Virtual Event
Beyond Hierarchy:
How Business Ecosystems are Changing Corporate Design
ORGANIZED BY:
Dec 14 2022
Beyond Hierarchy
For the last two centuries, the Hierarchy has been the dominant operating model for companies, governments, and organizations. But as the pace of change accelerates and new technologies mature, forward-looking organizations are exploring alternative, more agile and human-centered approaches
A new model of business is coming into focus.
New research shows strong correlations between elements of open business models and their impact on factors such as internal entrepreneurial activity, the ability to recruit and retain top talent, and financial performance. This new model of organization and its key components can be seen in a myriad of new approaches being tested in leading companies. A key focus of this virtual event will be on Haier Corporations RenDanHeYi model, one of the most developed and popular of these growing models that offers much to learn from.
Join the Beyond Hierarchy event to…
Be a part of the release and findings of Outthinker’s latest research into Business Ecosystems.
Engage with leading management thinkers Rita McGrath of Columbia Business School, Tony O’Driscoll of Duke Fuqua, Kevin Nolan of GE Appliances, Martin Reeves of the BCG Henderson Institute and Chief Strategy Officers from across sectors in a series of discussions of the new model “beyond hierarchy” that is emerging.
Discuss key questions CEOs, Chief Strategy Officers, CHROs, and business leaders should be asking:
- Is the traditional organizational model reaching its limit?
- If so, why now? What are the drivers of this apparent change?
- Where and in what situations will hierarchy continue to be the best choice? Where will hierarchy be replaced? Where will companies need to adapt?
- What successful new organizational models can we learn from?
- What specific steps should organizations take now?
- What kinds of organizations are most likely to win if a new business model beyond hierarchy takes hold?
- What are the implications for leaders, managers, and business owners?
- What are the implications for strategy (e.g., how will sources of competitive advantage change) and organization?
In this virtual summit, we will bring together strategy executives and thought-leaders to attempt to answer some of these questions and raise new ones.
Join the event via LinkedIn Live streaming HERE.
The Agenda – Dec. 14, 2022
*Click on the hyperlink below to see replay.
| Time | Activity |
| 10:00-10:05am | Welcome and setting the stage |
| 10:05-10:25am | Unveiling Ecosystem Research Findings |
| 10:30-11:20am | GE Appliances CEO Kevin Nolan on becoming an ecosystem driven organization |
| 11:30-12:10pm | Tony O’Driscoll, Rita McGrath and Martin Reeves dissect business ecosystems and models beyond hierarchy |
| 12:15-1:00pm | Outthinker Strategy Network Practitioner Panel with Kyndryl (formerly IBM’s infrastructure services business), Amplify Education and Boston Globe Media |
| 1:00-1:15pm | Closing Remarks |
Event Speakers
Rita McGrath
Author, Speaker and Strategic Advisor. Professor at Columbia Business School.
Rita McGrath
Bestselling author, sought after speaker, and longtime Columbia Business School professor, Rita Gunther McGrath, is responsible for some of the most thought-provoking business insights over the past two decades. She is an expert in driving innovation and growth for organizations in times of uncertainty and has consistently been recognized as one of the top ten management thinkers by Thinkers50. Her latest book, Seeing Around Corners is a guide to spotting and responding to inflection points in business before they happen.
Tony O'Driscoll
Professor, Research Fellow and Academic Director at Duke University
Tony O’Driscoll
Tony O’ Driscoll is a professor, speaker, author, and advisor whose message emphasizes that the key digital-age differentiator is not technology, but people. He is the co-author of the new release, Everyday Superhero: How You Can Inspire Everyone and Create Real Change at Work. Tony’s current positions as adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Pratt School of Engineering afford him the unique opportunity to apply cutting-edge academic research to increasingly complex business challenges. He has spent the bulk of his professional and academic career at the nexus of business, innovation, technology, change, and learning, creating and implementing strategies that enable organizations to realize the full potential of their most valuable asset: human beings.
Kevin Nolan
President & CEO of GE Appliances, a Haier Company
Kevin Nolan
Kevin Nolan is the President & CEO of GE Appliances, a Haier company. GE Appliances is at the forefront of building innovative, energy-efficient appliances that improve people’s lives. Kevin has overall responsibility for setting the business’ short- and long-term strategy, including technology, product innovation and product line performance. He is the former CTO of GE Appliances and Qingdao Haier. He led the Global Product and Technology Synergy Committee aimed at growing the company’s technology leadership by better connecting and leveraging the R&D resources across all of 690’s business units globally.
