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Episode 157: Chris Zook - The Founders Mentality: A Bias For Action & Front Line Obsession
Chris Zook is a partner in Bain & Company's Boston office. He was co-head of the Global Strategy practice for 20 years. During his more than 25 years at Bain, Chris has specialized in helping companies find new sources of profitable growth.
A best-selling author, Chris published his fifth book,The Founder's Mentality in 2016. Based on a decade-long study of companies in more than 40 countries, The Founder's Mentality shows how leaders can overcome the predictable crises of growth and set their companies on a path of sustainable growth. Chris has been a featured broadcast guest, including NPR, CNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV. He has been a keynote speaker at a wide range of international and business forums including the World Economic Forum, the World Knowledge Forum, the Forbes' CEO Conference, the BusinessWeek CEO Conference, the Economist Summit and Endeavour’s entrepreneur summits. In the last five years, he has done over 500 talks and workshops across more than 35 different countries.
Episode 157: Chris Zook - The Founders Mentality: A Bias For Action & Front Line Obsession
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The Learning Leader Show
“The leaders who have a deep intellectual curiosity to continuously learn" will sustain excellence over an extended period of time"
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
“Complexity is the silent killer of growth"
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Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell
Bio From Bain.com
Chris has authored numerous additional books with Harvard Business Review Press, including Repeatability: Build Enduring Businesses for a World of Constant Change (2012), an argument for simple, great repeatable models to realize enduring, profitable growth. In 2010, he published Profit from the Core: A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times, an updated edition of his 2001 best-selling business book, Profit from the Core: Growth Strategy in an Era of Turbulence, which offers an approach to assessing and making the most of core business opportunities. Chris's sequel, Beyond the Core: Expand your Market without Abandoning your Roots (2004) examines how companies that have fully exploited their core businesses can systematically and successfully expand into related, or "adjacent" areas. Unstoppable: Finding Hidden Assets to Renew the Core and Fuel Profitable Growth (2007) completes the series and examines what to do when your growth formula of the past begins to approach its limits, demanding that your company change its strategic focus and redefine its core.
These “growth trilogy” books have received widespread critical support. Beyond the Corewas recognized by The Economist as one of the top five business and economic books in the year it was published, and it was also voted one of the top 100 business books ever written. Unstoppable was identified by The Financial Times as one of the notable business books of the year. Based on his work on how companies grow, Chris was included by theTimes of London in its biannual list of the 50 Most Influential Global Business Thinkers. He has written dozens of articles with Harvard Business Review Press and other business publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Times,Fortune, Forbes and BusinessWeek.
He received a bachelor of arts in mathematics and economics from Williams College, an M.Phil. in economics from Exeter College, Oxford University, and earned master’s and doctorate degrees from Harvard University.