KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Columbia Executive Education Academic Director | Strategy & Innovation
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WHY RITA
Helps leaders recognise inflection points early, test strategic assumptions and reallocate resources before yesterday’s advantage becomes tomorrow’s constraint.
KEYNOTE TOPICS
How leaders can move beyond annual planning and fixed competitive positions to manage a portfolio of advantages, direct resources toward emerging opportunities and disengage from businesses whose assumptions no longer hold.
A practical approach to strategic inflection points: where weak signals appear first, how to distinguish meaningful change from noise and what leadership teams can do before a shift becomes obvious to the market.
How to pursue uncertain growth without pretending the forecast is a fact. McGrath shows leaders how to surface assumptions, test them at low cost and increase investment only as evidence improves.
Why productive experimentation requires more discipline, not less. This keynote distinguishes intelligent failures that create knowledge from preventable mistakes and connects learning directly with strategy and resource allocation.
Rita McGrath is Academic Director in Executive Education at Columbia Business School and one of the most influential thinkers on strategy under uncertainty. Her work has shaped how leaders understand transient competitive advantage, strategic inflection points and discovery-driven planning — giving organisations a disciplined way to act when the future cannot be forecast with confidence.
McGrath is the author of five books, including Seeing Around Corners and The End of Competitive Advantage, and has been ranked the world’s leading strategy thinker by Thinkers50. Her keynotes combine rigorous strategy with practical tools for recognising weak signals, testing assumptions, managing intelligent failure and moving resources toward emerging opportunities. The result is not a promise to predict disruption, but a clearer way for leadership teams to notice change earlier and respond before the obvious options disappear.
ON STAGE
The Transformation Economy with Rita McGrath and Joe Pine
Building Strategy for the Future with Rita McGrath and Jonathan Brill
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