Outside In Podcast:

Rita Gunther McGrath: What’s Next for Strategy?

Author and Columbia Business School Professor Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned expert on strategy, innovation, and growth. Her work has been a beacon for companies during times of uncertainty. She and Ian MacMillan created “discovery-driven planning,” a foundational idea for the lean startup methodology — and her bestselling book, The End of Competitive Advantage, is considered the definitive strategy playbook. McGrath joins the podcast to talk about how growth strategies and innovation have changed over the last few decades, how companies should be responding to these changes, and why spotting “strategic inflection points” can open a world of opportunities for businesses.

Listen to this episode to learn:

  • Why “arena thinking” is an imperative and should be prioritized over industry thinking
  • What inspired the thinking behind “discovery-driven planning”
  • Why aiming for a sustainable competitive advantage is actually a disadvantage for companies
  • Why blockchain will change a lot less in the short run, and a lot more in the long run
  • How technology has opened up the “marketization” of more business functions
  • A preview of McGrath’s forthcoming book about strategic inflection points: how to spot them, what to do about them, and how to convince your organization to act on them