Martin Adams

Martin Adams is an international keynote speaker and workshop leader on the topics of artificial intelligence, disruptive technology and innovation.

Martin has a rich background as a cutting-edge entrepreneur, innovation advisor and policy expert. As an entrepreneur, he helped setup the world’s first ever social media consultancy, which was eventually backed by Sean Parker (President of Facebook and founder of Napster), where he started to learn about the power of understanding audiences to drive company innovation.

Martin Adams is also the CEO and Founder of Codec.ai, a company that has raised millions to map popular culture around the globe and help companies understand what products and communications their audiences want them to create, before companies have to guess. Codec works with the leading brands in the world, including Unilever, Nespresso Time Inc and the BBC, and has been recognised as ‘the Best Artificial Intelligence Product in Marketing’ (CognitionX), one of the ‘Hottest AI Businesses in Europe’ (TechCrunch) and one of the ’50 most disruptive businesses in the UK’ (Real Business).

Martin Adams | Disruptive Innovation

As an innovation advisor, Martin Adams has worked with some of the world’s most high-profile individuals and organisations in the world on how to use technology to be more innovative and connect more deeply with real people- including companies like Pfizer and Red Bull, influencers like Barack Obama, and governmental organisations like the Royal Marines.

Having used his most precious asset as a student- a university ‘.ac.uk’ email address- to get access to a then-unknown site called Facebook, he helped to start one of the world’s first social media consultancies more than 15 years ago which worked with the world’s leading companies and innovative figures like Madonna and Lady Gaga. This sparked a fascination with building innovative businesses and creating intellectual property which Martin took to the next level after he was offered a place at Harvard Law School.

While there he worked at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society with the famous street-artist Shepard Fairey, advising on intellectual property and digital issues and defending him in a legal battle over the famous Obama ‘Hope’ poster- one of the most high profile intellectual property cases ever contested, receiving coverage in the New York Times, Guardian and BBC.

After graduating from Harvard Law with a Dean’s Prize, Martin was recruited by the firm he had fought against in this suit, and given the brief of counselling the firm, and its top private equity clients, on the transformative aspect of social and digital media in their business portfolios.

He worked on the portfolios of some of the world’s most successful venture and private equity firms and with clients like Facebook and Samsung. Martin Adams was lured back to East London from New York by Songkick.com (where he worked on business development and using audience data to change the way the music industry operated before Songick was acquired by Warner Music Group.) Coming from a family of teachers with no knowledge of business or technology, Martin is firmly committed to helping younger people understand both. 

Martin Adams founded the Social Media Unit @ UCL to promote wider discussion at the policy and political level around tech and digital in the UK and Europe, and to make these industries more understood and accessible for school leavers, students and budding entrepreneurs from all sections of society.

Martin Adams has been engaged as an Advisor & Strategic Consultant to the Royal Marines on Psychographic Terrain Mapping & the digital war against ISIS, and the Department for Communities & Local Government, and is an Advisor to The Inspire Movement, a movement for entrepreneurs and innovative thought leaders who have been through adversity and emerged transformed for the better. 

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