As Vice-Dean and Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, Julian Birkinshaw is a world-renowned figure in the world of management. With decades of experience studying organisational innovation, corporate entrepreneurship and strategic leadership, he is a perfect guide to the business landscape of today – one marked by disruption, ‘discontinuous innovation’ and existential debates from digital technology to the very purpose of the firm itself.
Beyond the academy, Julian is also a popul...
As Vice-Dean and Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, Julian Birkinshaw is a world-renowned figure in the world of management. With decades of experience studying organisational innovation, corporate entrepreneurship and strategic leadership, he is a perfect guide to the business landscape of today – one marked by disruption, ‘discontinuous innovation’ and existential debates from digital technology to the very purpose of the firm itself.
Beyond the academy, Julian is also a popular author, speaker and executive mentor across the world of business. When we say he’s a big deal, we mean it – he makes regular appearances in the “Thinker’s Fifty” and has received widespread acclaim for books such as Rethinking Management, Becoming a Better Boss, and Fast/Forward.
As well as his own ideas on ‘organisational ambidexterity’ and ‘adhocracy’ in the face of climate change, we also took a hard look at rational strategic planning, remote working, the Great Resignation, and the very future of shareholder capitalism itself.
What’s in this episode?
- Professor Birkinshaw’s work arbitraging business and academia (yes, in both directions!)
- How to find – and sculpt - big ideas that truly resonate with leaders on the ground
- Disruption as the key framework to understand our times…
- …and why the secret to surviving it might just be to following the ‘dancing elephants’
- Digital technology as a grand experiment for hierarchical authority
- The ‘grey rhino’ that is climate change: a greater or lesser challenge than COVID for adaptive firms? Will Big Oil cope better in Europe or the US?
- His view on the purpose vs. profits debate – and the Unilever story we can’t stop talking about
- Where he would head out into the world, as a purpose-first MBA graduating today
- Motivation, micromanagement and the Great Resignation
- Organisational ambidexterity – what it is and why it matters
- Thinking through global climate institutions as ‘adhocracies’
"…take the Fortune 500 from last year and guess how many of that Fortune 500 did not exist in any form 25 years ago at the beginning of the Internet revolution. And most people, when I ask that question, they say, oh, maybe it was 100 or 200. Some people say maybe it was 300….Only 17 of the Fortune 500 are completely new. And of course, it's Facebook. It's it's Amazon, it's Google. It's Netflix. I mean, Tesla, you can name half of those even without thinking about it.…Most people fixate on the world's being disrupted…"
"…You’ve got to be resilient to very short term shocks covered in a global financial financial crisis where the effect is felt within weeks. You've got to be resilient to the stuff which takes, you know, months, If not years to work through. And certainly digitization is one… and then you've got to be resilient to the things which take decades to work their way through, which, of course, is climate change.
…And and we sometimes call the first one a black swan event… the thing that you kind of didn't foresee. And then suddenly it's there and and you think, oh, my gosh, why didn't we think of that? Then you've got the other end. You've got climate change, which sometimes is called a gray rhino.
And the metaphor there is, this thing is coming at you, it's coming at you. You can see it a long way off. No one needs to predict this. It's happening. And yet, because it's a long way off for a long time, you actually just sort of, you know, say, yeah, I can see it's coming…
…And then and then suddenly you've actually got to act…climate change is in some ways the hardest. I mean, everybody found COVID difficult, but the point is, there was never any ambiguity about what needed to be done… but the climate crisis: the question is, is when do you act, not do you act…?”
References:
https://www.london.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty-profiles/b/birkinshaw-j
https://julianbirkinshaw.com
Article from HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW:
https://hbr.org/2014/05/beware-the-next-big-thing/
Conversations on Climate is a podcast produced by United Renewables in association with the London Business School Energy Alumni Club.
It brings together the best minds from academia and business, to offer their experience and expertise in the face of climate change –from game theorists to corporate diplomats, and oil industry veterans to micro-algae entrepreneurs.
For more top-quality interviews with our incredible guests, subscribe to our youtube channel or follow us on twitter. We’d love to have you join us!
Don’t forget to share with your colleagues, friends and family. We would love to hear your opinions and feedback, so please leave your comments on our platforms.
Throughout season 1, we talk about how the scope of the challenge before us is beyond that of any one individual or any one solution. We talk to thinkers, researchers, policymakers, and business leaders. They discuss a diversity of ideas and solutions to global climate and environmental issues and why they matter.
Season 1 is presented by Chris Caldwell and produced by UNITED RENEWABLES in association with LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL, ALUMNI ENERGY CLUB.
For more information visit: https://www.unitedrenewables.co.uk/resources
Please visit our YouTube channel, where all of our Conversations are available for you to enjoy.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHANNEL HERE: https://bit.ly/3GZpd7R
and ring the notification bell
Join us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3MnhuSf
Join us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3Q5UKcj
Join us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3tFEnK3
