Dr.(h.c.) Ansgar Pabst is a transformation speaker, growth strategist, and emerging market practioner who helps organisations reinterpret disruption and turn obstacles into opportunities for growth.

Operating between global boardrooms and township economies, Ansgar brings a rare combination of academic depth and real-world execution. His work focuses on helping leaders navigate the growing gap between strategy and reality — especially in times of uncertainty, disruption, and rapid change. As Ansgar often says: “Strategy is easy. Reality is messy.”

With experience spanning Europe, Africa, and emerging markets, Ansgar has worked with leading organisations including Walmart/Massmart, Pick n Pay, Lidl, Samsung, and Woolworths.

What makes his perspective different is that he does not only speak about transformation — he has lived it. Through ThinkDisruption and initiatives such as FLIP! Direct-to-Community Retail, he actively builds and tests new growth models in-market, generating practical insights from the field rather than theory alone.

His work is particularly focused on helping organisations bridge the gap between developed and emerging markets, as well as between Top-of-Pyramid corporate structures and Base-of-Pyramid customer realities.

Ansgar’s doctoral research focused on: “Generating Inclusive, Sustainable and Profit-Driven Growth in Emerging Markets: Overcoming Barriers for Large Organisations.”

As part of this work, he studied in India to explore emerging-market solutions for emerging-market challenges and interviewed more than 55 CEOs and business leaders to understand why traditional growth models struggle in rapidly changing and complex environments.

His research explored how organisations can better integrate profitability, inclusion and sustainability — not as competing priorities, but as mutually reinforcing drivers of long-term growth while bridging the divide between Top-of-Pyramid (ToP) and Base-of-Pyramid (BoP) markets.

This led to the development of:

• The 7A Framework

• The Chief Alignment Officer (CAO) model

• Profit-Enabled Impact (PEI) — a practical approach to growth that transforms sustainability and inclusion from cost centres into growth drivers.

His speaking focuses on helping organisations:

• turn disruption into opportunity

• navigate uncertainty and transformation

• bridge strategy and execution

• connect developed and emerging market realities

• unlock inclusive, profitable and sustainable growth

His core message is simple:

“Most organisations are trying to optimise yesterday’s model. The future belongs to leaders who can reinterpret disruption and turn obstacles into opportunities.”