Strategic Sparring & Cognitive Architecture

Non-linear minds build breakthrough companies. They also break conventional operating systems.

High-stakes strategic sparring for founders and C-suite executives navigating complexity with ADHD, giftedness and spiky cognitive profiles. Keynotes and architectural workshops for boards and executive teams.

Book Private Sparring Enterprise & Board Engagements
A spiky cognitive profile Radar chart across ten cognitive dimensions. The profile peaks well above a dashed linear norm on some axes and falls below it on others.
Spiky profile Linear norm
  • Active Research Collaborations with Top Business Schools (IESE / IE)
  • Trusted Thought Partner to 100+ Tech Founders & C-Suite Executives
  • Neuroscience-Grounded Systems & Spiky Profile Framework

Track A · Private

For Founders & CEOs Private Sparring

For leaders whose thinking runs ahead of their company’s operating rhythm. We work on cognitive friction, decision fatigue and the fast pattern recognition that sees the answer before the data arrives, then build the operational scaffolding that lets your spikes carry the business.

  • Cognitive friction
  • Decision fatigue
  • Pattern recognition
  • Operational scaffolding

Executive work on how you lead and decide. Diagnosis and therapy stay with clinicians.

Explore 1:1 Sparring

Track B · Enterprise

For Organisations & Boards Workshops & Keynotes

For boards and executive teams that keep reading their most original people as unreliable. Keynotes and leadership offsites that make non-linear performance legible, then help you design roles, governance and team systems around high-performance spikes.

  • Keynotes
  • Board workshops
  • Leadership offsites
  • Team design

Formats from a 45-minute keynote to a full offsite, adapted to your board or team.

Explore Enterprise Programmes

01 · Executive Sparring

One-to-one strategic sparring for the person who carries the final decision.

Conventional leadership coaching assumes steady, predictable execution. High-performing non-linear leaders operate on radical spikes. Sparring provides confidential, high-velocity thought partnership directly at the level of your active strategic inflection points.

  1. The Spiky Diagnostic

    Mapping asymmetric cognitive capacity, intuitive leaps and operational friction points under extreme load.

  2. Energy Over the Clock

    Restructuring executive rhythms, high-stakes decisions and focus blocks around cognitive velocity instead of the calendar grid.

  3. Deconstructing Masking Costs

    Auditing and retiring compensatory micro-management systems that consume critical executive bandwidth.

  4. Leading Asymmetric Teams

    Designing leadership interfaces and translating non-linear strategy into clear execution for linear teams.

Confidential. In person in Barcelona, London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and Zurich or remote, in English, Spanish, German or French.

Request Sparring Intake

02 · Workshops & Keynotes

For boards, executive committees and the leaders who back them.

When non-linear talent collides with conventional governance, organisations mistake cognitive asymmetry for unreliability. These engagements align boards, executives and teams around high-performance spikes.

  • Keynote

    The Non-Linear Edge in the C-Suite

    Reframing ADHD, giftedness and divergent cognition as proprietary strategic advantages.

    Leadership forums, conferences, company events

  • Board Working Session

    Bridging the Cognitive Interface

    Preventing founder burnout, aligning board expectations and reading executive variance accurately.

    Boards, investors, executive committees

  • Enterprise Workshop

    Designing Systems for Cognitive Spikes

    Building organisational scaffolding so spiky thinkers can execute without burning out their teams.

    Executive teams, HR and L&D leaders

From a 45-minute keynote to a half-day working session, delivered across Europe in English, Spanish, German or French.

Request a Speaking / Workshop Proposal

03 · The Spiky Profile Framework

A working map of cognitive range, built for decisions.

Retire diagnostic labels. Replace them with an operating map that locates breakthrough capacity, names the valleys and specifies the scaffolding each one needs.

Flat corporate baseline: the same moderate value on all ten axes

The Flat Corporate Baseline

Uniform, average execution across every axis. The profile most roles, reviews and governance models are built for.

Spiky profile: peaks far above the baseline on some axes, valleys below it on others Breakthrough Scaffold

The Spiky Profile

Exponential breakthrough capacity on some axes, operational valleys on others. Each valley gets scaffolding.

  1. 01 / Map

    Multi-dimensional cognitive mapping across perception, synthesis and execution.

  2. 02 / Stress-Test

    Evaluating behavioural variance during funding rounds, hyper-growth and board friction.

