Podcast appearances and mentions of rita gunther mcgrath

We're all faced with a constant stream of unexpected changes in the business environment. The challenge for visionary CEOs, C-Suite executives, and Boards is separating the signals of important changes from the noise.  Even better, how about spotting early signals of change before they grow to have a major impact? Sometimes, it helps to takeRead More The post Spotting Signals of Important Changes Before They Happen – with Rita Gunther McGrath appeared first on Business Advancement.

Guest Bio: Rita McGrath is a best-selling author,  sought-after advisor and speaker, and  longtime professor at Columbia Business School. Rita is one of the world's top experts on strategy and innovation and is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world, including the #1 award for strategy by Thinkers50.  McGrath's recent book on strategic inflection points is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Rita is the author of four other books, including the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Since the onset of the pandemic, Rita has created workshops, strategy sessions and keynotes, applying her tools and frameworks to strategy under high levels of uncertainty to specific issues organizations are facing.  As Rui Barbas, the Chief Strategy Officer for Nestle USA said, “You were incredibly insightful and, despite the virtual setting, there was lots of engagement and comments from leaders sharing eye-opening observations and building on your examples throughout. You delivered the inspiration and illustration desired and it was exactly the right focus and challenge for this team. Appreciate your time throughout the process to align on content and delivery. The future-focus theme was the perfect close to our leadership summit.” Rita's work is focused on creating unique insights.  She has also founded Valize a companion company, dedicated to turning those insights into actionable capability.  You can find out more about Valize at www.valize.com. McGrath received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. She is active on all the main social media platforms, such as Twitter @rgmcgrath.  For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.   Social Media/ Websites: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritamcgrath/ Twitter: @rgmcgrath Instagram: @ritamcgrathofficial Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rgmcgrath Websites: https://ritamcgrath.com and valize.com Rita's Newsletter/ Articles Substack: https://thoughtsparks.substack.com/ Medium: https://rgmcgrath.medium.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/thought-sparks-6787762418471755776/ Books Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Around-Corners-Inflection-Business/dp/0358022339 The Entrepreneurial Mindset by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillian https://www.amazon.co.uk/Entrepreneurial-Mindset-Continuously-Opportunity-Uncertainty/dp/0875848346 The End of Competitive Advantage by Rita Gunther McGrath https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Competitive-Advantage-Strategy-Business/dp/1422172813 Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Disrupt-Yourself-New-Introduction-Relentless/dp/1633698785 Humanocracy by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humanocracy-Creating-Organizations-Amazing-People/dp/1633696022 Reimagining Capitalism by Rebecca Henderson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reimagining-Capitalism-Business-Save-World/dp/0241379660 When More is Not Better by Roger L. Martin https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-More-Not-Better-Overcoming/dp/1647820065/ Being An Adult by Lucy Tobin https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Adult-ultimate-getting-together-ebook/dp/B07GQ1KRTC/ Only The Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove https://www.amazon.co.uk/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Andrew-Grove/dp/1861975139  Ula Ojiaku: My guest today is Dr. Rita McGrath. She's a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker and advisor and consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world, including the #1 award for strategy by Thinkers50. In this episode, Rita talked about the concept of inflection points from her book ‘Seeing Around Corners' and how as leaders, we can train ourselves to spot these inflection points and act on the information we receive. She also talked about making complex things simple for the people we work with. I learnt a lot speaking with Rita and I'm sure you will find this conversation insightful as well. Thank you again for watching! It's an honor to have you on the show, Rita McGrath. Many, many thanks for joining us. Rita McGrath: Well, thank you Ula. It's a pleasure to be here. Ula Ojiaku: Great. Now, can you tell us about yourself? How did the Rita, Dr. Rita McGrath we know today evolve? Rita McGrath:  Well, it would have to start with my parents, of course. I mean, all great stories start with your parents. And so, my parents were both scientists. My mother was a Microbiologist, and my father was an Organic Chemist. And so, I grew up in a house where, you know, (if) a question couldn't be answered, you went and got the reference book and figured it out. And both, (had) incredible respect for science and for diligence. And, you know, the house was always full of books and lots of emphasis on learning. I wouldn't say we were, financially all that well-off – we weren't poor by any means. But it was, you know, there wasn't like a lot of money to spare, but there was always money for books, and there was always money for, you know, educational experiences and that kind of thing. So, that's the household I grew up in. So, my parents, when I was born, were both on the staff at the Yale Medical School. So, they were both researchers there. And then my dad in the late 60s, got an offer to go join this upstart, fledgling company that was at the cutting edge of all kinds of things in his field and that was Xerox Corporation. And he was very conflicted about leaving academia, but went off eventually to Xerox. So, we moved the family to Rochester, New York. So that's where I did most of my growing up. And my mother at that time, decided to stay home, more or less. And then she started a scientific translation business. So, she moved into an entrepreneurial career more than her scientific career. And then when it came time to go to college, I went to Barnard College in the City of New York. I'd always thought New York was an amazing place and was accepted there. So, went off to New York, did my Bachelor's and my Master's in Political Science and Public Policy. I was very interested in public policy and matters of social contract and those kinds of things. And then my first job was actually with the City of New York, I ran purchasing systems for government agencies. It doesn't sound very glamorous. But today, we would call it digital transformation. It was the very first wave of companies taking their operations in a digital form. And it was very exciting and I learned a lot. Then I got to the end of… the thing about public service is when you start, there's (this) unlimited sort of growth that can happen for a few years, and then it really just levels off. And you're never going to go beyond that. So, I kind of reached that headroom and decided to do something different. Ula Ojiaku:  Was it at that point that you decided to go for your PhD? Rita McGrath:  And that was one of the options I was considering. And my husband basically said, ‘look, if you get into a top five school, it's worth doing and if you don't, it's probably not.' But you have to think in that time, MBA programs were just exploding, and there'd been a lot of pressure on the administrators of MBA programs, to put PhD accredited faculty in front of their students. The big knock against the MBA at the time was, oh, they're just trade schools. You know, we've got some guy who ran an entire company comes in and talks and that's not really academically suitable. And so, there was a huge pressure for schools to find PhD accredited people-  that still exists (but) the market pressures has changed a lot. But when I was doing my PhD, it was pretty sure I would get a job if I managed to complete the degree. So that that gave me that extra input to do that. Ula Ojiaku:  Did you already have like children when you started the PhD? Rita McGrath: Yes Ula Ojiaku:  And how did you cope? Rita McGrath:  Our son was, how old was he? He would have been nine months old when I started my PhD program. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku: Wow, 9 months old. Rita McGrath: Oh, yeah, it was a real challenge. And I guess everybody manages those kinds of challenges in their own way. But yeah, it was a struggle because, you know, typical day would be you know, get up, get the baby to daycare or wherever and then do school or whatever I had to do that day. And then it was sort of pick them up. By the time I had a second child it was pick them up, get them dinner, get them bedtime, get them story, and then I'll be back at my desk at nine o'clock at night, trying to do what I needed to do. So, it was a new turn. It was tough. It was difficult years. I mean, joyful years though but it was just hard to fit everything in. Ula Ojiaku:  I can imagine. I mean, although I'm thinking of starting my PhD (studies), my children aren't that small but I do remember the time (they were), you know, I was still working full time. So, the challenge is you'd go to work and then come back to work. I mean, to another type of work. And then when they go to bed, the work continues. Yeah, it's interesting. Rita McGrath: Quite exhausting. Ula Ojiaku: You can say that. I'm so glad they're not in diapers anymore. So, it's baby steps, we are getting there. So, can we go on to your book, “Seeing Around Corners, How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen”. I'd like to start from an unusual place in the book. I started from the dedication page, and you know, reading everything, and I noticed that, you referred to a conversation, one of the last conversations you had with your mother. Could you tell us about that? Rita McGrath:  Oh sure. She was well, at the time, she was quite ill, she had sarcoma in her lung, and she was quite ill. It's a horrible disease, and we haven't got any real treatments for it. So, the recommendation is you do chemo and that really knocks you out. So, she was quite ill and sort of migrating between the chair and the couch and the chair and the couch. And in one of those conversations, she just said ‘I want you to know I'm proud of you. And I've had a good life and I'm prepared for whatever comes next.' And I thought that was lovely of her to say and I thought in that moment to pass it on to all these other women. And you know you bring up motherhood and being a working woman and all those complicated emotions that come with that because there seems to be guilt around every corner you know, if you're not at home full time, oh you're a terrible mom. And if you're not at work full time, you're a terrible worker. I just I think so many of those things are just designed to twist us up into little balls. And when I look at my own mother's experience - she was a working woman… I grew up but I think I'm third or fourth generation working woman so it never even occurred to me that wouldn't be possible. But I think what often is missing is this validation, you know that for women who are trying to you know make their way professionally and be great, responsible parents and do all these other things that often there's a sense of a lack of self-worth you know, ‘oh, I'm not doing enough.' The more I hear that… Ula Ojiaku:  I feel like that some… most days I feel like that… Rita McGrath: Believe me, you are doing enough Ula Ojiaku:  Sometimes I ask my children, am I a good mom? Rita McGrath:  I think part of it too is we, and when I say we, I mean baby boomer mothers and maybe a little younger. We got ourselves all tangled up in this if it's not like organic, hand-processed  lima beans with you know, organic succotash, mixed in you know, it's not good baby food. Honestly, Gerber's exists to provide perfectly nutritious food for really young babies and they've been doing it for decades and you can trust that and if it makes your life easier, go with it. Ula Ojiaku:  Thank you! Rita McGrath: You know, I think we I think we get ourselves all tossed up in like, what does good mean? I mean, honestly, the kids don't mind you know? I mean, they'd celebrate if it was chicken finger night. Ula Ojiaku:  Let's go to the book. You know, because in your book you said you it's about how to spot inflections before they happen in business. Can you give us examples of, you know, businesses that had these inflection points occur, and they failed to recognize it and what was the impact? Rita McGrath:  Sure, let's take one that is quite sad to me, which is Intel. And Intel built its, well, Intel went through a major inflection point, in fact, the originator of the concept was Andy Grove, who was their former CEO. And he talked about his inflection points in his book, Only the Paranoid Survive, which is really a brilliant, brilliant book. And one of the reasons I wrote my book was that very little had been done since his book on that topic. And Grove built this incredible company, Intel. And they were making microprocessor chips. And they were very, very powerful, very fast chips. And so, the assumptions inside Intel's business model was, what customers were going to pay for was faster, faster, faster, more computation power, more and more powerful. But what they didn't really think about was energy consumption. And as the world went more mobile… so the Intel product is the PC, and the PC, the desktop PC remains firmly plugged into the wall. And then later, we make PC chips that maybe have slightly lower power consumption to power PCs, but it's still that notion of power, you know, and I think the inflection point that caught Intel by surprise, to some extent was, this movement towards mobile, where the vast majority of chips being made were these completely different architecture chips by  companies like ARM and you know, and companies like that, which, from their inception, recognized that low power was the way to go. Then they weren't very powerful in the sense of speed, which is what Intel was driving its business towards. But they were powerful in the sense of ubiquitous low power, long battery life, that kind of thing. And I think that's an example of the kind of assumption that can cause a company to get into trouble, when the underlying shift in the business environment says, ‘wait a minute, this thing you've been building all this time may not be what is needed by the marketplace.' Ula Ojiaku:  That's interesting. So, it brings me to the point of, the points you made about, you know, the indicators, the early warnings, and you mentioned the concept of you know lagging, current and leading indicators. And there was an emphasis in your book on, you know, leading indicators. Could you tell us a bit about that? Rita McGrath:  Sure. Well, so leading indicators are today's information about tomorrow's possibilities. And what we unfortunately rely on a lot in business is lagging indicators - so profits, performance, you know, ROI, all those things are lagging some kind of decision that you made a long time ago. So, the concept of leading indicators is to try to get business leaders to think about what would have to be true, you know, before I was able to make a certain decision, what are the leading indicators? So, an example would be back in the 90s, computer scientists all over the world realized that come the year 2000, from the turn of the millennium, that the way computer programs had been programmed, was only two digits for the year. And so, when the year went to zero-zero, computers, were going to think it was 1900 and this was going to be terrible. Because they all get out of sync, you know, and planes would drop out of the sky. You're gonna become unstable, and you'll all need to move to Montana and stuff … I don't know if you can remember this. