Craig Wing

Craig Wing is a visiting faculty in Executive Education, at Mahindra University. He is also visiting faculty at the Indian School of Business (ISB) and Duke Corporate Education.

For two decades, Craig has advised clients to understand, create and design their ideal futures through Imagineering and thinking from the future. His areas of expertise include emergent technology (AI, blockchain, Quantum, CRISPr), business models (platform, experience), company culture and New World of Work. Across Africa, he has spoken at length on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the preparedness of the continent. He has converted his own car to electric: creating the future we could have versus just talking about it! He rejected an opportunity to lead one of Richard Branson’s companies – to create a global platform for tomorrow’s leaders – to focus on making South Africa a better place for all.

Craig, as a consultant to the United Nations, advises the Nigerian government on their future country plans; he moderated the 10th BRICs summit on 4 th Industrial Revolution with President Xi, Putin and Ramaphosa & PM Modi in attendance. He has hosted sessions at the African Innovation Symposium with the United Nations. He was head of Innovation for B4SA as South Africa sought to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. He is a keynote speaker at conferences including the SA Innovation Awards, Finance Indaba, Manufacturing Indaba, Africa Agri conference & ITWeb Digital Economy. His clients include UNAIDS, Tata, Shell, MTN, Airbus, Danone, Nestle, Anglo American, Microsoft, Fidelity, Accenture, Barclays, Investec, Discovery, Standard Bank, BMW, Huawei, and Mubadala fund

He has a BSc (Eng), MSc (Usability) and MBA from Babson College (USA) as a recipient of the prestigious Frederic C Hamilton scholarship for significant entrepreneurial achievement. During his MBA he was the first “non-American” class president. His current research as part of his PhD will formulate new models for “futures thinking” for leaders to formulate their ideal future company strategy. As head of small business marketing for Google, he launched South African Business Woza online where SME’s created 50,000 websites in its inaugural year – one every ten minutes. He grew revenue by 82% YoY and was selected the African “Googliest Googler!” He was also the first African to work for GoogleX.

Craig’s accolades include: AFLI Desmond Tutu Fellow, AshokaU Changemaker, WEF Global Shaper, Mail and Guardian Top 200 under 35, Destiny Man & African Independent Top 40 under 40, disruptive Innovation speaker at TEDx and profiled at the Clinton Global Initiative. He is the youngest graduation speaker at University of Johannesburg. He is a board member for WomHub, a non-profit inspiring woman into engineering, former chairperson of Moving into Dance (educating disenfranchised youth and the disabled through dance), non-executive for government entities and advisor to several government initiatives. He is also an angel investor in disruptive, technology driven startups.

Craig holds 2 Provisional patents in vision systems and computer components; He started 4 Companies, including a non[1]profit in Silicon Valley; has presented over 500 keynotes globally in over 45 countries; advised/mentored 1000+ entrepreneurs; and has advised Google X, Alphabet’s “Innovation Lab”.