Why the future of business is neurodivergent

Most business advice was built for one type of brain.

But the founders changing industries, spotting gaps others miss and building businesses that actually stick are often the ones who were told they think "differently".

In this session, Amanda Perry makes the case that neurodivergent thinking isn't a problem to be fixed, but a competitive advantage.

Drawing on 18 years of working with entrepreneurs and her book Brain First Business, Amanda will show you how understanding how your brain works is the most underrated business strategy available to you right now.

Offer: Become a Brain First workplace

The Brain First Mark is the standard for neuroinclusive business. Start with the FREE audit to see where your business scores against our BRAIN framework. Claim now

Topics covered in this session

• Why the future of business is neurodivergent: The traits that traditional workplaces pathologise – hyperfocus, pattern recognition, non-linear thinking – are exactly what modern business demands. You'll leave with a new frame for your biggest strengths.

• How to build a business that works with your brain, not against it: Practical strategies for structuring your work, your offers and your decision-making around your actual cognitive style – not a productivity system designed for someone else.

• The Brain First framework in action: A clear, actionable model for making better business decisions by starting where all good strategy starts: understanding yourself.

About the speaker

Amanda Perry is a strategist, an entrepreneur and the author of the 2026 book Brain First Business.

With 18 years of experience working with entrepreneurs and four business exits of her own, she's the founder of Brain First, a media platform for neurodivergent founders and leaders.

She's also the creator of Brain First Workplace, the training and accreditation programme that helps businesses earn the Brain First Mark and build cultures where every brain can do its best work.

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Transcript

Lightly edited for clarity.

Caitriona: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Caitriona, and I'll be your host today.

For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for startups and small businesses.

I'm pleased to introduce Amanda Perry, who is an author and entrepreneur. In this session, Amanda will make the case that neurodivergent thinking isn't a problem to be fixed, but a competitive advantage.

If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat and we'll do our best to answer them at the end of the session. Today's webinar will be recorded, and we'll send a follow-up email to you with the recording and further resources later today.

Over to you, Amanda.

Amanda: Thank you, Caitriona. Hi, everyone. I always find these sessions slightly strange when I can't see anyone, so I'm just going to trust that there are people there watching, listening and appreciating what I'm talking about.

This is such an important topic, and if you follow me online, you'll know I talk about it a lot. Today, I'm talking about why the future of business is neurodivergent.

I'm going to assume that most of the people who've come along are neurodivergent. I'm sure some of you aren't, but I'm going to use "we" and "us" quite a lot, as someone who was diagnosed with ADHD in 2020.

The future of business is ours, but is business ready for it?

I'm Amanda Perry, founder of Brain First. Brain First is a media platform that supports neurodivergent founders and leaders.

Let's start with the premise that business standards are neurotypical standards. I've been working on this for a long time, and it still amazes me when people fully understand that for the first time. The standards we're expected to work towards, both our own expectations and the wider expectations of business infrastructure, are built around neurotypical brains. They are not built for neurodivergent brains.

Most business advice was built for one type of brain. In the 1940s and 1950s, there was a man called Taylor. I can't remember his first name, but his surname was Taylor, and his approach became known as Taylorism.

He created a system called scientific management, where he realised almost every business task could be broken down into individual tasks and optimised for time, motion, productivity and profitability. This was used in car manufacturing, so think of a factory line.

This is an extremely neurotypical way of working, and really, nothing much has changed in business since then. We are still expected to work in task-based ways, through task-based productivity systems.

But times have changed. ADHD diagnosis and prescriptions have risen significantly, particularly in the last five years. Neurodivergent entrepreneurs are increasing, and we can also see how quickly AI capability has developed over the last three to five years.

Those three things give us a real snapshot of what's changing in business, and it's time business caught up.

In an AI-focused world, nonlinear thinking becomes more valuable. This is where the future of business is neurodivergent, and where we can get excited.