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah, the Y2K bug… Rita McGrath: Oh my goodness…! Ula Ojiaku: It was a big sensation. Yeah… Rita McGrath: Apocalyptic – remember?! And yet, when the big moment came the year 2000. What happened? Well, nothing happened. Why did nothing happen? We looked at that early warning, and we said, whoa, if that happens, it's bad. And then so companies, prodded by their accounting firms, prodded by other security considerations invested billions in correcting that flaw. And so, that's an example of an early warning. And there are a couple of things to understand about early warning. So, the first important thing is, the measure of a good early warning is not, did it predict what happened. The measure of a good leading indicator is, did it help you prepare for what might happen? And so, I think that's a really important distinction, because we oftentimes, oh, you that didn't predict this or that. But that's not the point. The point is, did it help you think more broadly about what might happen so that you could be prepared? So, I think that's the first thing. The second thing to remember about leading indicators is they're often not quantitative in the way that we like to think about quantitative things. They're often qualitative. They often take the form of stories. And they often come from what are called unrepresentative parts of your mental ecosystem. So, you know, it's that person on the loading dock (saying to themselves), ‘this is, well, that's weird, a customer never asked for that before', or the person answering the phone, you know, in headquarters going, ‘Well, I don't understand why they need that information…' You know, it's those little anomalies or things that depart from business as usual, that are often the weak signals that you need to be paying attention to. Ula Ojiaku:  So, can you give us an example where you mean, I mean, of how we can go about choosing good leading indicators? Rita McGrath:  Well, in the book, I describe a technique that I use, which is you take a couple of uncertainties and juxtapose them on each other. And that gives you four or more you can do this for as many as you like, stories from the future, possibly a future that we could live in. And then depending on which one you want to think about, you say, ‘okay, I'm gonna write a headline as if it came from a newspaper story about that scenario. And I'm gonna work backwards and say, what has to be true for that headline to emerge.' So, take an example that's playing out right now, chronic and accelerating decline in birth rates in the United States. People are just deciding not to enlarge their families or not to start their families at all. And for very good reasons, you know, the level of social support for families is very low. Mostly women are bearing the burden. And very often women are the ones that make a large part of the decision about whether the family is going to grow or not. And so, we're facing a real baby bust. Well, if that's true, and we follow that along, well, what are some things that would be early warnings or indicators of what that world will be like? Well, you'll see a decline of working people relative to retired people, or people needing assistance, you'll see, you know, fewer kids with more resources to support them. So, the kind of baby Prince phenomena we saw in China. There are lots of things you can kind of work through. But once you say, ‘okay, I see a world with a million fewer children three years from now, than we would have expected well, okay, what now working backward? What does that tell us we need to be paying attention to today? Ula Ojiaku:  Yes, yes. That's a great example. And I wonder, though, so given all, you know, the research that has led to, and your experience as well, consulting with, you know, most of these large organizations, the case studies, you've come to witness and all that, what would you, what would be your advice to leaders of such organizations, you know, in terms of how they can better prepare themselves or equip themselves to recognize these inflection points, and lead effectively? Rita McGrath:  Well, I think the first principle is you have to be discovery driven. In other words, you have to be curious about what's going on. And if you're the kind of leader who (when) someone brings you a piece of information, and instead of treating it like a gift, you're like, oh no, you don't understand that's wrong. That's not the way the world works. If you're dismissive of information people are bringing you that's very dangerous. Because the information you need is not going to come from your lieutenants at headquarters, it's going to come from that guy on the loading dock. So, I think you want to think about establishing some kind of information flows, that go directly from where the phenomena are happening to your desk. So, as an example, a company I really admire is the German metal services company Klockner. And their CEO, Gisbert Ruehl was taking them through a digital transformation. And his big concern was not that they meant it, right? But that his lieutenants, his middle manager, cohort, would be so expert, and so experienced at the way business was, that they would just shut down these digital efforts. And he was very, very concerned about that. He said, well, I need some way of making my message heard directly to the people that are on the frontlines and I also need a way of hearing from them what's going on. So, he implemented Yammer, called non-hierarchical communication. And the deal was anybody in the company that had something he needed to know should feel comfortable sending him a note. And I'm told, I don't know this for a fact that I'm told that at headquarters, he had his instance of Yammer set up so that the lower the hierarchical level of the person, the higher it came in his newsfeed. Ula Ojiaku: Oh, wow. Rita McGrath: So, you know, I can talk to my lieutenants, anytime. Information I need is in the, you know, 24-year-old person who's just joined us with an engineering degree, who's looking at our manufacturing process for screwdrivers and saying, ‘Why do you do it that way? There must be a better way of doing this…' That's the information I really need and he set up a whole system to try to get that information to him, to himself. Ula Ojiaku:  Would you say there's a typical kind of leader with, you know, some certain characteristics that's best equipped to spot the inflection point, and you know, kind of lead the charge and get the organizations in line? Rita McGrath:  You know, I think it's more of the behavior, it's not the characteristics. So, I've seen charismatic, attractive, you know, movie star type CEOs be good at this. I've seen people you look at and you go ‘Really? He looks kind of like he slept in his clothes all night.' I've seen those people be good at it. So, you know, I think the differentiation is this, this hunger for new information, this curiosity, this relentless… ‘tell me again…' and ‘why was that and why was that?' It is this urgent need to really learn what's going on. And then and then putting yourself in the, in the context. So, one of the people I'm working with right now is a brilliant retail CEO, and everything. And one of the things he would do before hiring anybody into his senior team, is he would spend a day or two walking the stores, you know, and in his explanation to me was, ‘I want to see how they react to the stores. I want to see how they treat the people working in stores. I want to see what they notice, you know, I want to see if they notice that there's a thing out of array and I want to see how they are with me, like if they spend their whole two days in store visits, sucking up to me - that's not somebody I need, you know. And so, I think the best leaders along those lines are people who are relentlessly curious, bring people around them who are diverse, you know, you don't just want echo chambers of themselves. Ula Ojiaku:  True, true. You don't want ‘yes' men if you really want to make an impact really. Yeah, and how can I, as a person, train myself to also recognize these inflection points. Rita McGrath:  Well, it depends what the inflection point is. So, if it's a question of, you've been making nice steady progress in your career, and now you've hit some kind of ceiling and you just feel you're not growing or developing any more, then that choice is really okay, I need to… the way Whitney Johnson would put this, she's written a great book on this, “Disrupt Yourself”, right? You go up this S curve, then you need to make the decision if you're going to take on the J curve, right, which is the part below the S curve before you get into the next round of learning. So, that's a personal decision, really only you can make a decision like that. Then there are the cases where inflection points are thrust upon you. So you lose a job, your spouse has some setback, a family member has an urgent need that makes whatever you were doing before impossible. I mean, there's all kinds of outside things that can happen to you. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah… Rita McGrath: And I think the best way to try to look at those is. ‘is this a slingshot to a better future, potentially?' And you know, how many people have you talked to who got fired, and some years later say, ‘that was the best thing that ever happened to me, it shook me out of my complacency. It made me think differently.' And so, I think a lot of times, you know, we, it's very comfortable (staying) stuck in our ruts. And sometimes it takes a bit of a jolt to get us out of that. Ula Ojiaku:  That's a great one. Can I just ask you about so it's not really about your book, Seeing Around Corners, but this one is about the Entrepreneurial Mindset? Just one quick question. Because there's a quote, in your book, that book that says, you know, “the huge part of becoming an entrepreneurial leader is learning to simplify complexity, so that your co-workers can act with self-confidence.” That quote, it made me kind of be more conscious about, am I really making things simpler for my co-workers instead of, you know, rather than to enable us, you know, achieve the best that we could as a group? So why did you, make that quote and associate it with an Entrepreneurial Mindset? Rita McGrath:  Well, because if you make things complicated for people, there's maybe three responses, right? One is they'll start on whatever they start on, which is kind of random. And maybe they finish it, and maybe they don't, but it's really now you're leaving it to chance. Because if you give people more to digest than they can manage, you're going to get back some fraction of it. So that's one thing. Second thing that happens is, if it's too complex, a lot of times people will pick what they want to do, not have anything to do with the agenda that you want to set for the organization. And the third thing is there's just a laziness that comes from having things be complex. I know for myself, when I've had to do strategy statements for myself, or my business, it takes a long, long time to get it done into a few simple things. And each word has to mean something. So, as an example, some years back, I started a sister company. It's called Valize. And the strategy really is to its mission, its purpose for me, is to help organizations create innovation and transformation capability as the basis for shared prosperity. And that sounds really simple. That sounds really kind of ‘duh, that's not so grand, but I mean, the hours it took to get to that simplicity of statement. And then once you've got something like that, you can go back and you could say, okay, well, here's the thing that I'm being asked to do or think I'm thinking of, does it build capability? Yes. No. Does it build shared prosperity? Yes, no. Does it help organizations to help themselves? Yes, no. And it sorts out a lot of stuff means a lot of stuff we could do. But there are only a few things that really fit into that sweet spot of shared capability. So, having that simplification allows you to clear out a lot of the …, there are always wonderful options that you got to do things, right? And it's a question of abundance, you've usually got more great options than you could possibly exercise. So, picking the best ones is the challenge. Ula Ojiaku:  Wow, wow. I'm going to listen to this part again. You've mentioned some books already, like Andy Grove's, Only the Paranoid, I mean, Only the Paranoid survive. And you've mentioned the book, Disrupt Yourself… In addition to these books, and your wonderful suite of books, what other books would you recommend to the audience that you believe have influenced you that you'd recommend to the listeners that would help them you know, learn more about this topic? Rita McGrath: Oh, that's hard, because there's so many. Well, I love Safi Bahcall's Loonshots. I think that's a brilliant, brilliant book. And it really gets to the heart of how innovation actually happens rather than how we think it happens. I rather like Gary Hamel's and Michele Zanini's book, Humanocracy which has the basic question, you know, if you look at Instagram, or Twitter or any of these social platforms, you see these people who are just brilliant. I mean, they're creating incredibly creative stuff. And then we put them inside companies. And we insist that they do things by the rule, and we block all the creativity out of them. So, why do we do that? You know, I think that's a really great one. I'm very taken with Rebecca Henderson's, Re-imagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. Very, very brilliant. Roger Martin, When More is not Better. Just recently had a Julie Lythcott-Haims on my fireside chat program, which is and she's got a book called Your Turn, How to be an Adult”, which is, on a personal level, absolutely fascinating - really good book. I like Peter Sim's, Little Bets. You know, they're just so many I mean, I wouldn't even know where to where to start. Those are the ones that are sort of top of mind at the moment. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. scribbling away as you're talking, and yeah, these all these would be in the show notes with the links to them. So that's great. Now, how can the audience reach you? If they want to, you know follow your work. Rita McGrath: The best place to start is my website, which is really ritamcgrath.com, that's easy. I have columns that I write for. They're currently going up on substack and medium. If you just search my name and or medium, you'll find me there. I do weekly, LinkedIn post, which goes to subscribers on LinkedIn. Also, that's all sort of good places to start. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Are you on social media? Rita McGrath:  Oh, yes. So yes. I'm on Twitter @RGMcGrath. And I'm on LinkedIn. Okay. I'm not on Facebook so much. But I have put things I post there, but I'm not really on it very much. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. All right. That's, I mean, thanks for those. Now, let's wrap up any ask of the audience first? Rita McGrath:  I think we're in a remarkable moment, right now, you know, we've had so many of our previous habits and assumptions disrupted, that I think it would be a shame to lose, to lose all that and just go back to the way things were. So, I think it's an opportunity to reflect and to really think about, what kind of future do we want to build now that so many of our assumptions and institutions have been challenged, and we learned whole new tricks, we learned whole new ways to do things. Let's not just snap back to the way it was, let's think about inventing better. Rita McGrath:  Really, I think there's going to be great opportunity coming out of this current crisis and those who are thinking ahead will benefit from it. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay, great. Well, Rita, thank you so much for your time, and it's been a pleasure again, having you on the show. Rita McGrath: Thank you very much.  

