The future is not something you predict from a distance—it is something you design and build with your own hands.
Zia Zaman led business development, strategy, and ventures for Microsoft across Asia Pacific, and served as Chief Innovation Officer at MetLife. For ten years he sat as a board director on two of Singapore’s statutory boards—the Energy Market Authority and the National Environment Agency—watching firsthand how a small state governs energy and technology. He is that rare strategist who, while a futurist, has always cared most about implementation.
As AI rewrites the very structure of industry, why do so many companies and institutions stall at “forecasting the future,” while only a few challengers move to “designing” it? He offers a way of thinking that treats trends not as external information to consume, but as a playbook to embed in one’s own strategy—and a vantage point from which Tokai, the heartland of manufacturing, can absorb global change and move to the side that designs the standard for the next century.
The time for being a commentator is over. As the opening of DAY1, “DRAW,” this keynote embodies the very theme of BEYOND, seen through the eyes of a global builder.
