Born and raised in rural Scotland, Jonny’s natural entrepreneurial spirit was evident from an early age, starting a car washing business in his neighbourhood at just 14 years old. While study marketing at the University of Stirling, Jonny had a number of business ventures, including buying and selling used cars to generate supplementary income.
Today, Jonny is the President and CEO of PayByPhone, one of the fastest growing mobile payment companies in the world. Before being appointed CEO in 2022, Jonny led PayByPhone’s expanding corporate portfolio in North America and Europe, and was UK CEO from 2018 to 2022.
Prior to joining PaybyPhone, Jonny was General Manager of Digital and Innovation within the BMW Group. In this role, he pioneered the birth of the BMW Innovation Lab, an award-winning corporate accelerator and the first of its kind within the industry. He subsequently spearheaded the BMW Intrapreneur lab, an internal innovation programme aimed at fostering a culture of innovation within the business.
Recognised in 2020 as “One of the UK’s top ten business gamechangers”, Jonny has been featured in publications such as HuffPost, The Economist and the Scotsman. He has shared his insight and experience with a wide range of well-recognised brands, including Barclays, Disney, Asset Finance International and Baillie Gifford.
Jonny’s keynote topics include:
Innovation and Influencing
Anyone who has tried to “go against the grain” in a big corporate organisation knows only too well the feeling of getting nowhere.
Drawing on his experience of launching two award-winning innovation programmes of BMW, Jonny shares how he managed to navigate the “corporate immune” system that exists to kill off new ideas which don’t conform to the status quo, along with the learnings of what made both programmes successful.
Leadership
Drawing on this experience as a young CEO in the digital world, along with his 14 years at BMW, Jonny shares what he considers to be some of the key ingredients to effective leadership, and exposes some of the “old school” leadership styles that dramatically hold back organisations today.
Customer
Customer expectations seem to increase year on year, meaning that resting on your laurels is never an option.
Jonny explains how understanding the customer journey is the key to engaging effectively with your customers, and how to ensure that your organisation’s offering remains competitive in an age when no industry is safe from the threat of digital disruption.