Harvard Business Review - Use Failure to Grow Your Business

About this video
An interview with Rita McGrath, Professor, Columbia Business School. How can companies plan and pursue an aggressive growth agenda with confidence? By framing their strategic growth opportunities, testing assumptions, and creating a culture that acts on evidence and learning.

About Rita McGrath
Rita McGrath, an Associate Professor at Columbia Business School in New York, is one of the world's leading experts on strategic business growth in highly uncertain environments. She works with both Global 1,000 icons and smaller, but fast-growing organizations. Her current clients include Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Nokia, Microsoft, AXA Equitable, Novartis, Swiss Re, Glanbia, ON2 Technologies and the World Economic Forum. She is a popular speaker and works extensively with senior leadership teams.

Her new co-authored book, Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity was published by Harvard Business Press in the Spring of 2009. She has co-authored two previous books: The Entrepreneurial Mindset(2000) and MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth (2005), also published by Harvard Business Press. MarketBusters has been translated into ten languages and was named one of the best business books of 2005 by strategy+business. It was featured by Bill Gates at the 2005 Microsoft CEO Summit, whose theme "New Pathways to Growth" was derived from the book's main topic.

Rita has appeared on television and radio and has been interviewed by numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Businessweek, Inc., and Entrepreneur. She blogs actively on strategic growth (see www.ritamcgrath.com) and is featured as a discussion leader at Harvard Business Online (see http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/mcgrath/). She has co-authored six articles in the Harvard Business Review, including the best-selling "Discovery Driven Planning," which has been highly recommended by Clayton Christensen.

Rita joined the faculty of Columbia Business School in 1993. Prior to life in academia, she was an IT director, worked in the political arena and founded two startups. Her Ph.D. is from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. At Columbia, she teaches MBA and Executive MBA courses in strategy and growth. She teaches regularly in Columbia's top-rated executive education programs, and is the Faculty Director for Leading Strategic Growth and Change, and Creating Strategy, Tokyo.

Rita's academic publications have appeared in leading journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal and Management Science. She has won numerous awards for excellence in scholarship. Among these are the Strategic Management Society 'best paper' and 'runner up' awards in 2001 and 2004; the Maurice Holland award from the Industrial Research Institute; the Academy of Management Review "best paper" award, and the Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice Award for the Best Conceptual Paper (both 1992 and 1996). She is on several editorial boards of prestigious journals.



Have a wonderful day,
R.