12/02/2026

12 February 2026

Our Keynote sessions feature distinguished external speakers and industry leaders who share fresh insight and experience in service-led business transformation. These exclusive briefings give members of the Advanced Services Partnership access to perspectives and practices rarely available elsewhere, helping shape strategic thinking across the partnership.

Speaker and topic will be revealed as the event approaches.

Back
Share
Meet The Team

Our expert team is made up of researchers, practitioners and business transformation pioneers.

Sasha Ilukhin
Sasha Ilukhin
SVP Global Processing Services and Services Solutions at Tetra Pak

Sasha is Senior Industrial Fellow at Aston Business School and the Advanced Services Group. He brings more than 22 years of senior leadership experience with Tetra Pak, where he played a pivotal role in shaping service-led growth, innovation and transformation on a global scale.

Throughout his career, Sasha has been instrumental in developing outcome-based service solutions that redefined how value is delivered to customers. His leadership supported Tetra Pak’s strategic development, helping to embed advanced services at the heart of its business model and enabling sustainable, profitable growth.

Sasha’s expertise lies in turning strategy into practice, guiding organisations through complex change and demonstrating how servitization can deliver competitive advantage. He continues to champion service innovation as a powerful driver of industrial transformation.

Sandra Benbow
Sandra Benbow

Sandra is a Senior Industrial Fellow with the Advanced Services Group and a business consultant based in Germany. She has extensive experience in and passion for accelerating company transformation through business model innovation and technology adoption. As Programme Manager for the Advanced Services Growth programme, she supported 80 UK-based SMEs to boost GVA by £19.2M and create 70 new jobs.

Sandra supports ASG’s advisory services across Europe, delivering organisational development workshops, executive education and commissioned projects. As an Enterprise Educator and Business Mentor, she has advised more than 500 senior executives and founders, applying expertise in business ideation, lean start-up, customer value proposition design and business model innovation.

She is also an International Telecommunication Union Digital Innovation Expert, working with governments worldwide to strengthen ICT-centric innovation ecosystems. Sandra holds an MBA with distinction from Aston University.

Ian Hughes
Ian Hughes
Formerly of Tetra Pak

Ian is a Visiting Industrial Fellow at the Advanced Services Group, bringing more than 20 years of senior management experience in growing service businesses within the food manufacturing industry. Over the last 15 years, he has focused on service innovation, driving the shift from product support to advanced, outcome-based solutions through servitization.

Since 2008, Ian has held a series of global leadership roles with Tetra Pak, including Director Expert Services and Director of Service Solutions. In these positions, he designed advanced service strategies, built global organisational capabilities and deployed solutions that created measurable value for customers around the world.

Ian is motivated by the opportunity to help manufacturers unlock new ways of competing, showing how advanced services can deliver stronger, more sustainable business performance.

Dimitris Karamitsos
Dimitris Karamitsos
Senior Energy Efficiency Business Developer Specialist at BASE

Dimitris is a Senior Energy Efficiency Business Developer Specialist at the Swiss organisation Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy (BASE). With more than 13 years of professional experience in the field of energy, entrepreneurship and sustainable technologies, Dimitris has experience in business model innovation, valuation principles and project execution.

Within BASE, Dimitris plays a key role in accelerating the deployment of Servitization worldwide, including the Cooling as a Service (CaaS) model.

Dimitris is part of the founding team of the Servitization for Energy Transition (SET) Alliance – aiming to further engage both private and public markets to adopt the model and accelerate the path to a more climate resilient and circular future. He holds an MEng Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College and and MSc of Management, Technology and Economics from ETH Zürich.

Denise Taylor
Denise Taylor
Managing Director at Wylde Connections

Denise is a qualified sustainability practitioner with over 30 years of experience working with businesses in the manufacturing and construction sectors. Her work at Wylde Connections helps diverse industries create and apply sustainability strategies, ensuring businesses can meet sustainability challenges while staying commercially viable.

Her aim is to bridge the gap between academic research and industrial practice, fostering innovation in sustainability and environmental stewardship.

Contact Details

For any questions regarding the guidelines, submissions, or other inquiries, please get in touch with us at abs_ssc2026@aston.ac.uk

Take the Lead in the Future of Manufacturing

Let the Advanced Services Group help you and your business navigate your servitization and advanced services journey.

Related Articles
Thank you for Subscribing