Francisco Palao, PhD, MBA, is an award-winning entrepreneur who has inspired and advised organizations around the world to design and implement innovation strategies.
Also, Francisco is the main author of the book ‘Exponential Transformation: the ExO Sprint playbook to evolve your organization to navigate industry disruption and change the world for the better.
Currently, Francisco is the Co-Founder and CEO of ExO Lever, a Global Transformation Ecosystem focused on supporting organizations, institutions and people to transform themselves for the technology disruption.
Previously, Francisco co-founded with Salim Ismail the successful ExO Works, which has successfully implemented transformation projects for organizations around the world (Visa, Black and Decker, HP, etc.).
In addition, Francisco has founded several companies including LeanMonitor, a cloud-based platform acquired by Gust.com in 2014. LeanMonitor was focused on helping large organizations and startups implement lean startup principles and improve their innovation strategies. Francisco also founded Nativoo, an AI-based platform for personalized tourism, acquired by SBTUR in 2012, and IActive, a high-tech company focused on AI, named Cool Vendor by Gartner in 2012. The first Internet startup that Francisco ran was called BuscarAmigos.Com and he co-founded it in 2001 and was acquired in 2004.
Francisco has been honored with several prestigious international recognitions and was granted the TR35 award by MIT, honoring the Top Innovators under 35.
Francisco holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Granada, and an Executive MBA from the IE Business School. He is also a graduate student of Singularity University and was mentored directly by Steve Blank on Lean Startup Methodologies at Berkley University.
