Rita McGrath

Columbia University Business School Professor | C-Suite Strategist | Thinkers 50 Top 10 | Best-selling author | Founder, Valize and Rita McGrath Group

Rita McGrath, one of the world’s top experts on strategy and innovation, is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world and has earned the #1 award for strategy by Thinkers 50. She runs the Rita McGrath Group and is the founder of consultancy and innovation platform Valize.

Known as a trusted partner and strategic advisor in the C-suites of many of the country’s biggest and most well-known companies, Rita is the go-to guide for leaders and senior teams, especially as they work to grow, evolve, innovate, and see around corners.

She is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on strategic inflection points, the topic of her most recent book – Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). She is the author of 5 books on leadership, business, and organizational management including the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). Her work on discovery-driven growth was praised by the late legendary management thinker Clayton Christensen as offering “some of the most important tools of management and strategy that have ever been developed.” Additionally, she is currently working on a book full of humor and insight for business leaders aimed at helping organizations become ‘2% less stupid’ by adopting permissionless structures.

The author and host of the popular podcast and newsletter Thought Sparks, Rita also regularly sits down for in-depth conversations with high-level authors and leaders in her Fireside Chats series on Youtube and shares insights across social media platforms, including LinkedIn where she has more than 45,000 followers.

Known for her energy, positivity, storytelling, and ability to connect with audiences, Rita is a sought-after corporate speaker and a long-time professor at Columbia Business School where she leads its popular Executive Education course Leading Strategic Growth and Change, guest-lectures in a number of other courses and is active in a variety of initiatives including the launch of its Think Bigger Innovation Hub. She also acts as faculty director for some of Columbia’s prestigious custom programs offerings, learning experiences designed specifically for individual organizations.

One of the most frequent contributors to the Harvard Business Review, she publishes regularly in other premier journals such as the MIT Sloan Management Review and was awarded the prestigious C. K. Prahalad award from the Strategic Management Society, an award for scholarly impact on practice. She has won many other awards for her work and impact, including the “Theory to Practice” award from the Vienna Strategy Forum, the “Best Paper” award from the Academy of Management Review, and multiple “best-book” awards for her work.

A proud graduate of Barnard College (B.A.), the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania (PhD), and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (M.P.A), Rita is also co-leader of the Silicon Guild, a group of thought leaders and best-selling authors who write about trends in business, society, and culture.