The old values in business were built around linear, sequential thinking. Someone could follow a process from end to end, doing one step after another. They could follow processes and procedures, stay in their lane, stick to a job description and work in a prescriptive way.

Businesses valued consistent, predictable output, doing the same tasks day in, day out, going back to that scientific management model. They valued single-task focus and executing instructions precisely.

If you have ADHD, I don't know whether you're having a visceral reaction to this, but for me, it sounds like absolute hell.

The old value was on consistency, execution and fitting into the system.

But the skills that are valuable now in an AI-focused world are different. I know AI is controversial. Not everyone is using it and not everyone agrees with it, but the reality is that our world, business and the workplace are becoming focused around AI, whether we like it or not.

The shift that brings is that execution can increasingly be looked after. The operational part of a business can and will be supported by AI. The value now is in the way we think. It's in creativity, pattern recognition and pattern connection.

We can spot patterns and connect them in ways that neurotypical brains often can't. We can know the right questions to ask, not just ask questions. We can connect two ideas, or more ideas, at a higher level. We can think strategically and get to Z before some people have got to B.

We can make meaning from ambiguity. We can hyperfocus on what actually matters, although I know we can sometimes have difficulty distinguishing what matters. We can think in systems rather than steps, zoom out and reimagine the entire system.

These things are in our skill set. They are not always natural strengths for neurotypical brains. But there is a gap, and we need to talk about it.

Neurodivergent awareness has increased massively. AI adoption has increased massively. The skills needed in the workplace have changed. Yet one in five employees may be neurodivergent, whether diagnosed or not. I've also seen more recent research suggesting that could be up to one in three, which was shocking.

Thirty seven per cent of managers have never had a single hour of neurodiversity training, according to City & Guilds. That is a shocking number.

I heard someone talk recently about delivering neurodiversity training to a Premier League football club. One of the people on the board said they had never heard the word neurodiversity before. That absolutely blew my mind.

And this is the sad statistic: six in 10 employees don't trust their organisation to support them if they disclose.

That's one of the big issues in the workplace. Yes, one in five, and perhaps up to one in three, employees may be neurodivergent, whether diagnosed or not. But they don't trust the workplace to support them, so they don't disclose.

They sit there masking. They sit there struggling. And we see this huge issue of presenteeism in the workplace. If you have a team, this will be happening in your business.

It's interesting to think about this both from the perspective of people who've been in workplaces, and people who are creating workplaces. If we have a team, whether remote or on-site, we are creating workplaces.

All of this results in one statistic I find heartbreaking. According to Barclays, 54% of neurodivergent founders say entrepreneurship felt like their only viable path. The workplace forced them out.

The workplace is pushing this talent out of the door and creating a layer of reluctant entrepreneurs. These are not necessarily people who had a burning vision and always knew entrepreneurship was for them. Many were happy in the workplace. They had career goals. They wanted to climb the ladder, but the workplace wasn't viable for them. There wasn't the flexibility or support they needed for their brains.

Fixing this isn't about individual adjustments for neurodivergent brains. It's about designing a system that works for every brain.

There's often this eye-roll moment, particularly in corporate spaces, when people say, "We need to talk about neurodiversity." Or an individual has asked for noise-cancelling headphones, or said the lights are too bright.

But this isn't about fixing individual issues. It isn't even just about asking employees what accommodations they need. It's about creating workplaces that work for everyone.

I want to talk about the dropped kerb theory, because it's such a good metaphor for what I mean.

The dropped kerb was built in 1940s America for disabled war veterans. It was built specifically for disability, but everyone benefits from it. Parents with pushchairs, cyclists, delivery drivers with trolleys and many others all use dropped kerbs.

It shows that when you build for the edges, the whole system benefits. If we create flexible systems, accessible workplaces and dynamic processes, the whole business benefits.

I was talking earlier about the widespread return-to-office mandate. We see headlines every week about corporations demanding everyone comes back to the office. But why? Demonstrate exactly why that needs to happen. If people can't see a good reason, they're not going to get behind it.

