Nicolas De Santis - Future Worldbuilder®

Technology Entrepreneur and Market Disruptor.

Over the past three decades, he has built and scaled technology breakthrough ventures that have reshaped entire industries. As a founding executive of Opodo, the online travel platform backed by Europe’s leading airlines, Nicolas helped grow the company into a €1.2 billion revenue giant — transforming the way consumers engage with global travel. Earlier, he co-founded Beenz.com, the world’s first web-based digital currency, which pioneered many of the core ideas that underpin today’s fintech and crypto ecosystems. His conceptualisation of future ventures for his clients have consistently been ahead of their time, challenging legacy models and opening entirely new markets. Nicolas continues to apply his expertise in technology and strategy to advise leaders on navigating disruption and unlocking long-range innovation opportunities, with a particular focus on creating new enterprise ventures that deliver sustainable value for both business and society.

Enterprise Visioneer and Futuriser: Advisor to Global Brands and Fortune 500 companies.

Nicolas has pioneered the fields of Corporate Vision®, Enterprise Futurising®, and Enterprise Visioneering® for over 40 years — all trademarks owned by him. As an inventor of multiple business tools, frameworks, and methodologies, he has enabled companies and organisations to futurise and strategically reinvent themselves for long-term success.

Among his key contributions is MEGAVISIONING® — The Future as a System®, a radical new approach designed to help companies reposition themselves to lead from the future. He also developed the Megavisionary Enterprise Model®, a diagnostic framework that assesses an organisation’s visionary and cultural maturity, and FUTURE WORLDBUILDING®, a unique methodology to co-create visionary future worlds that inspire actionable, breakthrough ideas for present-day innovation.

In 2026, Nicolas will publish MEGAVISION®: THE MAGIC OF VISIONING THE FUTURE®, a comprehensive guide detailing his proprietary methods and tools for building megavisionary enterprises. The book will offer practical frameworks for embedding futurising capabilities into organisations, enabling them to craft megavisions and strategies that deliver sustainable innovation and disruptive ventures.

Nicolas’s extensive advisory career spans strategic vision development, global brand strategy, business model innovation, and sustainability initiatives for a diverse range of clients, including multinational corporations, industrial holding companies, governments, and international organisations. His clients include Coca-Cola, Santander Bank, British Airways, Ferruzzi, the European Union, European Parliament, Government of South Africa, WWF, Ferrovial, General Electric, Ferroglobe, Scottish Power, Instituto Nacional de Industria (INI Spain), Istituto Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI Italy), Iberdrola, CEPSA, among others.

Leading research on enterprise futurisation and visioneering

Nicolas De Santis leads the research teams at MEGAVISIONARY LABS®, where he spearheads applied research across the frontiers of enterprise reinvention and long-range strategic capability. His work focuses on designing breakthrough systems and frameworks in areas such as Enterprise Visioneering® (how organisations craft and execute long-term vision), Corporate Futurising® (embedding future-readiness into leadership, culture, and governance), and Business Model Innovation (developing scalable, sustainable, and disruptive architectures for value creation). Under his direction, the Lab explores the transformative potential of Generative AI and Exponential Technologies to reshape enterprise operating systems. He also advances thinking in Strategic Foresight and Time Horizon Leadership, enabling decision-makers to internalise multi-decade perspectives. Other specialised research domains include Future Worldbuilding®—a methodology for creating worlds of tomorrow and future-enterprise-state modelling. These integrated efforts position MEGAVISIONARY LABS® as a world-leading hub for future-centred enterprise strategy. For the full Centre research agenda, click here.

Future Worldbuilder® and Sci-fi Futures Imagineer

Nicolas’ expertise in Future Worldbuilding® is rooted in his lifelong passion for future visioneering, technology futures, and science fiction—shaped by his family’s background in filmmaking and the entertainment industry. Nicolas is also a superhero sci-fi comic book writer—a skill he honed through the creation of Captain Euro®, Europe’s Superhero. This original series of comic books and animated content was developed to support the launch of the Euro currency and featured a rich character universe, complete with sci-fi personas, a futuristic headquarters, and non-lethal high-tech gadgets. Captain Euro®, gained worldwide media attention throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Nicolas uses science fiction narrative building, prototyping, and visualisation techniques to create future worlds, futuristic product concepts, and advanced business models. What began as a creative passion has evolved into a practical discipline that he now integrates into his futurising strategies—shaping visionary mindsets and visioneering advanced technologies, products, societies, and future scenarios.

