Speakers Bios & Abstracts

Platzhalter Speakers
John Hagel III
US

Director Deloitte Consulting LLP, Co-Chairman
Deloitte Center for the Edge

Biography

John Hagel III has nearly 30 years experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur, and has helped companies improve their performance by effectively applying information technology to reshape business strategies. John currently serves as co-chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, which conducts original research and develops substantive points of view for new corporate growth.

 

Before joining Deloitte, John was an independent consultant and writer. Prior to that, he held significant positions at leading consulting firms and companies. From 1984 to 2000, he was a principal at McKinsey & Co., where he was a leader of the Strategy Practice. In addition, he founded and led McKinsey’s Electronic Commerce Practice from 1993 to 2000. John has also served as senior vice president of strategic planning at Atari, Inc., and earlier in his career, worked at Boston Consulting Group. He is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups.

 

John is the author of a series of best-selling business books, including Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box and The Only Sustainable Edge. He has won two awards from Harvard Business Review for best articles in that publication and has been recognized as an industry thought leader by a variety of publications and professional service firms. Additionally, he and Center Co-chairman John Seely Brown recently contributed a chapter to Business Network Transformation: Strategies to Reconfigure Your Business Relationships for Competitive Advantage (2009) and The Power of Pull (April 2010; 2nd edition December 2012).

Abstract

“Innovation and Scale in Complex Times”

Our business environment is becoming increasingly complex and demands very different approaches to sustain success.  In particular, executives will need to expand their focus on innovation to include institutional innovation – re-thinking the fundamental rationale for our institutions and the architecture of relationships required to support this evolving rationale. At a fundamental level, we are shifting from a rationale of scalable efficiency as defined by Ronald Coase to a rationale of scalable learning. This has profound implications for all aspects of managing the firm.  If the goal is to achieve and sustain significant scale, it will also be necessary to target parts of the economy that will continue to concentrate and consolidate rather than operating in areas that will be subject to increasing fragmentation. Rather than anticipating a world where our institutions will inevitably disintegrate or fragment, this perspective suggests that, with the right moves, we will be able to re-invent institutions that create increasing value as they scale to unprecedented levels. Peter Drucker, with characteristic foresight, anticipated many of the moves required to harness this potential.