A legend and leader in the hotel world, Horst Schulze 's teachings and vision have reshaped the concepts of service and hospitality across industries. Horst’s professional life began more than 65 years ago as a server's assistant in a German resort town. He has worked for both Hilton Hotels and Hyatt Hotels Corporation before becoming one of the founding members of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company in 1983, where he created the operating and service standards that have become world famous. Horst se...
Sep 02, 2022•21 min•Ep. 57
FutureThink CEO Lisa Bodell ranks among the Top 50 Speakers Worldwide and is the best-selling author of Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins . She’s a global leader on simplification, collaboration, and innovation, whose keynotes leave audiences inspired to change and arm them with radically simple tools to get to the work that matters. Lisa brings a compelling perspective to the sought-after topics of simplification and innovation to over 100,000 people each year. A thought leader and serial en...
Aug 26, 2022•21 min•Ep. 56
Dr. Anna Tavis is Clinical Professor and Academic Director of Human Capital Management Department at NYU School of Professional Studies, Senior Fellow with the Conference Board, and the Academic in Residence with Executive Networks. Anna has been named to Thinkers50 Radar for 2020. Her latest book, Humans at Work. The Art and Practice of Creating a Remote Workplace, was published in the spring of 2022. Anna publishes regularly and has been quoted by the Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Human Reso...
Aug 19, 2022•22 min•Ep. 54
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 has authored a blog on the school's Working Knowledge web site. He has served as a consultant to compa...
Jul 01, 2022•22 min•Ep. 54
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 Ipsos, Emmanuel supports numerous Fortune 500 companies by providing them with a full understanding of...
Jun 24, 2022•26 min•Ep. 1
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 the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he recently served five years as ...
Jun 17, 2022•20 min•Ep. 52
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 CNBC . He is the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling management book The Alliance: Managing Tal...
Jun 10, 2022•21 min•Ep. 51
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 Week, Fortune, Forbes, WIRED, Vogue , and the BBC . Salim founded ExOWorks in 2016 to help transform...
Jun 03, 2022•21 min•Ep. 52
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 in its industry segment. ghSMART is the subject of two Harvard Business School Cases, and its credo...
May 27, 2022•20 min•Ep. 49
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, Mastercard’s stock price grew from $30 to $350 per share. Ajay began his career at Nestlé, India, where for ...
May 20, 2022•32 min•Ep. 48
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 Lean Startup founder Steve Blank, of Hacking for Defense (H4D)®, an academic program that focuses on ...
May 13, 2022•21 min•Ep. 47
*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 programs. His work is largely focused on helping businesses apply his framework of Value-Based Strategy, i...
May 06, 2022•37 min•Ep. 3
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 best and most original addition to the strategy bookshelf.” Richard received his doctoral degree fro...
Apr 29, 2022•20 min•Ep. 46
*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, and joint ventures, and his views have appeared widely in the business press. Ben helps companies c...
Apr 22, 2022•37 min•Ep. 2
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, three-star generals and admirals and executive government leadership on strategy and technology. She wa...
Apr 15, 2022•22 min•Ep. 45
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 director of the CGA Global Economy Program at NYU, and also teaches at the London School of Economics. He...
Apr 08, 2022•23 min•Ep. 44
*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 guest on Bloomberg, BNN, Cheddar, MSNBC, and Yahoo Finance, among others. She also contributes her thi...
Apr 01, 2022•32 min•Ep. 43
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 Wall Street, invested with Harvard’s Clayton Christensen, and coached alongside the renowned Marshal...
Mar 25, 2022•22 min•Ep. 43
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 companies scale up. He’s the author of the bestseller Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, authored The G...
Mar 18, 2022•20 min•Ep. 42
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 sought-after executive team coaches. Keith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Who’s Got Y...
Mar 11, 2022•19 min•Ep. 41
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 top 25 bestselling authors of all time. He is the co-author of more than sixty-five books, including ...
Mar 04, 2022•18 min•Ep. 40
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 reprinted author in the Review ’s history. His landmark books have been translated into more than 25 la...
Feb 25, 2022•37 min•Ep. 39
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 and Co-head of Morgan Stanley’s Media Group and was previously Publishing Sector Head in the Communic...
Feb 18, 2022•22 min•Ep. 38
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 in HBR and other top publications. She is the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration in...
Feb 11, 2022•20 min•Ep. 37
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 Next Game : Strategy Ideas for Forward Looking Leaders, and arguably one of the best strategy books of a...
Feb 04, 2022•20 min•Ep. 36
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 working, corporate entrepreneurship, business model innovation and management innovation. He is the auth...
Jan 28, 2022•19 min•Ep. 35
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" and “Vigilante Consumer." As the key strategist for Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve, Faith and her esteemed team app...
Jan 21, 2022•21 min•Ep. 34
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+Business magazine and is the Senior Advisor to the Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character...
Jan 14, 2022•20 min•Ep. 33
Ben Gomes-Casseres has worked on partnership strategies for thirty years, as a researcher, teacher, and advisor. A professor at Brandeis University, Ben directs the Asper Center for Global Entrepreneurship. Previously, he was at Harvard Business School and at the World Bank. Ben has published five books and many articles and case studies on M&A, alliances, and joint ventures, and his views have appeared widely in the business press. Ben helps companies create value from external resources by...
Dec 10, 2021•24 min•Ep. 32
Fred Reichheld is the creator of the Net Promotor Score (or NPS). He is a Bain Fellow and the founder of their Loyalty practice, which helps companies achieve results through customer and employee loyalty. His work in the area of customer and employee retention has quantified the link between loyalty and profits. He's authored numerous best-selling books including The Loyalty Effect, Loyalty Rules! ; and The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer Driven World. His...
Dec 03, 2021•18 min•Ep. 31