Business Model Innovation & Venture Building

A passionate advocate for disruptive innovation, startup acceleration, and scale-up excellence, Nicolas has dedicated his career to helping ventures unlock exponential growth and shape the future of entire industries. He brings a hands-on, founder-level perspective to every project, having built and scaled multiple high-impact startups — including Beenz, the first digital currency of the web, and Opodo, which grew into a €1.2 billion revenue travel platform.

A recognised expert in business model innovation, Nicolas was a co-creator of the seminal book Business Model Generation, which introduced the Business Model Canvas — now the global standard tool for designing, testing, and scaling business models across startups, corporates, and academic institutions worldwide.

As a strategic advisor, Nicolas De Santis has worked with countless founders, innovation labs, corporate ventures, and accelerators to identify billion-dollar opportunities, craft bold visions, and drive execution. His rare ability to fuse long-range visionary thinking with sharp business model design has made him a trusted partner in the venture and innovation space.

Strategic Advisor to Governments

Nicolas De Santis advised Enrique Barón Crespo, then President of the European Parliament, as well as the European Union, on the introduction of the EURO currency in 1992. Today, the Euro stands as the world’s second most-used currency after the US dollar (source: European Central Bank), marking a milestone in European economic integration and global finance.

In addition, Nicolas played a pivotal role in shaping the strategic vision and nation branding of post-apartheid South Africa. Working with the Mandela government, he crafted a compelling future vision and brand narrative that communicated South Africa’s profound journey of transformation, reconciliation, and rebirth — positioning the country confidently on the global stage as it embraced its new democratic identity.

Expert in Global Governance.

Nicolas is also a recognised global governance expert and serves as President of Gold Mercury International, the think tank and award organisation founded in 1961 to promote peace, cooperative governance, and sustainable development worldwide. Under his leadership, Gold Mercury has advanced its mission to improve strategic foresight and ethical leadership across governments, corporations, and global institutions.

As steward of the prestigious Gold Mercury International Award, De Santis continues a legacy of honouring exceptional contributions to global progress. Past laureates of the award include U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Kerry Kennedy, UNICEF, FAO, and the Red Cross — all recognised for their pivotal roles in shaping a more just and peaceful world.
In 2025, De Santis awarded the Gold Mercury International Peace Award to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in recognition of his lifelong commitment to non-violence, compassion, and the peaceful advancement of human rights.

Through Gold Mercury, Nicolas also leads pioneering initiatives such as GLOGO®, the Global Governance Monitoring System for Planet Earth. This innovative platform was developed to enhance strategic decision-making and improve governance frameworks in response to today’s complex and interconnected global challenges. GLOGO® organises the planet’s complexity into eight macro-areas that monitor governance, change, and disruption — providing leaders with clarity on the present and future state of the world.

Board Memberships and Philanthropy.

Nicolas De Santis brings extensive board-level experience across both corporate, listed companies and non-profit sectors. He has served on the boards and strategic committees of several high-profile organisations, including the U.S. public company Lyris Technologies, a leader in e-marketing solutions (acquired by AUREA Software in 2015), and the Global Virus Network, a coalition of the world’s top medical virology research centres focused on preventing illness and death from viral disease.

Currently, Nicolas serves on the board of FERROGLOBE (NASDAQ: GSM), the global leader in silicon metal production — a critical material powering the semiconductors and microchips that drive the future of computing and artificial intelligence. He also sits on the boards of The Moniker Art Foundation, The IWSC Foundation (supporting excellence in oenology and the wine & spirits industry), and is a trustee of the World Law Foundation, an international organisation composed of leading jurists, judges, lawyers, and law firms committed to promoting peace, human rights, and the rule of law.

Media Commentator

Nicolas De Santis is a sought-after media commentator and thought leader, regularly featured in leading global news outlets for his expertise on strategy, disruptive innovation, sustainability, and global governance. His insights have appeared on platforms such as CNBC, BBC News, CNN International, Al Jazeera, Russia TV, TVE Spain, EL PAÍS, and Shares Magazine, where he contributes analysis on the forces shaping our global future. Known for his ability to distil complex geopolitical, technological, and economic issues into actionable foresight, Nicolas is frequently invited to share perspectives on corporate transformation, AI disruption, planetary governance, and the long-term future of industries and nations. His media presence underscores his role as a trusted voice in helping leaders and the public understand and navigate systemic change.

External Links.

Private website: nicolasdesantis.com

Nicolas De Santis Wikipedia

President of Think Tank: Gold Mercury International