Take what you need. No form, no request, no waiting for a reply before you can
build the programme page.
Biography — short
Around 45 words. For a programme listing or an introduction from the stage.
Neil Catton is an independent technology strategist with thirty-nine years across more
than twenty industry sectors, working on a fractional and advisory basis with organisations
facing high-stakes technology decisions. He writes on technology, ethics and human purpose,
and is the author of four books, most recently Predictive Purpose (2026).
Biography — long
Around 110 words. For a conference site or a panel brief.
Neil Catton is an independent technology strategist with thirty-nine years across more
than twenty industry sectors, from computer operator to Group CTO and, along the way, CISO.
He works on a fractional and advisory basis — fractional CTO and CIO roles, board
briefings, technology due diligence and interim leadership — including Group CTO/CIO
advisory to the Global Consortium Group on AI and data strategy for public safety.
He is the author of Predictive Purpose (2026), the trilogy The Next Evolution,
The Cognitive Crucible and The Shadow System, and the ebook Working as
Designed. He writes the Substack The Next Evolution. His argument,
across all of it, is a single one: technology has to be designed for the individual human
being — not the organisation deploying it, and not the efficiency metric justifying it.
How to describe the practice
What an organiser or a journalist can lift straight into a programme page or an introduction.
An independent technology practice, trading under Neil’s own name. Thirty-nine years in the
industry across more than twenty sectors — from computer operator to Group CTO, and CISO along
the way. The work is fractional and advisory: fractional CTO and CIO roles, board briefings on AI,
AI readiness reviews, technology due diligence, data strategy, interim leadership and programme
recovery, speaking and masterclasses. Several engagements run at the same time, across different
sectors. It is a portfolio, not a single post, and no one client is the headline.
Speaking topics
Talks are built for the room rather than delivered from a deck.
- What AI adoption is doing to the people on the other side of the decision
- Governing technology at board level without a technology background
- Why the workaround tells you more than the system
- Designing for the specific human rather than the average user
Speaking and masterclasses
Books and briefings
Covers, blurbs and publication dates.
Predictive Purpose — for press and reviewers
Out 23 October 2026. For review copies and interviews, email
nc@neilcatton.com.
A book about the value organisations never count because the brief never asked.
Every technology investment starts with a brief. The brief decides what is in scope, the
scope decides what gets measured, and what gets measured becomes what success looks like.
Everything outside that line goes uncounted – not because anyone rejected it, but
because nobody was asked to look.
Predictive Purpose is about that line. It shows how to see the frame a brief draws
before it closes, how to ask what an organisation’s existing capability could also be for,
and how to make that wider value countable in terms a decision-maker will act on.
- Paperback and Kindle · 149 pages
- ISBN 978-1-0682985-8-5
Download the cover (JPEG)
About the book