Bcg Henderson Institute

Mike Evans made his name as the founder of GrubHub, which he co-founded back in 2004, guiding it to a successful IPO in 2014. Since then, he has bicycled across the United States, founded Fixer.com, a handyperson service and B-Corp focused on social impact, and written a memoir titled HANGRY: A Startup Journey focused on how to start and grow a business.In conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, Mike discusses a central theme in his new book, the art of starting something from nothing. The conversation touches on the importance of iterative experimentation, treating financial performance as an oblique goal, and knowing when to let go and abandon ideas when they are no longer working. They also discuss the necessity and challenges of cultivating entrepreneurialism within large established companies.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, t

Jeremy Utley is a Director of Executive Education at Stanford’s d.school and an adjunct professor at Stanford’s School of Engineering. He is the host of the d.school’s widely known program, “Stanford’s Masters of Creativity.”Perry Klebahn is an adjunct professor and Director of Executive Education at Stanford’s d.school. Previously he served as COO for Patagonia and CEO of Timbuk2.In their new book, IDEAFLOW: The Only Business Metric That Matters, Jeremy and Perry explain that creativity is not reserved for a select few, but can be developed like any other skill and applied to any problem.Together with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, Jeremy and Perry discuss the concept of “ideaflow”, which can be described as the rate at which one is able to generate ideas. They share various techniques for leaders to master and implement a culture of ideaflow, such as setting up metrics that communicate to their teams that they value creativity, creating evaluation and selection techniques to move ideas

Dr. Mohan Subramaniam is a Professor of Strategy and Digital Transformation at the IMD Business School. His research is focused on the digital transformation of incumbent industrial firms, specifically, new sources of competitive advantage in the digital age.In his latest book, The Future of Competitive Strategy: Unleashing the Power of Data and Digital Ecosystems, Mohan discusses how companies must adapt their competitive strategies to capture the value from data, suggesting that the context of competitive strategy has shifted from industries to digital ecosystems.In conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, Mohan explains the concept of digital myopia, referring to the inability of modern-day firms to envision the full scope of value that digital technologies can offer. Together, they evaluate the success factors of famous tech giants and how legacy companies can effectively compete with them.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting

In this special episode of the Thinkers & Ideas podcast, Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, is joined by two of the leading minds in strategy to discuss the nature of competitive advantage.Join Rita McGrath and Roger L. Martin as they debate whether competitive advantage is more or less sustainable today, whether it has shifted in nature and whether it will shift prospectively. In addition to defending their own positions, they discuss how two very different views of competition can be reconciled. They also offer thoughts for open questions in strategy which merit further consideration.Rita McGrath is a Professor of Strategy at Columbia Business School and the Founder of Valize, a company focused on helping organizations to build lasting innovation capabilities and long-term growth. She has been consistently named one of the world’s top 10 management thinkers in the Thinkers 50 ranking. Rita’s latest book, Seeing Around Corners is a guide to anticipating and capitalizing on disruptive inf

Nathan Furr is an Associate Professor of Strategy at INSEAD. His research focuses on how new and established firms adapt to technology, change, and enter new markets. Susannah Harmon Furr is a designer, entrepreneur, and art historian with a research focus on the Dutch Baroque period. She is the founder of a successful women’s clothing line inspired by her research on intricate embroidery.In their new book, The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown, Nathan and Susannah introduce a positive outlook on uncertainty, and how all possibility and success arise from uncertain situations.Nathan and Susannah discuss with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, their toolkit for productively managing uncertainty, “the uncertainty first aid cross”. They outline four distinct stages — reframe, prime, do and sustain — and number tools for each. Toward the end of their discussion, they touch upon the similarities and connections between harnessing individual and institutional

Tony O’Driscoll is a Professor of Business Administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Pratt School of Engineering. He has authored two books on learning and organizational performance and numerous articles for publications such as the Harvard Business Review and The Financial Times.In his latest book Everday Superhero: How You Can Inspire Everyone and Create Real Change at Work, a graphic novel co-authored with Gary Zamchick, Tony tells the story of a change champion, Mae B, a middle manager faced with a heroic challenge, hampered by an ineffective traditional approach to change.Together with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, Tony discusses how Mae B’s enlightened approach to leadership is a parable for the change challenges that organizations face today.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and scie