That's a clear example of how neurodivergent brains, and the exact thinking these businesses need, are being pushed out of the workplace. I can work in an office five days a week, but I know I couldn't if someone was telling me I had to. That was the bottom line for me.

And this isn't just about being kind. There is a real business impact. According to Deloitte, neurodiverse businesses, businesses made up of every type of brain, are up to 30% more productive.

When I was hiring a lot in a previous business, before I was diagnosed, we talked as a management team about diversity and inclusion. This was six, seven, eight years ago, and we would ask why we had to tick those boxes. Surely it should just be about the best person for the job.

But there is so much research showing that unless we actively recruit for difference, we are likely to recruit people exactly like us.

Neurodiverse businesses can have increased productivity, increased morale and increased profits. There is the business case. When I talk to HR managers or CEOs, yes, they care about the team, but ultimately they need to deliver a business case. That is the business case.

So we have introduced the Brain First Workplace Mark, and I'm really excited about rolling this out.

We've built this around the BRAIN framework, which works whether you're a business of one or a much larger team. The framework gives you a starting point.

The BRAIN framework captures what we need to assess in a workplace to make it work for every brain. This is not just about making it work for neurodivergent people. It starts with how our brains work and uses the same principle as the dropped kerb theory: make it work for every brain.

B is for belonging. How do people fit in without masking? I don't know about you, but masking is exhausting. You only have to look at the stats around presenteeism to see how much it costs the workplace.

R is for recruitment. Are you attracting diverse thinking, or actively filtering it out through your recruitment processes?

A is for architecture. That means looking at the physical environment and how it works for every brain.

I saw a really interesting video recently from the presenter of Grand Designs in Australia. They are working with an autism organisation to create spaces built around autistic brains and neurodivergent brains. They recognised that by building for those needs, they are creating more joyful, peaceful and accessible spaces for everyone.

I've shared it on the Brain First Instagram account if you want to see it.

I is for infrastructure. Do your tools, processes and systems support different ways of working?

It isn't hard to build dynamic processes. We're just still working with old scientific management processes, where we do this, then this, then this. It doesn't have to be that way. It's possible to build processes that allow for different working styles.

And finally, N is for nurture. Are you actively developing neurodivergent talent, or are you just tolerating it?

That's uncomfortable, but it's a reality in a lot of workplaces.

So this is the Brain First Workplace Mark. Think of it like B Corp, but for neurodiversity. Can you believe nothing like this already exists?

We need a way to tell the world that we are a safe place for neurodivergent talent, that we care, that we have an eye on the future and that we understand what's changing.

My invitation to you is to take the free audit. Caitriona has the link as well. It's brainfirst.co/workplace, or there's an offer on the Enterprise Nation website too.

Go and do it. Find out how set up you are for the future and how neuro-inclusive your business already is. That applies whether it's just you, a small team or a large team.

You'll get a five-page report, which you can either go away and act on, or use as your first step towards becoming a Brain First workplace.

I'd love to hear your results, so tag me on Instagram or send me a message and let me know.

My final bit of promotion is that I have a book coming out in August. I've written the book on this. I can finally say I've written the book on it. Brain First Business is out in August.

I didn't realise how much pre-orders matter. A lot of people have been asking whether there will be an audio version. I'm recording the audio version next week, which I'm nervous about. But physical book pre-orders really do matter, so no pressure, but if you are planning to get it, pre-ordering would be amazing.

Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that. I can see lots of questions.

Caitriona: Thank you so much, Amanda. We've had lots of chat going on, which is great.

If anyone has any questions for Amanda, please pop them in the chat. In the meantime, I can start with one here.

What's an example of a business advantage that neurodivergent founders often underestimate in themselves?

Amanda: A business advantage as in a strength?

Caitriona: Yes, exactly. A strength that someone who's neurodivergent might have, but often underestimates in themselves.

