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John Hagel    

Management Consultant, Author & Entrepreneur

John Hagel III has more than 40 years’ experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. After recently retiring as a partner from Deloitte, McGraw Hill published his new book, The Journey Beyond Fear, that addresses the psychology of change and he is developing a series of programs to help people navigate through change at many levels. Hagel has founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact.

While at Deloitte, Hagel was the founder and chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, focusing on identifying emerging business opportunities that are not yet on the CEO’s agenda. Before joining Deloitte, Hagel was an independent consultant and writer and prior to that was a Principal at McKinsey & Company and a leader of their Strategy Practice as well as the founder of their E-Commerce Practice. Hagel has served as senior vice president of strategy at Atari, Inc., and is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups.

Hagel is also a faculty member at Singularity University where he gives frequent talks on the mounting performance pressure created by digital technology and promising approaches to help traditional companies make the transition from a linear to an exponential world. He is also on the Board of Trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, an organization that conducts leading edge research on complex adaptive systems. He has also led a number of initiatives regarding business transformation with the World Economic Forum.

Hagel is the author of The Power of Pull, published by Basic Books in April 2010. He is also the author of a series of best-selling business books, Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box, and The Only Sustainable Edge. He is widely published and quoted in major business publications including The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal, as well as general media like the New York Times, NBC and BBC. 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 institutions, including the World Economic Forum and Business Week. Hagel has his own website at www.johnhagel.com, and for many years wrote personal blogs at www.edgeperspectives.typepad.com as well as contributing postings on the Harvard Business Review, Fortune and Techonomy websites.

Hagel holds a BA from Wesleyan University, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and a JD and MBA from Harvard University.

Speech Topics


The Big Shift

I share the perspectives that we have developed on the long-term forces that are fundamentally re-shaping our global economy and the implications in terms of how all institutions will need to adapt to this every different environment

Overcoming the Psychology of Mounting Performance Pressure

The forces that are re-shaping our global economy are creating mounting performance pressure for all of us – no one is immune. In times of mounting pressure, we as human beings have natural psychological reactions that are understandable yet can become very dysfunctional. By understanding the psychology of pressure, we can more effectively devise approaches that can help to turn mounting pressure into expanding opportunity.

Back to Strategy – Has Anything Changed?

In the peak of the dot com bubble, business strategy seemed a quaint relic from the past. Business strategy is now clearly back with a vengeance. The real question is: does business strategy have to adapt to changing needs? I focus on underlying economic forces and maintain that a different approach to strategy is required in times of high uncertainty. Drawing on examples from a variety of industries, I show where traditional strategic principles still apply and where they need to change. Most importantly, I lay out a basic approach to strategy that promises to improve both near-term economic performance and long-term advantage.

Pursuing the Right Innovation Agenda

Companies are beginning to realize that cost-cutting delivers diminishing returns. Executives are reassessing their innovation needs. Traditional forms of innovation – product innovation and managerial innovation are necessary but not sufficient. Growing competitive pressures require a more aggressive institutional innovation across multiple levels of business activity. In the process, the boundaries and even the role of the firm will be redefined. By pursuing this institutional innovation, companies will be much better positioned to pursue product and process innovation.

Transforming our Approach to Transformation

All large institutions will need to transform themselves in order to respond effectively to the long-term forces reshaping the global economy. The traditional “big bang, top down” approaches to transformation invariably run into the immune system and antibodies that work to subvert change in all existing institutions. I explore an alternative approach – scaling the edge – that is becoming much more feasible given the evolution of the global economy and that is much less likely to encounter the immune system and antibodies that make transformation so challenging.

News


The Job Training Conundrum: An Interview With John Hagel - Forbes
John Hagel There's a big problem in the world of work: How do you keep your employees both happy and up to date on current trends? John Hagel ...

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