Albrecht Enders is a Professor of Strategy and Management and Co-Director of the Transition-To-Business Leadership Program at IMD Business School. Together with Arnaud Chevallier, Professor of Strategy, Director of Global Management Programs, and Director of Science in Sustainable Management and Technology at IMD Business School he recently co-authored Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems, which walks readers through critical steps needed to solve any complex problem, specifically how to make a good decision when information is limited.In conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, Albrecht and Arnaud share insights from the book, address both the technical and people side of problem-solving, and provide concrete ways to adopt an evidence-based approach while managing key stakeholders.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technol

Alan Murray is the President and CEO of Fortune Media. He is a lifelong journalist having previously held leadership positions at the Wall Street Journal and CNBC.In his latest book, Tomorrow’s Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business, Alan discusses the history and future of corporate capitalism, suggesting that a variety of social, political, technological, and environmental forces are fundamentally reshaping the accountabilities of businesses beyond profit generation.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, Alan discusses key insights from his new book including: the progress and challenges he sees on various aspects of stakeholder capitalism; the evolution of ESG reporting; issues and approaches to collective action problems such as climate change; and the trend towards business becoming more human.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights f

Dorie Clark teaches executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. She is the author of 5 books including Entrepreneurial You and Reinventing You. Clark has been named one of top 50 business thinkers by Thinkers50.In her latest book The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World Clark explains how almost anything is attainable through small, methodical steps taken day by day. She urges her readers to optimize for interesting, as a first step in discovering one’s passion, suggesting that if one keeps optimizing their choices for things that feel interesting, it begins to carve a path to reaching something purposeful.Clark suggests three core arguments to achieve long term success and purpose, including creating white space; the act of opening ones mind to new opportunities, focus where it counts; the ability to decided which goals are the right ones, and, lastly, keeping the faith; the act of deploying strategic patie

Roger L. Martin is a Professor Emeritus of Strategic Management and former Dean at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He is a trusted strategic adviser to the CEOs of many global companies. Roger has consistently been featured in the Thinkers50 list, where he was named the world’s number one management thinker in 2017. He has authored 12 books, including When More is Not Better in which he discusses how growing inequality in American society poses a threat to democratic capitalism (listen to our interview about the book with Roger here).In his latest book, A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness, Roger challenges us to rethink many dominant mental models, revisiting common misconceptions and pitfalls in the application of common frameworks and ideas. He urges leaders to continuously develop their own ideas to lead and reinvent the future and explores fourteen management topics from this perspective.Together with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institu

Lynda Gratton is a Professor of Management Practice at London Business School and the CEO and founder of HSM advisory. Lynda has authored over ten books, including The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity co-authored together with Andrew J. Scott.In her new book, Redesigning Work: How to Transform Your Organization and Make Hybrid Work for Everyone, Lynda discusses how to deliberately redesign work taking into account not only the specifics of each job, and the new possibilities for flexibility around time and place but also a range of other technological, social and ethical factors. She introduces a powerful framework for matching the needs of each type of work, by considering four productivity modes: energy, focus, coordination, and collaboration.Based on her experience supporting companies around the world, Lynda suggests three groups that play an integral role in redesigning work: leaders in their narrative and role modeling, line managers in working and building accountabilities, and

Luc de Brabandere is a Senior Advisor at BCG, a BCG Henderson Institute Alumni Fellow, co-founder of CartoonBase, and an invited Professor at The Brussels Solvay School and ETH Zurich. He is the co-author of Thinking in New Boxes, which offers a new paradigm for business creativity.In his most recent book, Be Logical, Be Creative, Be Critical: The Art of Thinking in a Digital World, together with Lina Benmehrez, Brabandere deals with the role of thinking in business and provides a rich analysis of how digital technologies are affecting our thinking processes.Building on his knowledge and experience as a corporate philosopher, Brabandere suggests that firms should focus on creatively reinventing themselves with new tools, rather than using current digital tools to optimize existing processes or systems.In a discussion with Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, Brabandere explores the implications of logic, critical thinking, and creativity in business today.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe

John A. List is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and Chief Economist at Walmart. List is co-author of The Why Axis, a fellow of The Econometric Society, and an editor of the Journal of Political Economy.His new book, The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale, focuses on the necessity of scaling ideas and the things that help and get in the way of doing this.List argues the only ideas worth pursuing are the ones with the potential to make a significant impact on human lives — and translating an idea into widespread impact requires scalability: the capacity to grow and expand in a robust and sustainable way.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, List discusses the art of scaling, “voltage amplifiers”, “voltage drops” and gives advice on avoiding false positives, knowing when to quit an idea, not being deceived by averages, and the importance of behavioral economics in business.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG He

