Howard Yu

Future-ready strategist.

RANKED THINKER

Ranked in 2023. 

AWARD RECIPIENT

Recipient of the Thinkers50 2023 Strategy Award.

SHORTLISTED

Shortlisted for the Thinkers50 2019 Innovation Award.

Ideas

Specializing in technological innovation, strategic transformation, and change management, Howard focuses on why and how some firms can sustain new growth while others cannot. He is the director of IMD’s Center for Future Readiness, which produces the Future Readiness Indicator. The Future Readiness Indicator measures a company’s deep, long-term secular trends and consists of a composite of proven proxies to predict an organisation’s adaptability quotient, such as revenue generation or research and development spending. The ranking gauges within a given industry which companies are ready for a bold new frontier. The secret to stay ahead isn’t speed, explains Howard, it is to prepare. 

Bio

LEGO professor of management and Innovation at IMD in Switzerland, Howard received his doctoral degree in management from Harvard Business School. Prior to his doctorate, he worked in the banking industry in Hong Kong. In 2015, he was selected by Poets&Quants as one of The World’s Top 40 Business Professors Under 40.

Content

Leap: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied (PublicAffairs, 2018); ‘Leopards sometimes change their spots: How established firms can transform themselves’ (award-winning paper, 2012). Multiple publications in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Forbes, MIT Sloan Management Review, Financial Times, The Straits Times, The South China Morning Post, and Shanghai Daily.

NATIONALITY: Native of Hong Kong

Media picks

Verdict

“Our go-to future fitness trainer.”

Stuart Crainer & Des Dearlove, Thinkers50

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