Thinkers & Ideas

John Kay is one of Britain’s leading economists, and has been a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford since 1970. His work is centered on the relationships between economics, finance, and business. Today his main focus is on writing and he is renowned for his ability to express complex ideas clearly and succinctly. He is the author of many books, including The Truth about Markets (2003) and Obliquity (2010).In his new book, Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers, co-authored with Mervyn King, he argues that models have only limited value in guiding business decision making. In a numerical world, decision making should be guided by developing and critically challenging reference narratives, to figure out “what’s going on here?”.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Kay discusses insights from his new book, epidemiology, the accuracy and applicability of models, and what leaders can do to break with prediction addiction.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Georg Kell is the founding Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative and Chairman of Arabesque Partners.Kell, along with Herman Bril and Andreas Rasche, are the co-editors of Sustainable Investing: A path to a new horizon, a unique combination of perspectives from academics and practitioners on how corporate sustainability and sustainable investing are converging and driving change in markets.In a discussion with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Kell discusses the role of the corporate world and finance in making progress on sustainability, and shares his thoughts on how COVID-19 has impacted how we think about long-term challenges and resilience.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Loizos Heracleous is Professor of Strategy and Organisation at the Warwick Business School, and Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College and Saïd Business School.In his new book, Janus Strategy, he argues that organizations can accomplish strategies that seek to reach competing goals.Traditional strategy wisdom suggests that there are two generic strategies — differentiation and cost leadership. It is assumed to be impossible to combine both for a prolonged period of time, and those who try succeed only temporarily (in new markets that aren’t competitive yet) or fail at both. However, some organizations prove that it is possible to be a sustained cost leader whilst being differentiated or to explore while exploiting. Janus Strategy uses case studies to explore the six factors that make this possible.In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Heracleous explains the mindset and moves leaders need to make their organization a Janus organization.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Marc Levinson is an independent economist and historian. He is the author of The Box (2006) and several other books, a former finance and economics editor of The Economist, a former senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former sell-side analyst. His work has focused on trade, finance, globalization, and business.In his new book, Outside the Box, he argues that a fourth phase of globalization is underway, which will no longer be defined by cost optimization through shipping physical goods. Instead, the fourth globalization is about the spreading of ideas and services trade. In a conversation with Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, BCG Chief Economist, he discusses the likely impact of this shift on inequality, inflation, the trade-off between efficiency and resilience, and the U.S.-China decoupling.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Rebecca Henderson is an economist, a professor at Harvard Business School, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is an expert on innovation and organizational change, a board member of Idexx Laboratories and of CERES.In her new book, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, she argues why and how we need to reimage capitalism if we want to solve today’s big issues. In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, she discusses the need to abandon the shareholder value maximization, and instead focus on how we can create balanced capitalism between businesses, governments, and civil society supported by the law and free media.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Michael Kearns is Professor and the National Center Chair in the Computer and Information Science department of the University of Pennsylvania, where he has secondary appointments in Economics and the Wharton School. He has published widely in machine learning, artificial intelligence, algorithmic game theory, and quantitative finance.His latest book, The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design, co-authored with University of Pennsylvania colleague Aaron Roth, explores the interplay between societal values and the expanding role of algorithms in our everyday lives. In a discussion with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Professor Kearns discusses how algorithms work, where and why they fall short, design choices to consider to overcome these challenges, accountability, and why algorithms should be on the CEOs’ agenda.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group's think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg is a Harvard Business Press author and an expert on innovation and problem-solving. His first book, “Innovation as Usual”, coauthored with Paddy Miller, was translated into five languages and got Thomas recognized as a “Top 20 International Thinker” by HR Magazine.His new book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve focuses on how leaders can solve the right problems. In a conversation with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Wedell-Wedellsborg says that 85% of companies he surveyed for his book don’t consider themselves to be good at framing problems correctly. The good news: according to his research, you can learn how to get better at solving the right problems.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group's think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Margaret Heffernan is a Texas-born, Cambridge educated author, former media CEO, award-winning journalist, and BBC documentary maker whose TED Talks have been viewed more than twelve million times. Her six previous books include Willful Blindness, which was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times.In this podcast with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, she discusses insights from her forthcoming book, Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future. Heffernan argues that the future is inherently unpredictable and, as such, we really need to stop force-fitting models for prediction onto business strategy and elsewhere, as doing so only provides us with a false sense of certainty and security.Instead, she argues, the right approach is to embrace uncertainty and use scenario planning, experimentation, and imagination. She discusses several domains (art, military intelligence, “cathedral” projects like CERN) where acceptance of uncertainty and using creative approaches has led to great success.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group's think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

In this podcast, Martin Reeves interviews Roger L. Martin about his book on the negative consequences of pursuing economic efficiency at all costs. They discuss the flawed measurement of efficiency, the link between income distribution and efficiency, the trade-off between efficiency and resilience during the coronavirus crisis, and the impact of the over obsession with efficiency on democracy and capitalism in America.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a Professor of economics and Director of Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is considered to be one of the world’s leading experts on economic development, global macroeconomics, and the fight against poverty.In this discussion with Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, he discusses insights from his new book, The Ages of Globalization, which describes the dynamics of globalization across history and how it has influenced and has been influenced by economy, culture, geography and technology.In particular he describes the opportunities and challenges of the current digital age, and discusses possible solutions, including the social role and contribution of corporations.***About the BCG Henderson InstituteThe BCG Henderson Institute is the Boston Consulting Group’s think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration, sign up to receive BHI INSIGHTS, our monthly newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.