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Rita McGrath

Professor, Columbia Business School

Rita Gunther McGrath is 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 widely recognized as a premiere expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. 

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Bio

Rita McGrath, one of the world’s top experts on strategy and innovation, is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world by the prestigious Thinkers50 and won their #1 award in strategy. She is a trusted partner and strategic advisor in the C-suites of many of the country’s biggest and most well-known companies - especially as they work to grow, evolve, reinvent themselves and see around corners. Rita is known for her energy, positivity, storytelling, and ability to connect with audiences. She is also a sought-after corporate speaker, a long-time educator at Columbia Business School, the author and host of the popular podcast and newsletter Thought Sparks, available on YouTube.

She is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on strategic inflection points, the topic of her most recent book - Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). She is the author of 5 books on leadership, business and organizational management including the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her work on discovery-driven growth was praised by the late legendary management thinker Clayton Christensen as offering “some of the most important ideas of management and strategy that have ever been developed.” She is currently working on a book full of humor and insight for business leaders aimed at helping organizations become ‘2% less stupid’ by adopting permissionless structures.

Rita regularly sits down for in-depth conversations with high level authors and leaders in business for her popular podcast Thought Sparks. She also writes a regular Thought Sparks newsletter and shares insights across social media platforms, including LinkedIn, where she has more than 45,000 followers.

Known for her energy, positivity, storytelling and ability to connect with audiences, Rita is a sought-after corporate speaker and a long-time educator at Columbia Business School where she leads its popular Executive Education course Leading Strategic Growth and Change, guest-lectures in a number of other courses and is active in a variety of initiatives including the launch of its Think Bigger Innovation Hub. She also acts as faculty director for some of Columbia’s prestigious custom programs offerings, learning experiences designed specifically for individual organizations.

One of the most frequent contributors to the Harvard Business Review, she publishes regularly in other premier journals such as the MIT Sloan Management Review and was awarded the prestigious C. K. Prahalad award from the Strategic Management Society, an award for scholarly impact on practice. She has won many other awards for her work and impact, including the “Theory to Practice” award from the Vienna Strategy Forum, the “Best Paper” award from the Academy of Management Review and multiple “best book” awards for her work.

A proud graduate of Barnard College (B.A.), the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania (PhD) and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (M.P.A), Rita is also co-leader of the Silicon Guild, a group of thought leaders and best-selling authors who write about trends in business, society and culture. Connect with her on LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok. Subscribe to her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack, listen to her Thought Sparks Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or watch it on YouTube and learn more about her work at RitaMcGrath.com and Valize.com.

Keynotes

Featured Keynote

  • Snow Melts from the Edges
  • Discovery Driven Planning
  • Creating an Early Warning System
  • Innovation Should Bot Be a Mystery
  • Learning to Live with Complexity
  • Manage Your Portfolio, Manage Your Growth
  • Failing by Design
  • The End of Competitive Advantage & the New Strategy Playbook
  • 3 Approaches to Creating Customer Insight
  • Speed, Stealth and Selective Attack
  • The Permissionless Organization
  • How to Make a Rainmaker
  • Positive Politics for Organizational Change
  • The Transfer of Wealth to Women: A Looming Inflection Point
  • Creating and Communicating Your Personal Vision – How to Be Seen as Strategic
  • It's Not About “Fixing” the Women - Creating Gender Balanced Workplaces
  • Custom Topic

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Topics

5 Questions to Build Your Company's Capacity for Innovation

We finally get that innovation is not optional. But a lot of organizations simply don't know where to start. This article can help get you going.

When Your Business Model is in Trouble

When do established firms have to worry about broken business models? Read this HBR interview with Rita McGrath to find out.

Transient Advantage

Why looking for sustainable competitive advantages can be a trap and the new playbook for strategy.

Strategy + Business Interview with McGrath

McGrath describes what keeps companies up at night, why competitive advantages are short and how to think about innovation in this wide-ranging interview.

What do you think of Google's Alphabet Re-branding?

In this front-page piece in the FT, McGrath is quoted on the pros and cons of Google's decision to create a parent company, Alphabet, for its far-flung ventures.

Why Conventional Finance Metrics Measure the Wrong Things

The financial tools we use to run established businesses can be anathema to innovation. Read this 'experts' piece to find out why.

This Is How True Unicorn Startups Identify What Consumers Want

This look at Unicorn Startups, is an examination of the outlook of these companies and how to spot ones that will thrive.

Delta’s plan to block third-party sites is more than a game of chicken

This article looks at Delta’s refusing third party flight booking in the broader spectrum of learning about customer behavior and the risks companies are willing to take to gain an advantage.

  • 2019 Seeing Around Corners: How To Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen
  • 2013 The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business
  • 2009 Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity
  • 2005 Marketbusters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth
  • 2000 The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty
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