Amanda: There are so many. That whole list I went through earlier, really. Pattern recognition, systems thinking, hyperfocus, creativity, strategic thinking.

The thing is, with all of these strengths, there's often a positive and a negative. Hyperfocus is such a strength, but it can also be the fastest route to burnout.

That's why building a business around your brain and giving yourself permission to do that matters so much.

I used to have an agency with a team of 40, and I thought I had to work 12 hours a day because that's just what you do when you're a founder.

Since I've understood more about my brain, I've realised that in three or four, maybe five, hours of really focused work, I can get more done than I would have got done in 12 hours. So much of that longer day was spent thinking about how I could look like I was doing something, and masking.

Hyperfocus is a real strength of mine, and I think it's a skill many of us have. But we have to monitor how we use it.

There's a workplace lesson there too. A lot of people say neurodivergent people can get a week's worth of work done in a day, and employers say, "Brilliant, come and do that." But then once you've done that week's work in a day, they expect another four days of output.

That's not how it works. The workplace has to support our weaknesses as well as benefit from our strengths. We have to understand those weaknesses too.

We can't have these strengths, these so-called superpowers, without also mitigating for the things that cost us energy.

Caitriona: Thank you. What parts of traditional business advice do you think are harmful for neurodivergent entrepreneurs?

Amanda: So much of it. Where do I even start? "Eat the frog" is a big one. Don't ever eat the frog. Eating the frog is often impossible for us.

Anything based in hustle culture can be really damaging. The whole "if your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough" idea, and all of that productivity pressure, can be harmful.

Many of us have grown up with negative messages following us our whole lives, so we often have an eroded sense of self-trust. That means we can look for external validation and be really susceptible to comparison.

We look at what other people are doing. We see neurotypical people talking about productivity, or someone on LinkedIn saying all the things they got done in a week, and we think, "I must be rubbish."

That's why we need to talk about this stuff and normalise the three-hour day, or working in ways that genuinely support us.

This isn't about the four-hour work week or productivity hacks. We're talking about self-care, but for us, that is productivity.

Caitriona: Thank you. A question in the chat asks whether there is a link between perimenopause and women receiving a late diagnosis.

Amanda: Yes, there is a huge increase in women realising they have ADHD when they go through perimenopause.

I'm not a doctor, but my understanding is that perimenopause can really exacerbate ADHD symptoms. The hormone changes are significant, and for many women, symptoms suddenly become much harder to manage.

There's also another factor, which is that many women at this age are researching neurodivergence because of their children, and then recognising themselves in what they're learning. That's one of the big factors behind late diagnosis.

There's a doctor called Helen Wall who has just written a book on menopause and ADHD, and I can't wait to read it. She's brilliant, and the topic is hugely important. There is a massive link, and it's worth researching.

Caitriona: Thank you. What does a sustainable work rhythm look like for people who experience cycles of hyperfocus and burnout?

Amanda: I always say that if you've met one person with ADHD, you've met one person with ADHD. So I can't tell everyone what their ideal rhythm should look like.

It depends on your energy patterns, your lifestyle and what else demands energy from you outside work.

I could hyperfocus for 12 hours, but my toddler wouldn't get fed, I wouldn't go to the toilet and I wouldn't eat. So I have to understand what else needs to happen around me.

It's about tracking your week, and if you're a woman, probably tracking your month, and understanding how your energy flows. Then you can work out the best pattern for you.

The one thing I'd say is that the permission is more important than the pattern. Once you understand your pattern, give yourself permission to work to it.

Caitriona: Thank you. We've just come to the end of the session now. I've shared the link for Amanda's Enterprise Nation profile and LinkedIn, so please do reach out and connect. I've also shared the link for the audit Amanda mentioned, and we'll include it in the follow-up email too.

Thank you so much, Amanda, for your presentation. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We'll be sharing the recording and further resources in a follow-up email.

Amanda: Thanks so much.

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