As the pace of change continues to accelerate, we are both in a state of extraordinary challenges and opportunities. Kellee talks with Rita Gunther McGrath, a leading expert on innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. She will share her insights on how to identify, anticipate and harness the power of inflection points. Rita Gunther McGrath is a best-selling author and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world's Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her new book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). She has written three other books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating one of the most important management ideas ever developed. She is a highly sought-after speaker at exclusive corporate events around the globe, such as the Global Peter Drucker Forum. She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. Her expertise is covered in leading media outlets including Harvard Business Review, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. 

Today's guest - Erich Joachimsthaler - is the #1 brand strategist on the planet. He built from scratch a top-ranked professional services firm - called Vivaldi_ - which regularly advises the world's most admired CEOs and chief marketing officers - on their most complex transformational issues. Joachmisthaler's leadership journey will amaze you. He has continuously 'written the next chapter' - each new one more riveting than the last - from humble roots growing up in a small town in Germany to earning a doctorate from Harvard Business School to co-authoring Brand Leadership (with David Aaker) which literally redefined the way companies think about brand, strategy and their core purpose. It's no wonder why top talent and future leaders are attracted to Vivaldi. The firm has a unique culture and inspires future leaders to reach maximum potential. His most recent book - The Interaction Field - has been recognized by top scholars at elite business school. We all know that something fundamental has changed in how businesses deliver value, but many of us have no idea what to do about it. This deeply insightful book takes you behind the scenes to explore the idea of shared value - for real. Virality, network effects and learning have changed the very nature of competitive advantage. This deeply insightful book will show you how to use these shifts to your advantage."―Rita Gunther McGrath, professor, Columbia Business School "A thrilling new way of looking at a successful business model for the future. This fascinating book contains great business stories-such as LEGO, John Deere, Alibaba, Flatiron Health, and more-as well as important thinking today's CEOs should become familiar with."―Vijay Govindarajan Coxe Distinguished Professor at Tuck at Dartmouth NYT and WSJ Best Selling Author, Three Box Solution: A Strategy For Leading Innovation "In this powerful and groundbreaking book, Joachimsthaler clearly demonstrates how platform thinking can be utilized to create shared value and drive new growth for companies and brands."―David Collis, Adjunct Professor at Harvard Business School, author, Corporate Strategy: Resources and the Scope of the Firm "A fascinating, practical and insightful book that brilliantly examines the value that platform thinking can bring to companies and brands in today's hyper-connected world."―Sangeet Paul Choudary, CEO of Platformation Labs, International best-selling co-author, Platform Revolution and author of Platform Scale "An engaging, insightful and immensely practical book on building strong brands and businesses delivering not just shareholder value but also shared value for companies, customers and society."―Vince Hudson Senior Vice President, Enterprise Marketing Strategy, American Express www.imperfectleaders.com

Today's guest - Erich Joachimsthaler - is the #1 brand strategist on the planet. He built from scratch a top-ranked professional services firm - called Vivaldi_ - which regularly advises the world's most admired CEOs and chief marketing officers - on their most complex transformational issues. Joachmisthaler's leadership journey will amaze you. He has continuously 'written the next chapter' - each new one more riveting than the last - from humble roots growing up in a small town in Germany to earning a doctorate from Harvard Business School to co-authoring Brand Leadership (with David Aaker) which literally redefined the way companies think about brand, strategy and their core purpose. It's no wonder why top talent and future leaders are attracted to Vivaldi. The firm has a unique culture and inspires future leaders to reach maximum potential. His most recent book - The Interaction Field - has been recognized by top scholars at elite business school. We all know that something fundamental has changed in how businesses deliver value, but many of us have no idea what to do about it. This deeply insightful book takes you behind the scenes to explore the idea of shared value - for real. Virality, network effects and learning have changed the very nature of competitive advantage. This deeply insightful book will show you how to use these shifts to your advantage."―Rita Gunther McGrath, professor, Columbia Business School "A thrilling new way of looking at a successful business model for the future. This fascinating book contains great business stories-such as LEGO, John Deere, Alibaba, Flatiron Health, and more-as well as important thinking today's CEOs should become familiar with."―Vijay Govindarajan Coxe Distinguished Professor at Tuck at Dartmouth NYT and WSJ Best Selling Author, Three Box Solution: A Strategy For Leading Innovation "In this powerful and groundbreaking book, Joachimsthaler clearly demonstrates how platform thinking can be utilized to create shared value and drive new growth for companies and brands."―David Collis, Adjunct Professor at Harvard Business School, author, Corporate Strategy: Resources and the Scope of the Firm "A fascinating, practical and insightful book that brilliantly examines the value that platform thinking can bring to companies and brands in today's hyper-connected world."―Sangeet Paul Choudary, CEO of Platformation Labs, International best-selling co-author, Platform Revolution and author of Platform Scale "An engaging, insightful and immensely practical book on building strong brands and businesses delivering not just shareholder value but also shared value for companies, customers and society."―Vince Hudson Senior Vice President, Enterprise Marketing Strategy, American Express www.imperfectleaders.com

How can you predict opportunities for massive innovation before they happen? By identifying inflection points before they happen.  Inflection points are moments of significant change for a business, industry, or market. They feature prominently in Dr. Rita Gunther McGrath's latest book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen.  Dr. McGrath discusses how to identify and navigate these inflection points in business — so you can position yourself and your organization for success in the age of disruption. Tune in to the full conversation to hear how to spot inflection points before they happen, how to keep innovating without putting yourself or your business at catastrophic risk, and find out what happens when we let AI take over the interview and ask some questions. Dr. Rita Gunther McGrath is a leading authority on strategic innovation and growth. She is a professor at Columbia Business School, a globally recognized thought leader, and the author of several best-selling books. Resources: Learn more at ritamcgrath.com Read Seeing Around Corners Connect with Dr. McGrath on LinkedIn Learn more and get the full show notes at: 3PillarGlobal.com

