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Christina Romer is the chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and she is the former co-director of the programme in monetary economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Previously, Ms Romer was a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and she has served as vice-president and executive committee member of the American Economic Association. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ms Romer is known for her research on the causes of the Great Depression and on the role that fiscal and monetary policy played in the country’s economic recovery. Her most recent work shows the impact of tax policy on government and economic growth. Under her direction, the Council of Economic Advisers recently released the 2010 Economic Report of the President about the administration’s future agenda.

Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen is the author of “The Innovator's Dilemma”, which popularized the concept of disruptive innovation and won the Global Business Book Award for best business book of the year in 1997. Since then, Mr Christensen has published “The Innovator's Solution” and books on America's education and health-care systems: “Disrupting Class”, in which he offers solutions for struggling schools, in 2008, and “The Innovator's Prescription”, on fixing problems in heath care, in 2009. He is also the co-founder of the Innosight, an innovation consultancy, and the Innosight Institute, a nonprofit think-tank aimed at applying his ideas to the social sector.

Generally recognised as the father of the modern strategy field, Michael Porter is a professor at Harvard Business School. He is a leading expert on competitive strategy; on the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states and regions; and on the application of competitive principles to social problems such as health care. In 2006 he published, with Elizabeth Teisberg, “Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results”. Mr Porter has received many honours for his research and writing—including, in 2008, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award, for his contributions to economic development. He has warned that America is not strategically addressing the challenges it faces: failures in the public education system, energy inefficiency, excessive costs of doing business and a lack of economic security.

Arianna Huffington is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post and she is the co-host of “Left, Right & Center”, a popular public-radio roundtable programme. In 2009 she was named to Forbes magazine's list of the most influential women in media and she is ranked 8th in the Guardian's current list of the top 100 leaders in digital media. Ms Huffington maintains that traditional news outlets have become dangerously sympathetic to the interests of political parties and people in positions of power. Often, she believes, the press obscures the truth in its efforts to present two sides to every issue. Ms Huffington’s own website is the most linked-to blog on the internet. She is working on a new book which argues that America is becoming a third-world country.

Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer-winning author of “Guns, Germs and Steel”. As an ecologist, physiologist, evolutionary biologist and professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr Diamond’s approach looks to synthesise new discoveries from the fields of plant and animal genetics, biogeography, archaeology and linguistics. Mr Diamond is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award and the National Medal of Science. Prospect magazine/Foreign Policy lists him as one of the world’s leading public intellectuals. Mr Diamond’s other books include “The Third Chimpanzee”, “Why is Sex Fun?” and “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”.

Paul Saffo is a forecaster, essayist and academic with over two decades experience exploring long-term technological change and its impact on business and society. He teaches at Stanford University and is a Visiting Scholar in the Stanford Media-X Research Network. Mr Saffo was the founding chairman of the Samsung Science Board and is a member of the US National Academies Committee on Disruptive Technologies. Mr Saffo has described himself as a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist. He believes millennium-related anxieties dominate the zeitgeist; while decade ends cause turmoil for only a couple of years, century endings tend to reverberate for 10 years or more.

Shirley Ann Jackson is the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a presidential appointee to the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a policy-shaping group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers. She has received the National Science Board’s prestigious Vannevar Bush Award and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Ralph Coats Roe Medal. She has been named to three prestigious top-50 lists—of women in science (Discover magazine), of the most inspiring African-Americans (ESSENCE magazine) and of R&D stars to watch (Industry Week magazine). Ms Jackson has held senior leadership positions in industry, research, academe and government, including four years as chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She suggests that America should develop infrastructure that can be shared by nascent enterprises as a new kind of capital to support innovation.

Ray Kurzweil is a futurist philosopher and one of the leading inventors of our time. He was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first optical character-recognition software, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and the first music synthesiser capable of mimicking the grand piano and other orchestral instruments. Mr Kurzweil has won the world’s largest award for innovation, the MIT-Lemelson prize and the National Medal of Technology, the highest honour of its kind in America. He is also a 2009 recipient of an innovation award from Economist Conferences. In 2002 Mr Kurzweil was inducted into the Patent Office’s National Inventors Hall of Fame. He is the author of four bestselling books, including “The Singularity is Near”, on the moment when humanity will transcend its biological limitations.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran is an award-winning correspondent for The Economist. In his two decades on staff, he has covered development issues, energy and environment, health care, and innovation. He is an expert advisor to the World Economic Forum/ Davos and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He also teaches at NYU’s Stern Business School. Mr Vaitheeswaran has addressed groups ranging from the US National Governors’ Association and the UN General Assembly to the TED, AAAS and Aspen Ideas conferences. His most recent special reports for The Economist were on innovation and on technology in health care. His latest book, “ZOOM”, was named a book of the year by the Financial Times. Mr Vaitheeswaran is also the author “Power to the People”, a book on the future of energy.

Christina Romer

Michael Porter

Vijay Vaitheeswaran

Professor

Harvard Business School

Chair

White House

Council of Economic Advisors

Global Correspondent

The Economist

Jared Diamond

Arianna Huffington

Paul Saffo

Professor,

UCLA

Editor in Chief

Huffington Post

Visiting Scholar

Stanford University

Media X Research Network

Clayton Christensen

Ray Kurzweil

Professor, Harvard Business School

Founder

Kurzweil AI

Shirley Ann Jackson

President

Rensselaer Polytechnic

Institute