  3. 03 / Scaffold

    Structuring roles, chief-of-staff interfaces and operating models around natural cognitive spikes.

  4. 04 / Translate

    Establishing an objective, non-clinical language for boards, investors and leadership teams.

04 · About

Dr. Sven Mulfinger

Executive coach, offsite facilitator and strategic advisor to founders and C-suite teams across Europe.

Sven trained as an engineer and holds a PhD in biotech engineering. He spent years building start-ups, including a venture in women's mental health, before moving into advisory work with founders and leadership teams. He is Lead Partner at Kuma Partners in Barcelona, where he prepares and facilitates leadership offsites for scale-ups.

Neurodisruptors grew out of a late ADHD diagnosis at 50 and a pattern he kept recognising in the founders he worked with. The research, the book and the Spiky Profile framework all come from that work.

  • Based inBarcelona, in person across Europe and remote
  • LanguagesEnglish, Spanish, French and German
  • Also leadsKuma Partners
  • ConnectLinkedIn

Academic collaborations

Ongoing research with IESE Business School on neurodiversity, entrepreneurship and leadership performance, building on a teaching relationship that began with a 2015 IESE case study.

  • Prof. Tomas Kluetter, IESE Business School
  • Prof. Nicolas T. Deuschel, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
  • Prof. Iñigo Gallo, IESE Business School (2015 case study)

Strategic Context

Frequently asked questions.

Key distinctions drawn from executive sparring and Dr. Sven Mulfinger's book, The Non-Linear Operating System.

Conventional executive coaching assumes a flat competency model and tries to correct behavioural inconsistency, whereas strategic sparring is a confidential thought partnership focused directly on real-time inflection points and cognitive architecture.

Instead of pushing leaders towards generic productivity habits or asking them to mask operational friction, sparring uses the Spiky Profile framework to map where high-stakes pattern recognition peaks and where administrative drag accumulates. Dr. Sven Mulfinger then designs executive interfaces, decision rights and complementary team scaffolding so non-linear founders can lead sustainably with their natural cognitive wiring.

The Spiky Profile is an operational model that replaces clinical deficit labels with an objective map of cognitive range, contrasting radical spikes in synthesis and innovation with deep valleys in routine execution.

Grounded in executive case studies and a research collaboration with IESE Business School, the framework is set out in The Non-Linear Operating System. It maps how an executive processes information across perception, synthesis and execution. It gives founders, boards and leadership teams a precise, non-clinical language for structuring roles around cognitive strengths instead of a flat corporate average.

Time management fails non-linear leaders because open calendar space is useless once cognitive activation, curiosity or recovery capacity are depleted.

Drawing on hundreds of executive conversations, the book shows that non-linear minds, including those shaped by ADHD, giftedness and dyslexia, allocate attention by meaning, urgency and pattern synthesis. When leaders plan around energy cycles and recovery capacity instead of the clock, executive performance steadies and the risk of burnout falls.

Governance structures expect steady, predictable, incremental execution, so they mistake the natural cycles of non-linear exploration and sudden execution bursts for volatility or a lack of discipline.

When a founder works on high-velocity pattern recognition, strategic leaps often outpace the board's sequential processing. Board working sessions bridge this cognitive interface with governance rhythms and operational translation layers that protect the founder's leverage while keeping institutional accountability intact.

Dr. Sven Mulfinger offers private 1:1 strategic sparring, 45-minute C-suite keynotes, half-day board sessions and executive offsites, in person across European business centres or confidentially online.

Sven is based in Barcelona and works in person in London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and Zurich. Sparring, keynotes and enterprise workshops are delivered in English, Spanish, German or French.

No: executive sparring is an advisory thought partnership on operational design, strategic decisions and leadership architecture, separate from medical diagnosis and psychiatric therapy.

The work draws on neuroscience and research on adult ADHD, giftedness and divergent cognition. Its focus is how a leader thinks, decides and builds inside their business. Clinical questions belong with qualified clinicians; sparring designs sustainable systems for the executives who carry final responsibility.

Request a Conversation

Start with a confidential conversation.

A confidential first conversation to assess fit for 1:1 sparring, board advisory or keynote engagements.

  • Read personally by Sven. Never shared.
  • Founders, CEOs, boards and HR leaders across Europe.

Prefer direct contact?

Message Sven directly on LinkedIn