Advisory · Talks · Strategic counsel

"If you come pitching big ideas,
you'd better bring receipts."

Strategic counsel for boards, CEOs, and leadership teams facing AI as a civilisational shift — not a tool upgrade.

Forty years at the intersection of technology, exchange, and human consequence. From the City at the Big Bang to the Royal Society. From launching Ben & Jerry's in the UK to advising the CEO of one of Britain's leading precision-engineering firms. The frameworks were earned. The receipts are here.

See engagement options Direct enquiry
The argument

Most AI strategy work
is being built on the
wrong foundation.

The current wave of corporate AI advice is being delivered almost entirely through a Printocene lens — the assumptions, habits, and institutions of the era that is ending, applied to the era that is beginning. Better prompting. Better policies. Better procurement. None of it wrong; none of it sufficient.

The leadership question is not "how do we use AI?" The leadership question is "what kind of organisation do we become in relationship to it?" That is a different and harder question, and it's the one the existing playbooks aren't asking.

The frameworks I bring to client work — Cognology, Ludicity, the Three S Shift — are designed for that harder question. They're not a methodology to roll out. They're a map for thinking clearly through a transition the existing maps cannot describe.

Commissioning a scriptorium to explain the best uses for a printing press can be done — but it does not change the posture.

Track record

Three rooms across
four decades of commercial work.

I
1987 — 1999 · The City
Inside the information revolution before most knew it was one.

Started at Reuters, Extel, and ICC as the City moved from paper to electronic trading at the Big Bang. Account-managed thirty blue-chip clients including Nomura and Price Waterhouse. Helped establish the first online help desks for institutional investors. The training-ground for everything that followed: a front-row seat at the moment one information era was replacing another.

II
2004 — 2006 · New York
Blue-chip operations across publicity, hospitality, and finance.

Project-managed the migration of 1,650 Waldorf Astoria staff onto a biometric security system. At Ketchum PR, reported to the Global Account Director for Kodak. Offered a permanent senior position at the Institute of Private Investors, declined on principle. NYC was the operational laboratory: enterprise scale, demanding clients, serious institutions.

III
1990s · Brand Building
Helping launch Ben & Jerry's in the UK.

Led publicity for the UK launch of Ben & Jerry's — the campaign that turned a niche American ice-cream brand into a household name. The work that taught the deepest lesson about communication: a strong idea, well-told, doesn't just sell a product. It changes what's culturally legible.

Recent advisory

Senior counsel,
quietly delivered.

Recent advisory work has included counsel to the CEO of Wallace Precision Instruments, a leading UK precision-engineering firm — strategic guidance on AI's implications for an industry where evidence, tolerance, and verifiability are everything. (Testimonial forthcoming.)

Currently advising a senior figure at a globally recognised news and media organisation; engagement under wraps.

Recent collaborative work has included contributing to Professor Roger Steer's book on business ethics — bringing a Cognological frame to questions about the moral architecture of organisations operating through a civilisational transition.

Cognology and Coin

Money talks.
And it's been talking the same language as cognition all along.

A working hypothesis, offered with appropriate humility: each cognological shift in human history has been matched, in lockstep, by a corresponding shift in the form of money. Language gave us promise and barter. Writing gave us coin and contract. Print gave us banknotes, bonds, and credit. Digital infrastructure gave us a transitional third order — online banking, NFTs, crypto. AI is now producing the fourth: value generated as cognition itself, with compute and tokens as the new wrappers.

Cognology Form of exchange Order of abstraction
Language Promises, oaths, barter Zeroth — direct exchange backed by trust
Writing Coins, deeds, contracts First — symbolic representation of value
Print Banknotes, bonds, shares, credit, insurance Second — abstract claims on future value
Digital (transitional) Online banking, NFTs, crypto-currency Third — disembodied symbolic claim
AI Compute time, tokens, generated cognition Fourth — value without representational wrapper

The hypothesis is a working one. The Shannon-information analogy is heuristic, not formal; the fourth-order claim is offered as a direction of travel, not a settled destination. But the pattern is real, and the commercial implication is significant: every business that handles money is also handling a printocene-era artefact, and every leadership team faced with AI is implicitly faced with the question of what comes after that artefact.

A long-term interest in the history and concept of money has informed some significant beneficial investment decisions over the years — including in 2012, on the same kind of structural reasoning that produced the AI argument in 2017. The faculty is the same: noticing structural shifts before they are obvious.

Read the fuller treatment in the Lexicon →

Selected speaking engagements

Talks that produce furious note-taking, not polite applause.

METALL · Manufacturing Engineering & Technology Alliance
Unveiling the Exponential Potential of AI

"Engineers are my favourite kind of tough crowd. If you come pitching big ideas, you'd better bring receipts." Keynote on AI as the fourth hyperludic accelerant, with live demonstration. Hosted at Cottesmore Hotel, sponsored by Carpenter Box, DMH Stallard, and NatWest. Event write-up →

February 2025
Hurst Foundation · Hurstpierpoint College
Address to Senior Educators

At the invitation of CEO Tim Manley, addressed the senior educators of one of England's leading independent schools (4–18, day and boarding) on AI's implications for education, literacy, and what we are now teaching for. About the Foundation →

2025
The Royal Society · Future of Text Symposium
Twilight of the Printocene & the Dawn of Ludicity

Presented at the Royal Society with Vint Cerf, co-architect of the internet, as Emeritus Chair. The argument arrives at its most prestigious stage.

2025
Mid Sussex District Council
Briefing to the Economic Delivery Team

Strategic briefing to the council's economic delivery team on AI's implications for local economic development, business support, and the changing texture of work in the cognology era.

2025

"I've rarely been in a room where there have been so many stunned faces in response to the demonstrations and information provided, and furious scribbling of 'must-do' actions as a result. Thank you Vincent Murphy for an excellent, thought-provoking and slightly scary presentation."

Alastair Watkinson · Business Development Manager · Carpenter Box
Engagement options

Four ways to work together.

I
Keynotes & Talks

Single-session keynotes for conferences, leadership offsites, board awaydays, and institutional events. Built from original frameworks, delivered without jargon, calibrated to audience seniority. Talks are designed to produce decisions, not polite applause.

Format: 45–90 minutes, plus Q&A
Fee: from £4,000
II
Workshops & Programmes

Half-day and full-day sessions for leadership teams, departments, and institutional cohorts. Combines framework introduction with applied work on the specific questions a given organisation is wrestling with. Bespoke programmes available for sustained engagement.

Format: half-day, full-day, or multi-session
Fee: from £6,000 (half-day) / £10,000 (full-day)
III
Board-Level Advisory

Retained advisory for CEOs, MDs, and boards navigating AI as a strategic-level question — not an IT procurement one. Long-form conversation, written counsel, and selective deep work on the specific decisions a leadership team is facing. Confidentiality assured.

Format: retained, typically 6–12 months
Fee: by enquiry
IV
Bespoke Programmes

For institutional clients with unusual needs — multi-stakeholder programmes, hybrid speaking-and-advisory engagements, embedded work with strategy or transformation teams, sustained partnership across a transition period. Designed in conversation.

Format: designed to brief
Fee: by enquiry
Direct contact

No form. No funnel.
The conversation starts here.

For talks, advisory, retained counsel, or any conversation about whether and how to work together — write directly. Initial conversations are without obligation, scoped to the question you're actually trying to answer.

vincent@vincentmurphy.co.uk