As a member of the senior leadership team, he focused on commercializing new technologies through new business models and partnerships. He played a key role in establishing FirstBuild, an innovation accelerator that is helping redefine how products are developed, built and sold. Throughout his career, he has continued to develop new technology with 27 patent awards, and has led the design and launch of numerous innovative appliance products.
Martin Reeves
Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute
Martin Reeves
Martin Reeves is chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, BCG’s think tank dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. Martin is also a member of the BCG Henderson Institute's Innovation Sounding Board, which is dedicated to supporting, inspiring, and guiding upstream innovation at BCG.
Martin is a regular contributor to HBR, MIT SMR, Fortune and other management journals on business strategy and management.
A regular public speaker and a repeat TED@BCG presenter, Martin is coauthor of The Imagination Machine, an executive’s guide to systematically harnessing imagination for corporate reinvention and rejuvenation. He also cowrote Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, which proposes the “strategy palette” as a tool to enable business leaders to tune their approach to strategy to the strategic environment of each business. Martin is the editor of the Inspiring the Next Game book series, published by De Gruyter.
Since joining BCG in 1989, Martin has led a broad range of strategy assignments in the Financial Institutions, Consumer Goods, Industrial Goods and Health Care sectors. He has particular expertise in the areas of adaptive strategy, strategy for multi-business systems, sustainability strategies, ecosystem strategies, collective learning and innovation, corporate vitality, and trust.
Prior to joining BCG, Martin worked for Zeneca in Japan and the United Kingdom, where he focused on marketing and strategic planning.
Michelle Micone
VP Innovation & Strategic Initiatives, Boston Globe Media
Michelle Micone
Michelle Micone is an experienced sales and marketing executive with a general management background across multiple industries – professional sports, licensing and entertainment, toys and packaged goods. Recently, she served as a consultant for the Globe, helping to expand its Rhode Island bureau. Prior to that, she was the Head of Consumer Products at the National Football League, where she led the expansion of the the NFL’s brands into new and expanded categories. Prior to the NFL, Michelle held a variety of leadership positions over a 17-year career at Hasbro in Rhode Island. She led North American licensing, bringing merchandise and experiences to market for Hasbro's portfolio of brands. As a global brand strategy leader, she steered new product development and marketing for various brands at Hasbro, growing retail presence, entertainment distribution and revenue globally.
Adam Zalisk
Senior Vice President Strategy, Amplify
Adam Zalisk
Adam Zalisk leads Amplify’s corporate strategy team. Before taking on his current role, Adam led non-profit partnerships, operations, implementation, and product teams at Amplify, including serving as chief operating officer for Amplify’s K–5 literacy portfolio. Before joining Amplify, Adam served as senior advisor and led innovation at the Harlem Children’s Zone, and was a founding member of Booz & Company’s North American education practice.
Rich Haas
VP Business Model Innovation, Kyndryl (formerly IBM Global Technology Services)
Rich Haas
Kaihan Krippendorff
Founder of Outthinker, Strategy, Innovation, & Transformation Keynote Speaker, Podcast Host, Author
Kaihan Krippendorff
Dr. Kaihan Krippendorff is the founder of Outthinker, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant and author of five business strategy books, most recently Driving Innovation from Within. A sought-after keynote speaker, recognized expert and popular blogger on the topics of business strategy, innovation, growth, and transformation, Kaihan is helping a growing cadre of leading companies and corporations such as Microsoft, Oracle, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg’s, TIAA-CREF and BNY Mellon prepare themselves to compete in a digital, agile, purpose-driven future.
Kaihan is a member of the prestigious Thinkers50 radar group – A global selection of the top 30 management thinkers in the world to follow. He was also shortlisted by Thinkers50 for a Distinguished Achievement Award in Innovation – awarded to the person in the world that has contributed the most to the world’s understanding of innovation in the past two years. Kaihan is currently ranked the Thinkers360 #1 Global Innovation Thought Leader and the Thinkers360 #1 Global Business Strategy Thought Leader.
Amidst his dizzying schedule of keynote speeches, consulting projects, ongoing research and writing, Kaihan still finds time to teach at business schools throughout the US and internationally. Regularly featured in major business media outlets Kaihan is an advisory board member for a blockchain-powered transportation platform, an international food processing/exporting company, and a B-corporation focused on sustainable products and lifestyle.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Management & Technology Program, Kaihan has spent more than a decade studying the intersection of language, technology, and innovation to drive competitive advantage. He earned his BS in finance from Wharton Business School, BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, MBA from Columbia Business School, and Doctorate of Science in Economics from Abo Akademi.