We covered the Innovator's Dilemma with Matthew Christensen in the first part of this series, but we did not cover Chapter 7 of the Innovator's Dilemma,that chapter Is entitled “Discovering New and Emerging Markets” It opens as follows: “Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed: Suppliers and customers must discover them together. Not only are the market applications for disruptive technologies unknown at the time of their development, they are unknowable. The strategies and plans that managers formulate for confronting disruptive technological change, therefore, should be plans for learning and discovery rather than plans for execution. This is a crucial point to understand because managers who believe they know a market's future will plan and invest very differently from those who recognize the uncertainties of a developing market.” You may know those to be the words of Clayton Christensen, but what you may not know is that this concept of discovery-driven growth stems from the work of a very special friend of the Innovation Show, it is an immense pleasure to welcome Rita McGrath. Topics on this episode: 00:00:00 - Intro and Sponsor 00:02:28 Rita McGrath Welcome 00:04:15 Clayton Christensen Relationship 00:07:35 Discovery-Driven Planning 00:12:05 Client Example of Too Attached to Outcome 00:13:23 Redefining Failure: Failing Fast is Not Always Failing 00:14:04 Example of Varo Bank 00:18:51 KittyHawk Example 00:20:54 The Role of Luck 00:24:51 Honda SuperCub and NonConsumers 00:27:50 Jobs To Be Done and The McLean Hamburger 00:29:51 Origins of Discovery-Driven Planning 00:31:41 Most Mutations in Nature Fail, as do most ideas 00:32:47 Origins of Innovation Thinking From Schumpeter to Today 00:34:08 Discovery-Driven Planning Overview in a Nutshell 00:37:55 Disasters: EuroDisney 00:42:09 Disasters: PolaVision 00:43:15 Organisational Capabilities, Arenas and Kao 00:46:23 Selling an Idea to a CFO/Incumbent Gatekeeper 00:51:06 UPM Example: United Paper Mills Example 00:55:00 R.A.C.E.

Many professionals realize that a published book is a great business card – but is anyone actually reading it?  Does your book have an impact? Today, we discuss the journey of publishing, marketing, and building a full business model from a book. To share their insights on that topic, we've invited two great guests that have the publishing process down pat. Rita Gunther McGrath is a highly regarded speaker, professor at Columbia Business School, and the author of multiple best-selling books such as Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen. A.J. Jacobs is a journalist, TED Speaker, and seven-time author including the best-selling book Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey. Our conversation starts by discussing the business side of publishing. Our best-selling authors clarify the focus of their recent work, and discuss the various purposes that a published book can serve. While creating a "book-sized" calling card will put you ahead of some, your content still needs to be more than a glorified article if you want people to read it and take action based on your insights. Many first-time authors believe that once the book is written, the job of marketing will fall to the publisher. That's no longer the truth! Nowadays, publishers have stepped back from marketing - leaving the author to get the word out themselves. Rita shares how she plans the marketing of a book before any real writing even begins, while A.J. seeks innovative and creative ways to slice the topics of his books into as many sectors as possible, in order to earn a larger audience. The final leg of our conversation involves taking the information from the page and turning it into teachable content. Our guests share their strategies for turning thought leadership insights into lessons, creating systems and capabilities for instruction that can be brought into an organization in order to create measurable impact. Three Key Takeaways: * When writing a book, ensure your content is bigger than a simple article could contain. * Consider the method of publishing and marketing for your book before you start writing. * Publishers no longer promote books. As the author, you'll need to build a platform to reach the audience by yourself.

This vibrant discussion held in the summer of 2022 focused on innovation, design, strategy and communication. Rita Gunther McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world's Top 10 management thinkers. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies. Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage and Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen. ----- Fred Dust is the founder of Dust&Co and works at the intersection of business, society and creativity. As a designer, author, educator, consultant, trustee, and advisor to social and business leaders, he is one of the world's most original thinkers, applying the craft and optimism of human-centered design to the intractable challenges we face today. Using the methodology in his book Making Conversation, he has been working with The Rockefeller Foundation to explore the future of pressing global needs. As a former Global Managing Partner at the acclaimed international design firm IDEO, Fred works with leaders and change agents to unlock the creative potential of business, government, education, and philanthropic organizations.  

Are we at an inflection point? How do you even spot one? Columbia Business School professor Rita Gunther McGrath joins us from New York to explain.

In this week's Dial P audio podcast, Kelly Barner takes two ideas, both desirable, and asks if they can co-exist. One is paradigm shifts, and the other is expertise. It easy to see that people don't like change, but are we rewarded for building up expertise in exclusion of new ideas? Do we build walls around our mindset and point of view that make us impervious to paradigm shifts? To underscore the need to find inspiration from a number of sources, Kelly quotes and pulls perspectives from John Dominic Crossan, Jennifer Ulrich, Malcom Gladwell, Charles Darwin, Max Planck, Thomas Kuhn, Rita Gunther McGrath, and Barbara Kingsolver. Additional Links & Resources: Learn more about Dial P for Procurement: https://supplychainnow.com/programs/dial-p-for-procurement (https://supplychainnow.com/programs/dial-p-for-procurement) Subscribe to Dial P for Procurement: https://dial-p-for-procurement.captivate.fm/listen (https://dial-p-for-procurement.captivate.fm/listen) This episode was hosted by Kelly Barner. For additional information, please visit our dedicated show page at: https://supplychainnow.com/does-development-expertise-naturally-lead-fail-dp15

Shawn Hymel spoke to us about creating education videos and written tutorials; marketing by and for engineers; and bowties. You can find Shawn teaching FPGAs, RTOSs and other interesting topics on Digikey's YouTube channel. Shawn also has two embedded Machine Learning courses on Coursera (free!).  Or start at his personal site: shawnhymel.com where you can find written tutorials like How to Set Up Raspberry Pi Pico C/C++ Toolchain on Windows with VS Code. Shawn talked about Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. Macmillan. He referenced  Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne Elecia enjoyed The Visual Mba: Two Years of Business School Packed into One Priceless Book of Pure Awesomeness by Jason Barron Embedded has: A Patreon page where you can support us and get into the Slack community A newsletter that sends you a weekly email about the show and little notes Transcripts that you can use to look things up or follow along if the speakers are unclear If you'd like to help the show grow, please write a review. Or share it with a friend. Or send it to your school's Dean of Computer Science and/or Engineering and tell them it should be part of the curriculum to see what engineering lives and careers are like. Or send it to your company's Director of New Hires and say it is important for techy folks to stay current and engaged in embedded systems. Transcript