Dr. Albert Bourla is Chairman and CEO of Pfizer Inc., and author of Moonshot: Inside Pfizer’s Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible, a new book that chronicles how Pfizer achieved what many believed to be impossible: the creation of a high efficacy, safe, and producible at-scale mRNA vaccine within a tenth of the expected time.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Dr. Bourla discusses the critical enablers of Pfizer’s success, both:Internally at Pfizer’s mass mobilization effort that enabled the world’s largest pharmaceutical company to act as a nimble startup: complete with bold and risky decisions making, rejection of bureaucracy, and challenging corporate norms at every step of the process, andExternally at how Pfizer navigated a charged political environment and complicated web of international bodies to collaborate with partners to develop and deliver the vaccines.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Gr

Andrew Binns and Charles O’Reilly are co-founders of Change Logic, a Boston-based strategic advisory firm. Charles is a Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and author of multiple other books on business management.They partnered with Michael Tushman, Professor at Harvard Business School, to coalesce their decades of collective experience in innovation and corporate transformation to create the Corporate Explorer: How Corporations can Beat Startups at the Innovation Game.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Andy and Charles discuss insights from the new book.While large corporations have relationships, assets, and capabilities to leverage at an advantage over startups, they must overcome impediments to innovation such as bureaucracy, a bend towards efficiency, and risk aversion. The book serves as a philosophical and tactical playbook to help large established corporations overcome these obstacles through all three stages of innovation: from ideation,

Ranjay Gulati is an organizational scholar and professor of business at Harvard Business School.His latest book, Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies shares the stories of companies that pursue what he calls a “deep purpose”. Ranjay studied the actions, cultures, and leadership companies pursuing purpose — where they succeed and where they fall short, to help other leaders in “walking the razor’s edge” to achieve both commercial value and social good through purpose.Ranjay calls for a reform of business, built around the idea that companies can and should use purpose not only to achieve social good but to help achieve greater commercial performance through clarity of direction and inspiration and engagement of employees.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Ranjay discusses insights from the new book.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developin

Ron Adner is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Ron previously authored the book The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See that Others Miss.His new book, Winning the Right Game: How to Disrupt, Defend, and Deliver in a Changing World, is a handbook on how leaders and companies can succeed in an era of ecosystem-based disruption.Adner views his book not as a replacement for traditional competitive strategies, but a necessary supplement for leaders who need to both compete in traditional industries as well as emergent cross-industry ecosystems.In a discussion with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Adner shares insights from the book, using several vivid company examples.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. Th

Martin Ford is an entrepreneur, futurist, and author of multiple books, including the New York Times bestseller Rise of the Robots.He recently published a sequel, Rule of the Robots, in which he claims that the best way to understand the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy and society is to see it as a utility analogous to electricity — in fact, “the electricity of intelligence.”In Ford’s view, while general AI is unlikely to be achieved in the near term, AI will still widespread disruptive effects as an “explosion of specific applications” reach every aspect of social and economic life.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Ford describes how that disruption will occur and how we will need to manage and regulate it, in order that the benefits outweigh the costs to society.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, tec

Paul Polman was the CEO of Unilever from 2009 to 2019, the first from outside the company in its century-plus history, and has been described by the Financial Times as “a standout CEO of the past decade.” Today he works to accelerate action by business to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which he helped develop.Andrew Winston is one of the world’s most widely read writers and leading thinkers on sustainable business. His books on sustainability strategy, have sold more than 150,000 copies in seven languages.Together they just published a new book, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, which outlines a framework to help leaders build net positive companies that profit by contributing more to the world than they use or take.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, the authors share insights from the book, discuss key takeaways of the recent COP26 meeting, and explore how can CEOs drive collective action addressing massive

Loran Nordgren is Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His research explores the basic psychological processes that guide how we think and act.David Schonthal is Clinical Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Kellogg, as well as Faculty Director of Kellogg’s Zell Fellows Program, a selective venture accelerator program designed to help student entrepreneurs successfully launch or acquire new businesses.Their new book, The Human Element, focuses on how to get people to say yes to a new idea or innovation. Many believe that the best (and perhaps only) way to convince people to embrace a new idea is to heighten the appeal of the idea itself. However, the authors argue, this neglects the other half of the equation — the psychological “Frictions” that oppose change.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Insitute, the authors share insights from the book, explore the causes of frictions, and provide guidance on