#68 Seeing Around Corners - A Conversation with Rita McGrath

Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned business strategist, author and Professor at Columbia Business School who has dedicated her career to helping identify how to anticipate, plan for and manage disruptive change.  Our conversation covered a broad range of topics including the principles of Discovery-Driven planning, which she pioneered in the mid 1990s and was the first major management approach to embace the idea that change is a constant in business – and which led to development of the Lean Startup methodology.   She shares insights into how the nature of competitive advantage has changed, leaving businesses vulnerable and in need of fresh strategies to address the opportunities and risks of digital business.  We discuss a range of examples of successful leadership, and explore how the dynamics around Big Tech are different but in many ways similar to past monopolies. Finally she shares the ideas around her new book.