As we close season 3 of the Evolving Leader podcast, it's time to reflect on some of our highlights from the last 18 episodes. We continue to learn so much from our incredible guests who not only give us their valuable time, but are also so willing to share their expertise and current thinking which in turn helps us to develop our own thinking around what being an evolving leader really means. The Evolving Leader podcast will return in March with the start of season 4, but in the mean time sit back and listen as we talk to Rita Gunther McGrath, Kevin Kelly, Tim Lomas, Will Page, Todd Kashdan, Steve Ingham, Leanne Infante, Monika Bielskyte, Anil Seth, Rob Murray, Steve Killelea, Azeem Azhar and Annie Murphy Paul. 0.00     Introduction2.01     Rita Gunther McGrath5.03     Kevin Kelly 7.05     Tim Lomas9.49     Will Page14.16     Todd Kashdan17.46     Steve Ingham18.47     Leanne Infante21.43     Monika Bielskyte24.25     Anil Seth26.23     Rob Murray27.58     Steve Killelea29.24     Azeem Azhar32.57     Annie Murphy Paul Social: Instagram           @evolvingleader LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast Twitter               @Evolving_Leader The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Guest Bio: Rita McGrath is a best-selling author,  sought-after advisor and speaker, and  longtime professor at Columbia Business School. Rita is one of the world's top experts on strategy and innovation and is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world, including the #1 award for strategy by Thinkers50.  McGrath's recent book on strategic inflection points is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). Rita is the author of four other books, including the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Since the onset of the pandemic, Rita has created workshops, strategy sessions and keynotes, applying her tools and frameworks to strategy under high levels of uncertainty to specific issues organizations are facing.  As Rui Barbas, the Chief Strategy Officer for Nestle USA said, “You were incredibly insightful and, despite the virtual setting, there was lots of engagement and comments from leaders sharing eye-opening observations and building on your examples throughout. You delivered the inspiration and illustration desired and it was exactly the right focus and challenge for this team. Appreciate your time throughout the process to align on content and delivery. The future-focus theme was the perfect close to our leadership summit.” Rita's work is focused on creating unique insights.  She has also founded Valize a companion company, dedicated to turning those insights into actionable capability.  You can find out more about Valize at www.valize.com. McGrath received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. She is active on all the main social media platforms, such as Twitter @rgmcgrath.  For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.   Social Media/ Websites: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritamcgrath/ Twitter: @rgmcgrath Instagram: @ritamcgrathofficial Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rgmcgrath Websites: https://ritamcgrath.com and valize.com Rita's Newsletter/ Articles Substack: https://thoughtsparks.substack.com/ Medium: https://rgmcgrath.medium.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/thought-sparks-6787762418471755776/ Books Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Around-Corners-Inflection-Business/dp/0358022339 The Entrepreneurial Mindset by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillian https://www.amazon.co.uk/Entrepreneurial-Mindset-Continuously-Opportunity-Uncertainty/dp/0875848346 The End of Competitive Advantage by Rita Gunther McGrath https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Competitive-Advantage-Strategy-Business/dp/1422172813 Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Disrupt-Yourself-New-Introduction-Relentless/dp/1633698785 Humanocracy by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humanocracy-Creating-Organizations-Amazing-People/dp/1633696022 Reimagining Capitalism by Rebecca Henderson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reimagining-Capitalism-Business-Save-World/dp/0241379660 When More is Not Better by Roger L. Martin https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-More-Not-Better-Overcoming/dp/1647820065/ Being An Adult by Lucy Tobin https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Adult-ultimate-getting-together-ebook/dp/B07GQ1KRTC/ Only The Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove https://www.amazon.co.uk/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Andrew-Grove/dp/1861975139  Ula Ojiaku: My guest today is Dr. Rita McGrath. She's a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker and advisor and consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world, including the #1 award for strategy by Thinkers50. In this episode, Rita talked about the concept of inflection points from her book ‘Seeing Around Corners' and how as leaders, we can train ourselves to spot these inflection points and act on the information we receive. She also talked about making complex things simple for the people we work with. I learnt a lot speaking with Rita and I'm sure you will find this conversation insightful as well. Thank you again for watching! It's an honor to have you on the show, Rita McGrath. Many, many thanks for joining us. Rita McGrath: Well, thank you Ula. It's a pleasure to be here. Ula Ojiaku: Great. Now, can you tell us about yourself? How did the Rita, Dr. Rita McGrath we know today evolve? Rita McGrath:  Well, it would have to start with my parents, of course. I mean, all great stories start with your parents. And so, my parents were both scientists. My mother was a Microbiologist, and my father was an Organic Chemist. And so, I grew up in a house where, you know, (if) a question couldn't be answered, you went and got the reference book and figured it out. And both, (had) incredible respect for science and for diligence. And, you know, the house was always full of books and lots of emphasis on learning. I wouldn't say we were, financially all that well-off – we weren't poor by any means. But it was, you know, there wasn't like a lot of money to spare, but there was always money for books, and there was always money for, you know, educational experiences and that kind of thing. So, that's the household I grew up in. So, my parents, when I was born, were both on the staff at the Yale Medical School. So, they were both researchers there. And then my dad in the late 60s, got an offer to go join this upstart, fledgling company that was at the cutting edge of all kinds of things in his field and that was Xerox Corporation. And he was very conflicted about leaving academia, but went off eventually to Xerox. So, we moved the family to Rochester, New York. So that's where I did most of my growing up. And my mother at that time, decided to stay home, more or less. And then she started a scientific translation business. So, she moved into an entrepreneurial career more than her scientific career. And then when it came time to go to college, I went to Barnard College in the City of New York. I'd always thought New York was an amazing place and was accepted there. So, went off to New York, did my Bachelor's and my Master's in Political Science and Public Policy. I was very interested in public policy and matters of social contract and those kinds of things. And then my first job was actually with the City of New York, I ran purchasing systems for government agencies. It doesn't sound very glamorous. But today, we would call it digital transformation. It was the very first wave of companies taking their operations in a digital form. And it was very exciting and I learned a lot. Then I got to the end of… the thing about public service is when you start, there's (this) unlimited sort of growth that can happen for a few years, and then it really just levels off. And you're never going to go beyond that. So, I kind of reached that headroom and decided to do something different. Ula Ojiaku:  Was it at that point that you decided to go for your PhD? Rita McGrath:  And that was one of the options I was considering. And my husband basically said, ‘look, if you get into a top five school, it's worth doing and if you don't, it's probably not.' But you have to think in that time, MBA programs were just exploding, and there'd been a lot of pressure on the administrators of MBA programs, to put PhD accredited faculty in front of their students. The big knock against the MBA at the time was, oh, they're just trade schools. You know, we've got some guy who ran an entire company comes in and talks and that's not really academically suitable. And so, there was a huge pressure for schools to find PhD accredited people-  that still exists (but) the market pressures has changed a lot. But when I was doing my PhD, it was pretty sure I would get a job if I managed to complete the degree. So that that gave me that extra input to do that. Ula Ojiaku:  Did you already have like children when you started the PhD? Rita McGrath: Yes Ula Ojiaku:  And how did you cope? Rita McGrath:  Our son was, how old was he? He would have been nine months old when I started my PhD program. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku: Wow, 9 months old. Rita McGrath: Oh, yeah, it was a real challenge. And I guess everybody manages those kinds of challenges in their own way. But yeah, it was a struggle because, you know, typical day would be you know, get up, get the baby to daycare or wherever and then do school or whatever I had to do that day. And then it was sort of pick them up. By the time I had a second child it was pick them up, get them dinner, get them bedtime, get them story, and then I'll be back at my desk at nine o'clock at night, trying to do what I needed to do. So, it was a new turn. It was tough. It was difficult years. I mean, joyful years though but it was just hard to fit everything in. Ula Ojiaku:  I can imagine. I mean, although I'm thinking of starting my PhD (studies), my children aren't that small but I do remember the time (they were), you know, I was still working full time. So, the challenge is you'd go to work and then come back to work. I mean, to another type of work. And then when they go to bed, the work continues. Yeah, it's interesting. Rita McGrath: Quite exhausting. Ula Ojiaku: You can say that. I'm so glad they're not in diapers anymore. So, it's baby steps, we are getting there. So, can we go on to your book, “Seeing Around Corners, How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen”. I'd like to start from an unusual place in the book. I started from the dedication page, and you know, reading everything, and I noticed that, you referred to a conversation, one of the last conversations you had with your mother. Could you tell us about that? Rita McGrath:  Oh sure. She was well, at the time, she was quite ill, she had sarcoma in her lung, and she was quite ill. It's a horrible disease, and we haven't got any real treatments for it. So, the recommendation is you do chemo and that really knocks you out. So, she was quite ill and sort of migrating between the chair and the couch and the chair and the couch. And in one of those conversations, she just said ‘I want you to know I'm proud of you. And I've had a good life and I'm prepared for whatever comes next.' And I thought that was lovely of her to say and I thought in that moment to pass it on to all these other women. And you know you bring up motherhood and being a working woman and all those complicated emotions that come with that because there seems to be guilt around every corner you know, if you're not at home full time, oh you're a terrible mom. And if you're not at work full time, you're a terrible worker. I just I think so many of those things are just designed to twist us up into little balls. And when I look at my own mother's experience - she was a working woman… I grew up but I think I'm third or fourth generation working woman so it never even occurred to me that wouldn't be possible. But I think what often is missing is this validation, you know that for women who are trying to you know make their way professionally and be great, responsible parents and do all these other things that often there's a sense of a lack of self-worth you know, ‘oh, I'm not doing enough.' The more I hear that… Ula Ojiaku:  I feel like that some… most days I feel like that… Rita McGrath: Believe me, you are doing enough Ula Ojiaku:  Sometimes I ask my children, am I a good mom? Rita McGrath:  I think part of it too is we, and when I say we, I mean baby boomer mothers and maybe a little younger. We got ourselves all tangled up in this if it's not like organic, hand-processed  lima beans with you know, organic succotash, mixed in you know, it's not good baby food. Honestly, Gerber's exists to provide perfectly nutritious food for really young babies and they've been doing it for decades and you can trust that and if it makes your life easier, go with it. Ula Ojiaku:  Thank you! Rita McGrath: You know, I think we I think we get ourselves all tossed up in like, what does good mean? I mean, honestly, the kids don't mind you know? I mean, they'd celebrate if it was chicken finger night. Ula Ojiaku:  Let's go to the book. You know, because in your book you said you it's about how to spot inflections before they happen in business. Can you give us examples of, you know, businesses that had these inflection points occur, and they failed to recognize it and what was the impact? Rita McGrath:  Sure, let's take one that is quite sad to me, which is Intel. And Intel built its, well, Intel went through a major inflection point, in fact, the originator of the concept was Andy Grove, who was their former CEO. And he talked about his inflection points in his book, Only the Paranoid Survive, which is really a brilliant, brilliant book. And one of the reasons I wrote my book was that very little had been done since his book on that topic. And Grove built this incredible company, Intel. And they were making microprocessor chips. And they were very, very powerful, very fast chips. And so, the assumptions inside Intel's business model was, what customers were going to pay for was faster, faster, faster, more computation power, more and more powerful. But what they didn't really think about was energy consumption. And as the world went more mobile… so the Intel product is the PC, and the PC, the desktop PC remains firmly plugged into the wall. And then later, we make PC chips that maybe have slightly lower power consumption to power PCs, but it's still that notion of power, you know, and I think the inflection point that caught Intel by surprise, to some extent was, this movement towards mobile, where the vast majority of chips being made were these completely different architecture chips by  companies like ARM and you know, and companies like that, which, from their inception, recognized that low power was the way to go. Then they weren't very powerful in the sense of speed, which is what Intel was driving its business towards. But they were powerful in the sense of ubiquitous low power, long battery life, that kind of thing. And I think that's an example of the kind of assumption that can cause a company to get into trouble, when the underlying shift in the business environment says, ‘wait a minute, this thing you've been building all this time may not be what is needed by the marketplace.' Ula Ojiaku:  That's interesting. So, it brings me to the point of, the points you made about, you know, the indicators, the early warnings, and you mentioned the concept of you know lagging, current and leading indicators. And there was an emphasis in your book on, you know, leading indicators. Could you tell us a bit about that? Rita McGrath:  Sure. Well, so leading indicators are today's information about tomorrow's possibilities. And what we unfortunately rely on a lot in business is lagging indicators - so profits, performance, you know, ROI, all those things are lagging some kind of decision that you made a long time ago. So, the concept of leading indicators is to try to get business leaders to think about what would have to be true, you know, before I was able to make a certain decision, what are the leading indicators? So, an example would be back in the 90s, computer scientists all over the world realized that come the year 2000, from the turn of the millennium, that the way computer programs had been programmed, was only two digits for the year. And so, when the year went to zero-zero, computers, were going to think it was 1900 and this was going to be terrible. Because they all get out of sync, you know, and planes would drop out of the sky. You're gonna become unstable, and you'll all need to move to Montana and stuff … I don't know if you can remember this. