Dion Chang

Guest Speaker Dion Chang will make you think differently. He is a professional cage rattler, a strategic thinker, a keynote speaker, and a walking ideas bank.

He is one of South Africa’s most respected trend analysts and founder of Flux Trends which takes the unique view of “trends as business strategy”. Flux Trends specialises in identifying unexpected business opportunities within shifting trends, and specifically the impact of disruptive technologies across all industries, ensuring that global trends have relevance when translated for African, and South African businesses.

Dion is passionate about assisting companies to embrace change and embedding a culture of innovation into corporate operating systems. Businesses facing change and struggling to adapt to a new world order turn to him to help them navigate the complex terrain.

These qualities serve him well in the new role he has added to his portfolio, that of ‘an end-of-life companion doula’. As such he will provide the terminally ill and their families with support, guidance and companionship. This new role aligns with his business practice – after all end-of-life is not necessarily about physical death but the death of old ideas and the birth of new ones. For businesses struggling to re-invent themselves, Dion will help identify the blind spots and ask the difficult and uncomfortable questions that growth requires.

He lectures and has conducted Foresight and Innovation Implementation modules for executives and senior management at various business schools, including GIBS, UCT’s Graduate School of Business and Duke CE. He has devised and hosted three trend conferences, published three trend books and continues to sit on the advisory board of the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment at WITS.

Apart from being an information source for cross-industry trends for many journalists, he also writes columns for City Press and Acumen (a C-suite business quarterly for GIBS).

His 20-year experience in the media industry, as a journalist and media spokesperson, enables him to provide insights into the ever-changing relationship between brands, consumers and the communication channels that bind them.

He has a deep passion for youth trends and subcultures, as well as for solution-based innovation for the greater good. The Gen Z Immersion Experience reflects this as it is a culmination of nine years of tracking local and global Gen Zers, those digital natives who became game-changers.

He is an intrepid traveller, global citizen and proud South African.