Claudio Garcia
Claudio Garcia
Claudio is President of Outthinker Strategy Networks, a global network of strategy executives from large organizations the are committed to staying ahead of the pace of change.
Before joining Outthinker, Claudio was Executive Vice Presidency for Strategy and Corporate Development at Lee Hecht Harrison, where he was responsible for the expansion and innovation of the company with operations in more than 60 countries. Prior to this role, he was LHH’s President of Latin America where he helped solve critical business challenges and personally supported dozens of complex transformation projects for large client organizations. During his tenure leading strategy LHH, Claudio was a member of the Outthinker Strategy Network.
Claudio has experience across a variety of industries, including food and beverage, entertainment, and media and communications. In addition to his role at Outthinker, Claudio is a board member and teaches Global Management and International Human Resources Management at New York University’s School of Professional Studies.
Replays:
How Business Ecosystems Are Changing Corporate Design
In this session, Kaihan Krippendorff—CEO and Founder of the Outthinker Strategy Network—discusses what a study on business ecosystems revealed about how a business’ org structure impacts its growth—particularly when it comes to innovation. The overarching theme revealed through this research is that companies with ecosystem-based characteristics tend to outperform others in two core areas: talent recruitment and retainment, and financial performance. Among key takeaways discussed are:
- What innovation has traditionally meant—and how it has changed over time—including, the source of innovation
- The typical profile of individuals responsible with 30 of the most transformative innovations in the last three decades
- How the idea of work and jobs has changed over time, and the implications for organizations
- The five ways in which organizational organize themselves, and how there has been a shift from traditional hierarchical structures
- The four attributes of an emerging post-hierarchical model, and what it means for talent retention and financial performance
Download Whitepaper & Deck
To read the full report of the research findings conducted by Outthinker on this topic, download the whitepaper and deck presentation here.
Download WhitepaperInterview with Kevin Nolan of GE Appliances
In this session, Kevin Nolan—President & CEO of GE Appliances—discusses GEA’s transformation and learnings they underwent as they adapted the Haier business model and practices. Among key takeaways discussed:
- The four essential components GEA learned from the Haier model that transformed their business
- How GEA went from leadership-first approach to a customer-centric one
- What it means to co-create with your customers, and how that affects the way in which the organization works together
- The ways in which the Haier microenterprise model enabled innovation and agility on a new level
- How to know if your organization is ready to integrate practices from this new business model, and first steps to take in doing so
- Barriers and resistance you might meet in implementing this new business model, and how to overcome them
- The small changes you can make in your organizations core to create change
- Key metrics that GEA implemented to track success, and how to know when to kill an idea that shows poor results
Download GEA Slides
To read and review Kevin Nolan's presentation of GE Appliances, download the slides here.
Download SlidesThought Leader Panel
In this session, Thought Leaders Martin Reeves, Rita McGrath, and Tony O’Driscoll discuss the parameters and implications to consider when it comes to ecosystems, and how they relate to hierarchies. As a shift from traditional org structure continues to gain traction, it’s important to consider various factors discussed in this session:
- The benefits and opportunities in adapting an decentralized model vs. a hierarchical one
- How integrating “microenterprises” enables customer-centricity and innovation
- Why leaders need to adapt, be open and embrace change for transformation to be possible
- The context in which org structure has minimal impact in light of other factors at play
- How to integrate aspects of ecosystems vs. when hierarchical structures are actually more beneficial
- Six ways in which strategy is changing due to technology
- How traditional functions within an organization are affected by ecosystems
- The type of culture—and benefits that come with it—that arises from an ecosystem approach
- How to balance the duality of stability with structure, adaptability with efficiency and key other dualities that come with the ecosystem model
- The first steps to take in experimenting with the ecosystem approach
Outthinker Strategy Network Practitioner Panel
In this session, three practitioners from the Outthinker Strategy Network with roles in Kyndryl (formerly IBM’s infrastructure services business), Amplify Education and Boston Globe Media, discuss their experiences in bringing innovation alive within their organizational models. Among key takeaways discussed are:
- Where to begin in adopting practices from post-hierarchical models
- Identifying potential barriers in transforming your organization and how to overcome them
- How to give employees more autonomy to achieve “zero distance” from customers
- How to help your organization adopt a new mindset with more agility and at scale
- Best practices in connecting with shareholders to earn their buy-in
Organized By
