Norman is a writer, speaker and consultant on innovation and technology. He is recognised worldwide as an expert on future trends and user behaviours regarding technology innovation and adoption. He has over 20 years of experience driving commercial innovations and disruptive social technologies in global corporations and start-ups. His research on the EU’s digital sovereignty strategy, particularly the negative impact of its regulatory dynamic, focuses on the increasing censorious attacks on online content and speech, which threaten the future of democracy and innovation.

Formerly a director at PwC, responsible for running their crowd-sourced innovation programme, he was also the Director of Technology Research at Orange UK for a decade. He was an Executive Board member of the MIT Communications Futures Programme and a former chairman of the International Telecommunications Union’s TELECOM Forum Programme Committee. He is a co-author of Big Potatoes: the London Manifesto for Innovation. Norman spends a lot of time in Northern Italy near Lake Como with his wife, where, besides writing and painting, he pursues his love of mountain walking, cycling, swimming, Italian food, and cooking. 

Norman believes that MCC Brussels can provide a critical intellectual counterpoint to the EU’s technocratic risk-aversion that threatens free speech and creativity and, thus, Europe's much-needed future innovation and economic growth.