Both of the Two Takeoff Meetings were heavily informed by the experience of practitioners. Theory was present, but held no trump cards.
While both meetings had a high proportion of consultants, the route to influence was via telling "war stories" (personal or repeating ones that had been told to them).
At LAWST1, the meeting format 
was organized around people taking an undefined amount of time to tell war stories, with a structured Q&A period afterward.
The Snowbird Workshop had a much higher percentage of consultants, but my impression is most were speakers-to-worker-bees more than speakers-to-bosses. (They gravitated toward the bottom of the org chart.)