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah, the Y2K bug… Rita McGrath: Oh my goodness…! Ula Ojiaku: It was a big sensation. Yeah… Rita McGrath: Apocalyptic – remember?! And yet, when the big moment came the year 2000. What happened? Well, nothing happened. Why did nothing happen? We looked at that early warning, and we said, whoa, if that happens, it's bad. And then so companies, prodded by their accounting firms, prodded by other security considerations invested billions in correcting that flaw. And so, that's an example of an early warning. And there are a couple of things to understand about early warning. So, the first important thing is, the measure of a good early warning is not, did it predict what happened. The measure of a good leading indicator is, did it help you prepare for what might happen? And so, I think that's a really important distinction, because we oftentimes, oh, you that didn't predict this or that. But that's not the point. The point is, did it help you think more broadly about what might happen so that you could be prepared? So, I think that's the first thing. The second thing to remember about leading indicators is they're often not quantitative in the way that we like to think about quantitative things. They're often qualitative. They often take the form of stories. And they often come from what are called unrepresentative parts of your mental ecosystem. So, you know, it's that person on the loading dock (saying to themselves), ‘this is, well, that's weird, a customer never asked for that before', or the person answering the phone, you know, in headquarters going, ‘Well, I don't understand why they need that information…' You know, it's those little anomalies or things that depart from business as usual, that are often the weak signals that you need to be paying attention to. Ula Ojiaku:  So, can you give us an example where you mean, I mean, of how we can go about choosing good leading indicators? Rita McGrath:  Well, in the book, I describe a technique that I use, which is you take a couple of uncertainties and juxtapose them on each other. And that gives you four or more you can do this for as many as you like, stories from the future, possibly a future that we could live in. And then depending on which one you want to think about, you say, ‘okay, I'm gonna write a headline as if it came from a newspaper story about that scenario. And I'm gonna work backwards and say, what has to be true for that headline to emerge.' So, take an example that's playing out right now, chronic and accelerating decline in birth rates in the United States. People are just deciding not to enlarge their families or not to start their families at all. And for very good reasons, you know, the level of social support for families is very low. Mostly women are bearing the burden. And very often women are the ones that make a large part of the decision about whether the family is going to grow or not. And so, we're facing a real baby bust. Well, if that's true, and we follow that along, well, what are some things that would be early warnings or indicators of what that world will be like? Well, you'll see a decline of working people relative to retired people, or people needing assistance, you'll see, you know, fewer kids with more resources to support them. So, the kind of baby Prince phenomena we saw in China. There are lots of things you can kind of work through. But once you say, ‘okay, I see a world with a million fewer children three years from now, than we would have expected well, okay, what now working backward? What does that tell us we need to be paying attention to today? Ula Ojiaku:  Yes, yes. That's a great example. And I wonder, though, so given all, you know, the research that has led to, and your experience as well, consulting with, you know, most of these large organizations, the case studies, you've come to witness and all that, what would you, what would be your advice to leaders of such organizations, you know, in terms of how they can better prepare themselves or equip themselves to recognize these inflection points, and lead effectively? Rita McGrath:  Well, I think the first principle is you have to be discovery driven. In other words, you have to be curious about what's going on. And if you're the kind of leader who (when) someone brings you a piece of information, and instead of treating it like a gift, you're like, oh no, you don't understand that's wrong. That's not the way the world works. If you're dismissive of information people are bringing you that's very dangerous. Because the information you need is not going to come from your lieutenants at headquarters, it's going to come from that guy on the loading dock. So, I think you want to think about establishing some kind of information flows, that go directly from where the phenomena are happening to your desk. So, as an example, a company I really admire is the German metal services company Klockner. And their CEO, Gisbert Ruehl was taking them through a digital transformation. And his big concern was not that they meant it, right? But that his lieutenants, his middle manager, cohort, would be so expert, and so experienced at the way business was, that they would just shut down these digital efforts. And he was very, very concerned about that. He said, well, I need some way of making my message heard directly to the people that are on the frontlines and I also need a way of hearing from them what's going on. So, he implemented Yammer, called non-hierarchical communication. And the deal was anybody in the company that had something he needed to know should feel comfortable sending him a note. And I'm told, I don't know this for a fact that I'm told that at headquarters, he had his instance of Yammer set up so that the lower the hierarchical level of the person, the higher it came in his newsfeed. Ula Ojiaku: Oh, wow. Rita McGrath: So, you know, I can talk to my lieutenants, anytime. Information I need is in the, you know, 24-year-old person who's just joined us with an engineering degree, who's looking at our manufacturing process for screwdrivers and saying, ‘Why do you do it that way? There must be a better way of doing this…' That's the information I really need and he set up a whole system to try to get that information to him, to himself. Ula Ojiaku:  Would you say there's a typical kind of leader with, you know, some certain characteristics that's best equipped to spot the inflection point, and you know, kind of lead the charge and get the organizations in line? Rita McGrath:  You know, I think it's more of the behavior, it's not the characteristics. So, I've seen charismatic, attractive, you know, movie star type CEOs be good at this. I've seen people you look at and you go ‘Really? He looks kind of like he slept in his clothes all night.' I've seen those people be good at it. So, you know, I think the differentiation is this, this hunger for new information, this curiosity, this relentless… ‘tell me again…' and ‘why was that and why was that?' It is this urgent need to really learn what's going on. And then and then putting yourself in the, in the context. So, one of the people I'm working with right now is a brilliant retail CEO, and everything. And one of the things he would do before hiring anybody into his senior team, is he would spend a day or two walking the stores, you know, and in his explanation to me was, ‘I want to see how they react to the stores. I want to see how they treat the people working in stores. I want to see what they notice, you know, I want to see if they notice that there's a thing out of array and I want to see how they are with me, like if they spend their whole two days in store visits, sucking up to me - that's not somebody I need, you know. And so, I think the best leaders along those lines are people who are relentlessly curious, bring people around them who are diverse, you know, you don't just want echo chambers of themselves. Ula Ojiaku:  True, true. You don't want ‘yes' men if you really want to make an impact really. Yeah, and how can I, as a person, train myself to also recognize these inflection points. Rita McGrath:  Well, it depends what the inflection point is. So, if it's a question of, you've been making nice steady progress in your career, and now you've hit some kind of ceiling and you just feel you're not growing or developing any more, then that choice is really okay, I need to… the way Whitney Johnson would put this, she's written a great book on this, “Disrupt Yourself”, right? You go up this S curve, then you need to make the decision if you're going to take on the J curve, right, which is the part below the S curve before you get into the next round of learning. So, that's a personal decision, really only you can make a decision like that. Then there are the cases where inflection points are thrust upon you. So you lose a job, your spouse has some setback, a family member has an urgent need that makes whatever you were doing before impossible. I mean, there's all kinds of outside things that can happen to you. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah… Rita McGrath: And I think the best way to try to look at those is. ‘is this a slingshot to a better future, potentially?' And you know, how many people have you talked to who got fired, and some years later say, ‘that was the best thing that ever happened to me, it shook me out of my complacency. It made me think differently.' And so, I think a lot of times, you know, we, it's very comfortable (staying) stuck in our ruts. And sometimes it takes a bit of a jolt to get us out of that. Ula Ojiaku:  That's a great one. Can I just ask you about so it's not really about your book, Seeing Around Corners, but this one is about the Entrepreneurial Mindset? Just one quick question. Because there's a quote, in your book, that book that says, you know, “the huge part of becoming an entrepreneurial leader is learning to simplify complexity, so that your co-workers can act with self-confidence.” That quote, it made me kind of be more conscious about, am I really making things simpler for my co-workers instead of, you know, rather than to enable us, you know, achieve the best that we could as a group? So why did you, make that quote and associate it with an Entrepreneurial Mindset? Rita McGrath:  Well, because if you make things complicated for people, there's maybe three responses, right? One is they'll start on whatever they start on, which is kind of random. And maybe they finish it, and maybe they don't, but it's really now you're leaving it to chance. Because if you give people more to digest than they can manage, you're going to get back some fraction of it. So that's one thing. Second thing that happens is, if it's too complex, a lot of times people will pick what they want to do, not have anything to do with the agenda that you want to set for the organization. And the third thing is there's just a laziness that comes from having things be complex. I know for myself, when I've had to do strategy statements for myself, or my business, it takes a long, long time to get it done into a few simple things. And each word has to mean something. So, as an example, some years back, I started a sister company. It's called Valize. And the strategy really is to its mission, its purpose for me, is to help organizations create innovation and transformation capability as the basis for shared prosperity. And that sounds really simple. That sounds really kind of ‘duh, that's not so grand, but I mean, the hours it took to get to that simplicity of statement. And then once you've got something like that, you can go back and you could say, okay, well, here's the thing that I'm being asked to do or think I'm thinking of, does it build capability? Yes. No. Does it build shared prosperity? Yes, no. Does it help organizations to help themselves? Yes, no. And it sorts out a lot of stuff means a lot of stuff we could do. But there are only a few things that really fit into that sweet spot of shared capability. So, having that simplification allows you to clear out a lot of the …, there are always wonderful options that you got to do things, right? And it's a question of abundance, you've usually got more great options than you could possibly exercise. So, picking the best ones is the challenge. Ula Ojiaku:  Wow, wow. I'm going to listen to this part again. You've mentioned some books already, like Andy Grove's, Only the Paranoid, I mean, Only the Paranoid survive. And you've mentioned the book, Disrupt Yourself… In addition to these books, and your wonderful suite of books, what other books would you recommend to the audience that you believe have influenced you that you'd recommend to the listeners that would help them you know, learn more about this topic? Rita McGrath: Oh, that's hard, because there's so many. Well, I love Safi Bahcall's Loonshots. I think that's a brilliant, brilliant book. And it really gets to the heart of how innovation actually happens rather than how we think it happens. I rather like Gary Hamel's and Michele Zanini's book, Humanocracy which has the basic question, you know, if you look at Instagram, or Twitter or any of these social platforms, you see these people who are just brilliant. I mean, they're creating incredibly creative stuff. And then we put them inside companies. And we insist that they do things by the rule, and we block all the creativity out of them. So, why do we do that? You know, I think that's a really great one. I'm very taken with Rebecca Henderson's, Re-imagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. Very, very brilliant. Roger Martin, When More is not Better. Just recently had a Julie Lythcott-Haims on my fireside chat program, which is and she's got a book called Your Turn, How to be an Adult”, which is, on a personal level, absolutely fascinating - really good book. I like Peter Sim's, Little Bets. You know, they're just so many I mean, I wouldn't even know where to where to start. Those are the ones that are sort of top of mind at the moment. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. scribbling away as you're talking, and yeah, these all these would be in the show notes with the links to them. So that's great. Now, how can the audience reach you? If they want to, you know follow your work. Rita McGrath: The best place to start is my website, which is really ritamcgrath.com, that's easy. I have columns that I write for. They're currently going up on substack and medium. If you just search my name and or medium, you'll find me there. I do weekly, LinkedIn post, which goes to subscribers on LinkedIn. Also, that's all sort of good places to start. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. Are you on social media? Rita McGrath:  Oh, yes. So yes. I'm on Twitter @RGMcGrath. And I'm on LinkedIn. Okay. I'm not on Facebook so much. But I have put things I post there, but I'm not really on it very much. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay. All right. That's, I mean, thanks for those. Now, let's wrap up any ask of the audience first? Rita McGrath:  I think we're in a remarkable moment, right now, you know, we've had so many of our previous habits and assumptions disrupted, that I think it would be a shame to lose, to lose all that and just go back to the way things were. So, I think it's an opportunity to reflect and to really think about, what kind of future do we want to build now that so many of our assumptions and institutions have been challenged, and we learned whole new tricks, we learned whole new ways to do things. Let's not just snap back to the way it was, let's think about inventing better. Rita McGrath:  Really, I think there's going to be great opportunity coming out of this current crisis and those who are thinking ahead will benefit from it. Ula Ojiaku:  Okay, great. Well, Rita, thank you so much for your time, and it's been a pleasure again, having you on the show. Rita McGrath: Thank you very much.

