Navigating the Unthinkable:  
Our Mission and Story

Founded by Nik Gowing in 2014, TtU is a dynamic leadership project which recognises that leaders are struggling to embrace new realities

Our Mission

We focus on developing new mind muscle that liberates leadership transformation. Our mission is to inspire bold, positive, purpose-driven leadership that embraces change and drives sustainable growth.

We engage with leaders and their organisations to surface difficult issues. We create space for innovative and positive thinking in response to global disruptions, in particular the climate and nature emergency

We challenge the status quo.

Our Story

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Nik Gowing

Founder and Director, Thinking the Unthinkable

Since 2014 Nik has been founder and director of the Thinking the Unthinkable (TtU) project. Using interviews with, and access to, the highest levels of business, public service and governments the ongoing and dynamic project reveals candidly why so many leaders at every level face new difficulties adapting to the scale of unthinkables and unpalatables.

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Until 2014 Nik was a main news presenter for the BBC’s international 24-hour news channel BBC World News 1996-2014. He presented The Hub with Nik Gowing, BBC World Debates, Dateline London, plus location coverage of many major global stories. He is best remembered for his many hours of live coverage of Princess Diana’s car crash in Paris in August 1997, making the announcement of her death, then the unfolding horrors of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US.

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For 18 years from 1978 he worked at ITN where he was bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw, and Diplomatic Editor for Channel Four News (1988-1996). He collected a BAFTA award for breaching media controls to cover martial law and the crushing of Solidarity in Poland in 1981. He reported for TV much of the drama in Eastern Europe and the rapid crumbling of Soviet power up to the sudden end of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the coup in Moscow in 1991.

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Nik has been a member of the councils of Chatham House (1998–2004), the Royal United Services Institute (2005–2021), and the Overseas Development Institute (2007-2014). The Foreign Office appointed him to the board of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy where he became vice chair (1996-2005) plus the advisory council at Wilton Park (1998-2012).

In 1994 he was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center in the J. F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He was a board member for the Hay Literary Festival 2004-2018 and was a trustee for the festival’s new charitable status until 2024.

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Nik had extensive reporting experience over three decades in diplomacy, defence, and international security. He has a much sought-after analytical expertise on the failures to manage information in the new digitally transparent environments of conflicts, crises, emergencies, and times of tension.

His peer-reviewed study for the Reuter Institute at Oxford University, ‘Skyful of Lies and Black Swan’ (2009), predicted and identified the new vulnerability, fragility, and brittleness of institutional power in what would soon become the new all-pervasive public information space. The work built on his earlier research in the Kennedy School at Harvard. Current developments have confirmed all that his cutting-edge work warned about.

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Since 2014 Nik has been a Visiting Professor at Kings College, London in the School of Social Science and Public Policy. From 2016 to 2018 he was a Visiting Professor at Nanyang University (NTU) in Singapore where he worked on deepening and widening the Thinking the Unthinkable research project.

He was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geo-Economics (2014-16). In September 2017 he was appointed an adviser on leadership challenges to the President of the UN General Assembly

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He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by Exeter University in 2012 and Bristol University in 2015 for both his ongoing cutting edge analyses and distinguished career in international journalism. Nik is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Royal United Service Institute, London.

Nik has written two acclaimed thriller novels, The Wire and The Loop which reflected his many years reporting behind the Iron Curtain and in Russia.

Leadership Transformation Examples

Click on a client example below to read about how leaders can achieve radical and positive change.
Be inspired by what they reveal.

All Client Examples

UK Nature Summit | York, 2026

The UK Nature Summit 2026, was hosted by Environment Bank at the historic Castle Howard Estate in North Yorkshire and moderated by Nik Gowing. The event brought together business leaders, investors, sustainability professionals and nature experts to examine how organisations can move from nature ambition to meaningful action.

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22nd June 202623rd June 2026

All Client Examples

CWZ Climate & Nature: Achieving Restoration at Scale | Zurich, 2026

At the opening of Climate Week Zurich 2026, Nik Gowing was invited to moderate a flagship session focused on one of the most persistent challenges in climate action: how to move from knowledge to implementation at scale.

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14th May 202614th May 2026

All Client Examples

CWZ x Google Ecosystem Partner Meet Up | Zurich, 2026

At Climate Week Zurich Nik Gowing moderated and steered the discussion for Google’s Ecosystem Partner Meet Up. This high-level session brought together leaders from business, policy and sustainability to explore how artificial intelligence can support both emissions reduction and climate resilience.

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14th May 202614th May 2026

All Client Examples

Delphi Economic Forum | Delphi, 2026

At the Delphi Economic Forum 2026, Thinking the Unthinkable designed and led a high-intensity, 30-minute workshop aligned to the Forum’s central theme: “The Shock of the New.” Convening global leaders across politics, business and policy, the session focused on how converging disruptions are already reshaping economic and societal stability.

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28th April 202614th May 2026

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Ready to Lead Through Uncertainty?

Whether you’re looking to develop resilient strategies or spark new conversations, we’re here to help.

If your organisation is ready to face complex challenges and lead with clarity, now is the time to act. Contact us to start a partnership that delivers insights, resilience, and positive impact.

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Navigating the Unthinkable: Our Mission and Story

Our Mission

Our Story

Leadership Transformation Examples

UK Nature Summit | York, 2026

CWZ Climate & Nature: Achieving Restoration at Scale | Zurich, 2026

CWZ x Google Ecosystem Partner Meet Up | Zurich, 2026

Delphi Economic Forum | Delphi, 2026

Ready to Lead Through Uncertainty?

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Navigating the Unthinkable:  
Our Mission and Story