Rita Gunther McGrath
Rita McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after advisor and speaker, and a 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.
Ian C. MacMillan
Ian MacMillan is the Dhirubhai Ambani Emeritus Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Formerly he was Director of the Entrepreneurship Center at New York University and a teacher at Columbia and Northwestern Universities and the University of South Africa. In 1999 he was awarded the Swedish Foundation for Small Business Research Prize for his contribution to research in entrepreneurship.
Prior to joining the academic world, MacMillan was a chemical engineer and gained experience in gold and uranium mining, chemical and explosives manufacturing, oil refining, and soap and food production; he was also a scientist at the South African Atomic Energy Board. MacMillan has been a director of several companies in the travel, import/export, and pharmaceutical industries. He also has extensive consulting experience with such companies as Air Products, DuPont, General Electric, GTE, IBM, Citibank, Chubb & Son, American Re-Insurance, Texas Instruments, KPMG, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Fluor Daniel, Matsushita (Japan), Olympus (Japan), and L. G. Group (Korea).
MacMillan’s articles have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and many other publications.