Rita Gunther McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world's Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage. On this episode, we discussed her new book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen, and its implications for learning leaders. Rita also shared her thoughts on the challenges and opportunities of innovation and what people often get wrong when thinking about it. Finally, Rita shared what makes her optimistic and what she's most curious about heading into the new year.

In this episode, we discuss the future of Learning & Development as we come out of Covid and face new challenges.   Rita Gunther McGrath is an American strategic management scholar and professor of management at the Columbia Business School. She is known for her work on strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including the development of discovery-driven planning. McGrath is also the founder of the innovation platform Valize.

Rita Gunther McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. Rita is one of the world's top experts on innovation and growth and is one of the most regularly published authors in the Harvard Business Review. She is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world and was ranked #1 for strategy by Thinkers50. Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her new book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thoughtsparksritamcgrath/message

Rita Gunther McGrath, best-selling author of The End of Competitive Advantage, Discovery Driven Growth, and her latest book Seeing Around Corners, talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder. They discuss what companies need to do to navigate the pace and intensity of today's changing environments and what needs to happen to foster the skills, the culture, and the metrics around innovation. For more innovation resources, check out insideoutside.io.

Today we’re joined by a true legend in the space of strategy, innovation and management: Rita Gunther McGrath. Rita is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. She is a best-selling author, speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. Rita has received the number one achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking.  Join our conversation as we explore the positive and negative impacts of inflection points for organizations and markets. We uncover discovery-driven leadership, irreversible versus reversible decisions, responsibility towards local communities as a key principle for organizing value creation, and much more. This discussion testifies the true depth of the rabbit hole of the future of organizing! Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our Medium publication: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/Podcast-S2E10-RitaMcGrath To find out more about Rita’s work: > Website: https://www.ritamcgrath.com/> Twitter: https://twitter.com/rgmcgrath> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritamcgrath/> YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rgmcgrath> Medium: https://rgmcgrath.medium.com/ Other references and mentions: > Boundaryless whitepaper (2020), New Foundations of Platform-Ecosystem Thinking — Designing Products and Organizations for a changing world, https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/DOWNLOAD-NF > Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, Chris Yeh, The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age, 2014: https://www.amazon.com/Alliance-Managing-Talent-Networked-Age/dp/1625275773 > Healthy San Francisco: https://healthysanfrancisco.org/ > Peter Turchin, “Intra-Elite Competition: A Key Concept for Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies”, 2016: http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition-a-key-concept-for-understanding-the-dynamics-of-complex-societies/  > Rita McGrath, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen, 2019: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Around-Corners-Inflection-Business/dp/0358022339/ Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music Recorded on 12 January 2021.

Rita Gunther McGrath, best-selling author of The End of Competitive Advantage, Discovery Driven Growth, and her latest book Seeing Around Corners, talks with Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder. They discuss what companies need to do to navigate the pace and intensity of today's changing environments and what needs to happen to foster the skills, the culture, and the metrics around innovation. For more innovation resources, check out insideoutside.io.

We discussed a number of things including: 1. State of Innovation in COVID-19 Era 2. Importance of innovation now and in the near term 3. How can we spot inflection points Rita Gunther McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world's Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her new book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). She has written three other books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating one of the most important management ideas ever developed. She is a highly sought-after speaker at exclusive corporate events around the globe, such as the Global Peter Drucker Forum. She received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. Follow Rita on Twitter @rgmcgrath. For more information, visit RitaMcGrath.com.

 Even in the midst of ambiguity, it is possible  to “see around corners”  Find out more by listening to fan-favorite Episode 168. Scott and I speak with Professor Rita Gunther McGrath, a world-renowned thought leader and a professor at Columbia Business School, where she directs the popular Leading Strategic Growth and Change program. She is widelyRead More The post How to Spot Major Changes in Business Before They Happen — with guest Rita Gunther McGrath appeared first on Business Advancement.

In this episode, we have our two dear guests Lisa Gansky — the eternal entrepreneur, great thinker and our long term advisor — and Bill Fischer, professor at IMD in Lausanne with whom we’ve developed the very first Rendanheyi Masterclass based on Haier’s revolutionary organisational model and a partner in our long term research on the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Enabling Organization.In our conversation, we wanted to pick their brains on the key theses emerging from the research for our upcoming 2020 Whitepaper, such as acknowledging marketplace pervasiveness, seeing a systemic shift happening towards health and redrawing the human development thesis to reverse the trend that machine development has long outpaced human development.Following an initial framing, Bill and Lisa take turns in providing amazing reflections on where the world seems to be headed, from an organisational, systems and cultural perspective and related to business ecosystems and innovation.Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our Medium publication.  Here are some important links from the conversation:See the previous Podcast episodes with Lisa and Bill> Checkpoint episode with Lisa Gansky: Ecosystems - between the “no more” and the “not yet”, https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/checkpoint-episode-with-lisa-gansky-ecosystems-between-the-no-more-and-the-not-yet-c183d21257c4> Leadership as Architecting: Transforming Organisations into Thriving Ecosystems — with Bill Fischer. https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/leadership-as-architecting-transforming-organisations-into-thriving-ecosystems-7-4af8dd0cf06c Other references and mentions:> Warren Bennis, 1998. The Temporary Society: What is Happening to Business and Family Life in America Under the Impact of Accelerating Change. https://www.amazon.com/Temporary-Society-Happening-Accelerating-Management/dp/0787943312  > Structural Shifts podcast by Aperture Hub, with Rita Gunther McGrath, Seeing Around Corners (#19): https://medium.com/aperture-hub/seeing-around-corners-19-ec64b2260337> Tessy Britton, “Universal Basic Everything” - .creating essential infrastructure for post Covid 19 neighbourhoods. https://medium.com/@TessyBritton/universal-basic-everything-f149afc4cef1> Simone Cicero,  “An Entrepreneurial, Ecosystem Enabling Organization - What’s emerging from understanding Haier Group”. https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/an-entrepreneurial-ecosystem-enabling-organization-c35eaf5acd9cFind out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music Recorded on July 1st 2020

On this week’s Structural Shifts podcast, we talk to the brilliant Rita Gunther McGrath, author of "The End of Competitive Advantage". In this bestseller, she talks about how the world is moving from one dominated by organizational systems and hierarchies to one of individual superstars where a stable career means a series of gigs. Hosted by Ben Robinson, they discuss strategy, the benefits / limitations of network effects, Facebook’s failures, and more.

Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned thought leader and a professor at Columbia Business School. She has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s top ten management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. She wrote Discovery-Driven Growth and The End of Competitive Advantage, which are widely used in the business design community. In this podcast we talked about: how and why we should prototype with numbers, why the era of sustainable competitive advantage is over, and how designers can explain “inflection points” to business leaders.

Rita Gunther McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a professor at Columbia Business School, where she directs a popular program on Leading Strategic Growth and Change. Her new book, Seeing Around Corners, is a guide to anticipating and capitalizing on disruptive inflection points shaping the marketplace.  Listen to Rita and Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, discussing Rita's new book and also her reflections on Clay Christensen in this episode of the BCG Henderson Institute podcast. *** About the BCG Henderson Institute The BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group's strategy think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on Twitter: @BCGHenderson

Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned thought leader. professor at Columbia Business School, and is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty.

  Rita Gunther McGrath. World-renowned management & innovation expert tells us: How do we see around corners in business and in our own lives?    

