Dr Michélle Booysen

Runner Up Innovation Leadership Award

Dr Michélle Booysen is an economist, entrepreneur, board member and Co-Founder and CEO of Pétanque NXT, with more than 30 years of experience turning strategy into measurable business results through practical innovation.

A distinctive feature of Michélle’s work is the use of visual storyboards to make complex change visible, understandable and actionable. Through methodologies such as VizPro®, Business X-ray®, Business Destination Map®, ChangeMaker® and Navigator®, she has helped organisations see how strategy, processes, people, risks and technology connect—and where change will create the greatest value.

Her innovation leadership increasingly focuses on applying technologies such as AI, blockchain and tokenisation to improve business processes, decision-making, governance and customer value. She looks beyond technology adoption to redesign how work itself is performed.

Michélle has also used AI to innovate how Pétanque NXT delivers work to clients, including AI-supported analysis, rapid assessments, decision-support agents, data-quality agents, process diagnostics and faster conversion of business information into actionable insights.

Across Africa and Europe, she combines economics, law, process engineering, project leadership and commercial experience to bridge strategy, people, process and technology. Her focus is consistent: make innovation practical, visual, measurable and capable of delivering sustainable business impact.