Thinking About the Future

Rita McGrath accepts the 2013 Strategy Award from CIMA sponsor

It was a fast and furious exchange of ideas at the Thinkers50 education day and gala in glamorous Draper’s Hall in London.
It was quite a special night for me, as I won the distinguished achievement award in the Strategy category and broke through to the top ten-ranked management thinkers (coming in at #6). It was even more special as my husband, sister in law and her husband all made the effort to “clean up nice” and dress in black tie. The evening was capped by what pundit Andrew Hill of the FT called Clayton Christensen’s “Gwyneth Paltrow” moment as he emotionally accepted his award as the #1 thinker. Some ideas that came out of the conference are discussed below.

Thinking About the Future

The Future of Management Education

While the distinguished panel of commentators disagreed on many things, one thing they did agree on was that management education in a short period of time – perhaps five years – is going to look radically different than it does today, with blended learning, apps, and perhaps even a subscription business model becoming prevalent. Read more on the blog »

The Future of Work

Split 50/50 about whether the workforce of the future was going to be a happier place than it is today, a second distinguished panel described some of the issues they see having an impact on the workplace. These include the hollowing out of companies’ middle ranks as a consequence of globalization, the disappearance of those first jobs that offer young people their first “perch” of a corporate career ladder, and the issue that we still have come nowhere close to cracking work/life balance with the result that an astonishing number of younger people intend to have careers, but not families. Read more on the blog »

The Future of Enterprise

The final panel of the day considered where today’s large corporations are headed. While the panel was gloomy, citing the likely disappearance of the publicly traded firm, the end of a ‘golden age’ of the good corporation and an increased lack of job security overall, I begged to differ a bit. Yes, in the transient advantage economy the playbook is different, but I believe we have seen some inspiring examples of firms that have figured quite a bit of this out and transformed accordingly. Read more on the blog »

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