Hear how nonusers are waiting for you to fulfill their unmet needs! I had such an amazing conversation with Dr. Rita Gunther McGrath. I have been a fan of her thinking over the past twenty years, and have read and used each of her books, The Entrepreneurial Mindset, Market Busters, Discovery Driven Growth and The End of Competitive Advantage. Her new book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen, is coming out today, September 3, 2019, and is the topic of our interview. Today, you're either a disrupter, adapting to disruptions, or being disrupted You will enjoy listening to Dr. McGrath reflect on what we are both seeing: a great deal of change opening up opportunities for new businesses to emerge, for others to surge, and for some to purge. The "resisters" are gone—those businesses that refuse to adapt to changing times, that “don’t do it that way,” that cannot seem to open their minds to the massive changes coming all around them. Listen carefully to our conversation because you don’t have to fight the changes—the unmet needs and nonusers that we speak about at SAMC so often. Your potential customers are waiting for you to help them. You just have to start seeing things through a fresh lens. Our job (Rita's and SAMC's) is to help you do that. Rita will tell you why and how to start to spot those inflection points before they gobble you up! About Dr. Rita Gunther McGrath Rita Gunther McGrath Ph.D. is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth, and is one of the most regularly published authors in the Harvard Business Review. She is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world and was ranked #1 for strategy by Thinkers50. In 2009, she was elected as a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society in recognition of her impact on the field. She has also been elected as a Fellow of the International Academy of Management and has received the “Theory to Practice” award at the Vienna Strategy Forum. Learn more about Rita on her website.  To learn more about adapting to change, we suggest these blogs and podcasts: Blog: Additional resources Rita's website: ritamcgrath.com Rita's books: The Entrepreneurial Mindset Market Busters, Discovery Driven Growth The End of Competitive Advantage Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen My book: On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants

Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned business strategist, author and Professor at Columbia Business School who has dedicated her career to helping identify how to anticipate, plan for and manage disruptive change.  Our conversation covered a broad range of topics including the principles of Discovery-Driven planning, which she pioneered in the mid 1990s and was the first major management approach to embace the idea that change is a constant in business – and which led to development of the Lean Startup methodology.   She shares insights into how the nature of competitive advantage has changed, leaving businesses vulnerable and in need of fresh strategies to address the opportunities and risks of digital business.  We discuss a range of examples of successful leadership, and explore how the dynamics around Big Tech are different but in many ways similar to past monopolies. Finally she shares the ideas around her new book.

Developing a successful organizational strategy isn’t easy, especially in an unpredictable business climate. Navigating a shifting landscape requires leaders to abandon pre-conceived notions and think differently, according to Rita Gunther McGrath, a professor in the Business School’s Executive Education program. A globally recognized expert on innovation and growth strategy, McGrath argues that to maintain a competitive advantage in times of change, organizations must protect their key resource — personnel. “One of the few sources of advantage left is going to be that core group of people who carry the culture, who carry the norms, who are the secret sauce of the place,” McGrath says in this episode of Columbia Bizcast, which highlights the critical importance for leaders to create a culture where all employees feel safe. “All leaders need to create psychological safety, need to communicate up and down the organization, need to be able to see what’s going on out there, need to be able to hear uncomfortable information and not lash out at the person bringing it and so forth,” says McGrath. “If you think about it, organizations would benefit by that style of leadership becoming more prevalent.”

Marcello Mancini - intervista con Marcello Mancini (Performance Strategies)http://www.giuseppefranco.itCome si comunica con i numeri uno? Come si possono creare delle relazioni efficaci?In questo video, insieme a Marcello Mancini (CEO - Performance strategies), abbiamo parlato di quali sono le azioni più efficaci per comunicare efficacemente e rendere il nostro servizio o prodotto sempre interessante.Questi sono i 3 punti su cui ci siamo focalizzati:1 - Il pensiero a lungo termineE l'esperienza emotiva che dovresti imparare a fare.2 - La fiduciaCome e perché spesso è il miglior modo per comunicare.3 - Il rischio di essere noiosiLa variabilità di un servizio è alla base. E se si tratta di innovazione, che cosa succede?Nel video tutti i punti spiegati nel dettaglio:https://youtu.be/H2eTE9g3GSo-------------------------------------------------SCOPRI IL CORSO PUBLIC SPEAKING - METODO 4Shttp://bit.ly/2YwqhcIALTRI VIDEO SU FACEBOOKhttp://www.facebook.com/giuseppefrancopaginaCANALE PUBLIC SPEAKING PER IL BUSINESShttp://bit.ly/speaking4SSCRIVIMIinfo @ metodo4s.ithttp://telegram.me/giuseppefranco-------------------------------------------------marcello mancini - marcello mancini ospite di numero1Marcello Mancini no CNRintervista con marcello mancinitelefonata marcello mancini-------------------------------------------------Marcello Mancini parla di Performance Strategies. Nel prossimo calendario (2019) ha messo insieme menti brillanti come Jeffrey Gitomer, Mark Robenge, Michael Tsur, Daniel Priestley, Randi Zuckerberg, Sena Ellis, Howard Gardner, Rita Gunther McGrath, Fabio Capello, Verne Harnish, Keith Ferrazzi, Claudio Cecchetto, Massimo Bottura, Federico Buffa, Julio Velasco e Jack Cambria.Marcello Mancini, nel video, spiega come è riuscito a comunicare con loro e rendere ogni evento un successo. Lascia i tuoi commenti o fai le tue domande (a me o a Marcello Mancini)

Author and Columbia Business School Professor Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned expert on strategy, innovation, and growth. Her work has been a beacon for companies during times of uncertainty. She and Ian MacMillan created “discovery-driven planning,” a foundational idea for the lean startup methodology — and her bestselling book, The End of Competitive Advantage, is considered the definitive strategy playbook. McGrath joins the podcast to talk about how growth strategies and innovation have changed over the last few decades, how companies should be responding to these changes, and why spotting “strategic inflection points” can open a world of opportunities for businesses. Listen to this podcast to learn: • Why “arena thinking” is an imperative and should be prioritized over industry thinking • What inspired the thinking behind “discovery-driven planning” • Why aiming for a sustainable competitive advantage is actually a disadvantage for companies • Why blockchain will change a lot less in the short run, and a lot more in the long run • How technology has opened up the “marketization” of more business functions • A preview of McGrath’s forthcoming book about strategic inflection points: how to spot them, what to do about them, and how to convince your organization to act on them

Episode #55 - We are joined by Rita Gunther McGrath, Strategy Professor, Columbia Business School and Globally recognised expert on innovation and growth strategies, Thinkers50. Watch the video footage from the podcast here: http://bit.ly/HRDLeadersPodcast.

In the episode of Art of the Kickstart we hear from Petr Prochazka, founder and CEO of Skinners. Tune in to learn more about the inspiration behind Skinners, what the prototyping process looked like leading up to his campaign and what question he’d love to ask Forrest Gump. SKINNERS: Revolutionary Ultraportable Footwear with Silver Key Crowdfunding Takeaways Where some of the best project ideas originate How long prototyping takes for a new product Why you should pay attention to other crowdfunding campaigns before launching your own The importance of building a community around your product How to make fulfilling rewards a priority Links Skinners on Kickstarter http://www.skinners.cc/ The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillan Connect with Skinners Skinners on Facebook @skinners_int on Twitter Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code AOTK for 20% off! Transcript

This week's guest audio excerpt features Rita Gunther McGrath, the author of The End of Competitive Advantage. She was interviewed by CREW Network CEO Gail Ayers before speaking at their 2015 Network Convention and Marketplace. The whole interview is only 10 minutes long, and covers a number of topics including advanced strategic planning, challenges for female executives in today's competitive climate, and how CEOs can manage their workloads through better priority setting. You can watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFREurlszMY In the two minute excerpt I have selected to share, McGrath talks about the opportunities she sees in the marketplace and how leaders and companies can prepare to handle the changes they will usher in. For procurement, the trend that will have the greatest impact is what McGrath calls dematerialization.

Welcome to the first podcast for 2015! In this podcast Chief Executive Peter Cheese explains the key themes the CIPD will be focusing on in the coming year and introduces 4 important thinkers discussing what they think is significant and cutting edge for the profession right now. First we speak to Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science at the Warwick Business School, about the science of human behaviour and its relevance to HR issues. Next we hear from James Rule, Director of HR Solution Effectiveness at Thomson Reuters who describes a scheme called ‘partnering for performance’ that embodies the idea of aligning talent within the business with opportunity and how they have used technology to achieve this. We also hear from Arnab Banerjee, an HR Transformation and Technology expert, who describes the ways technology can optimise HR and his predictions for what will happen in this space. Finally we hear from Rita Gunther McGrath, a Professor at Columbia Business School, who outlines why she believes that businesses should stop focusing on sustaining a competitive advantage and instead work towards identifying different opportunities and working in an agile way to take advantage of these opportunities.

Rita Gunther McGrath, a Professor at Columbia Business School, is a globally recognized expert on strategy in uncertain and volatile environments. Her thinking is highly regarded by readers and clients who include Pearson, Coca-Cola Enterprises, General Electric, Alliance Boots, and the World Economic Forum. She is the author of The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business. In this interview, we discuss the end of sustainable competitive advantage and a the new strategy playbook for establishing a transient advantage.

I would once again like to welcome from Buyers Meeting Point to share information of this week's events and news from the world of purchasing, Kelly Barner. NOTE: In this week's guest excerpt, we will hear Rita Gunther McGrath, author of the End of Competitive Advantage, talk about the three main challenges that she believes will keep executives up at night in 2014. Be sure to visit the Buyers Meeting Point website @ http://buyersmeetingpoint.com

I would once again like to welcome from Buyers Meeting Point to share information of this week's events and news from the world of purchasing Kelly Barner. NOTE: In this week’s guest sound bite, we get an overview of a recently published book on strategy called 'The End of Competitive Advantage' by Columbia Business School Professor, Rita Gunther McGrath. Be sure to visit the Buyers Meeting Point website @ http://buyersmeetingpoint.com  

Paul McLoughlin, The Work Wonk, speaks with Rita Gunther McGrath, about her “manual” for this revolutionary approach to strategic and tactical success. Specific information to help your business or division grow. Next week: David Scott and World Wide Rave, how to get millions of people to spread you ideas and share your stories. Yup, using the web to … Read more about this episode...

Paul McLoughlin, The Work Wonk, speaks with Bob Beaudine, premier executive recruiter in sports and entertainment, about the power of relationships. Summary: you best circle is your inner circle. Start and stay there to move forward. Next week: Discovery-driven Growth – A breakthrough process to reduce risk and seize opportunity with Rita Gunther McGrath. … Read more about this episode...