Outthinkers

James L. Heskett is UPS Foundation Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and author of his latest book, Win From Within: Build Organizational Culture for Competitive Advantage. He completed his Ph. D. at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and has been a member of the faculty of The Ohio State University as well as President of Logistics Systems, Inc. Since 2000, he h...

Emmanuel Probst is Global Lead, Brand Thought-Leadership at Ipsos, adjunct professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, and the author of Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller Brand Hacks: How to Build Brands by Fulfilling the Human Quest for Meaning Emmanuel’s background combines over 16 years of market research and marketing experience with strong academic achievements. At Ip...

Admiral James Stavridis , USN (Ret.) spent more than thirty years in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of four-star admiral. He was Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and previously commanded U.S. Southern Command, overseeing military operations through Latin America. At sea, he commanded a Navy destroyer, a destroyer squadron, and an aircraft carrier battle group in combat. He holds a Ph. D. from t...

Ben Casnocha is an entrepreneur and cofounder of Village Global, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has funded hundreds of startups and the co-author, with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, of The Start-Up of You: Adapt, Take Risks, Grow your Network, and Transform Your Career. He delivers keynote speeches on business and globalization and has appeared on CBS’s The Early Show, CNN , and CN...

Salim Ismail is the lead author of the bestselling business book, Exponential Organizations. A renowned technology strategist and serial entrepreneur with ties to Yahoo!, Google, and Singularity University, he consults with governments and the world’s top Fortune 500 companies on innovation and growth. His work has been featured in premier media outlets like the New York Times, Bloomberg Business...

Dr. Geoff Smart is the Chairman & Founder of ghSMART. Founded in 1995, ghSMART helps Fortune 500 CEOs & boards, billionaire entrepreneurs, and heads of state achieve their goals through hiring, developing, and leading talented teams. They serve clients globally from 12 offices in North America and Europe. For three consecutive years, Forbes named ghSMART the best management consulting firm...

Ajay Banga is the 14th President of the World Bank Group. Prior to this he was Vice Chairman at General Atlantic, which he joined after 12 years at the helm of Mastercard, leading the company through a strategic, technological and cultural transformation over 11 years as president and chief executive officer and one year as executive chair of the board of directors. Under Ajay leadership, Masterca...

Pete Newell is a nationally-recognized innovation expert whose work is transforming how the government and other large organizations compete and drive growth. He is the CEO of BMNT, an innovation consultancy and early-stage tech accelerator that helps solve some of the hardest real-world problems in national security, state and local governments, and beyond. Pete is a founder and co-author, with L...

*Note to listeners* This episode is part of a special sub-series on business ecosystems. Felix Oberholzer-Gee is the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. An award-winning instructor, his academic work has been published in the very best, peer-reviewed journals of his profession, and he currently teaches competitive strategy in executive education progra...

Richard P. Rumelt is one of the world’s most influential thinkers on strategy and management. McKinsey Quarterly described him as “strategy’s strategist” and “a giant in the field of strategy.” He is the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters , reviewed by the Financial Times as “the most interesting business book of 2011” and by Strategy + Business as “the year’s...

*Note to listeners* This episode is part of a special sub-series on business ecosystems. Ben Gomes-Casseres has been studying ecosystems since before the term as we know it existed. He is an expert on business combinations, in particular alliance strategy and management, having researched this topic for 30 years. He has published five books and many articles and case studies on M&A, alliances,...

Amy Webb is a quantitative futurist and a bestselling, award-winning author. She is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business and the Founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex futures. Amy has advised CEOs and heads of strategy of some of the world’s largest companies, thr...

Prof. Dr. Christian Busch is the bestselling author of The Serendipity Mindset: The Art & Science of Creating Good Luck. Arianna Huffington called it “a wise, exciting, and life-changing book” that Paul Polman says “provides excellent practical guidance for all.” Christian is an internationally-known expert in the areas of innovation, purpose-driven leadership, and serendipity. He is the direc...

*Note to listeners* This episode is part of a special sub-series on business ecosystems. Tiffani Bova is the chief growth evangelist at Salesforce and the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book GROWTH IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business. Tiffani has been named to the latest Thinkers50’s list of the world’s top management thinkers and is a welcomed gu...

Whitney Johnson is the CEO of human capital consultancy WLJ Advisors, an Inc. 5000 2020 fastest-growing private company in America. She is an expert at helping high-growth organizations develop high-growth individuals, and recognized as one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world (#14) as named by Thinkers50. Having worked at Fortune 100 companies, been an award-winning equity analyst on...

Verne Harnish is founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), with over 16,000 members worldwide, and chaired for fifteen years EO’s premiere CEO program held at MIT, a program in which he still teaches today. Founder and CEO of Scaling Up, a global executive education and coaching company with over 200 partners on six continents, Verne has spent the past four decades helping co...

Keith Ferrazzi is a bestselling author, award-winning speaker, investor, philanthropist, and executive team coach who helps teams transform enterprises. As Founder and Chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight and its applied research institute, he coaches executive teams in top organizations to achieve transformative outcomes by harnessing Radical Adaptability. He is recognized as one of the world’s most s...

Ken Blanchard is one of the world’s most influential leadership experts. A prominent, sought-after author, speaker, and business consultant, Ken is respected for his lifetime of groundbreaking research and thought leadership that has influenced the day-to-day management and leadership of people and companies throughout the world. In 2005, he was inducted into Amazon’s Hall of Fame as one of the to...

Gary Hamel is one of the world’s most influential and iconoclastic business thinkers. He has worked with leading companies across the globe and is a dynamic and sought-after management speaker. Hamel has been on the faculty of the London Business School for more than 30 years and is the director of the Management Lab. Gary has written 20 articles for the Harvard Business Review and is the most rep...

Jonathan Knee is a of Professional Practice in Media and Technology and Co-Director of the Media and Technology Program at Columbia Business School, where he has taught Media Mergers and Acquisitions and Strategic Management of Media. He serves as a Senior Advisor at Evercore, an investment banking advisory firm. Before joining here as Senior Managing Director in 2003, he was a Managing Director a...

Francesca Gino is an award-winning researcher who focuses on why people make the decisions they do at work, and how leaders and employees have more productive, creative and fulfilling lives. She is the author of Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules in Work and Life , Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed , and How We Can Stick to the Plan and numerous articles that have been featured...

Martin Reeves is a Managing Director and Senior Partner in BCG’s San Francisco office and Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, where he explores ideas from beyond the world of business, which have implications for business strategy management. He is the co-author of The Imagination Machine: How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company's Future (HBR Press, 2021), the series Inspiring the...

Julian Birkinshaw is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Strategic Management Society, and the (American) Academy of Management. Julian is a recognized thought leader on the impact of digital technology on the strategy and organization of established companies, for example such topics as digital disruption, agile work...

Faith Popcorn founded her BrainReserve (FPBR), the futurist marketing consultancy, in 1974. The New York Times has called her “The Trend Oracle," Fortune Magazine named her “The Nostradamus of Marketing," and she is recognized globally as the original and foremost Futurist. She has identified such sweeping societal movements as “Cocooning,“ “SOS,” “AtmosFear,“ “Anchoring,“ “99 Lives&quot...

Adam Bryant is managing director of The ExCo Group, a senior leadership development and executive mentoring firm. Prior to this, Adam worked for 30 years as a journalist, including 18 years as a reporter, editor and columnist at The New York Times . He interviewed more than 500 CEOs for “Corner Office,” a series on leadership that he created in 2009. He also writes a monthly column for Strategy+Bu...