Global authority on achieving strategic agility in unpredictable markets - Fortune listed him among the ten new management gurus to know

In short

Donald Sull is Professor of Management Practice in Strategic and International Management and Faculty Director of Executive Education at London Business School, where he designed, directs and teaches an intensive week-long “boot camp” to help senior executives thrive in turbulent markets. His earlier books include the award-winning Why Good Companies go Bad and Made in China, which was selected by the Financial Times as one of the eight best business books of 2005. He has published more than one hundred case studies, book chapters, and articles including six best-selling Harvard Business Review articles. Sull has been identified as a guru by the Economist, which named his theory of active inertia as an idea that has shaped business management over the past century. Fortune listed him among the ten new management gurus to know. Sull received his bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees from Harvard, where he taught entrepreneurship. He worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, and a management-investor with the leveraged buyout firm Clayton & Dubilier prior to entering academia.

In full

Dr. Donald N. Sull is the Faculty Director, Executive Education, at the London Business School and Professor of Management Practice in Strategic and International Management.
Professor Sull has published four books and over 100 articles, book chapters and cases studies. Six of his seven Harvard Business Review articles have been bestsellers. Professor Sull has been named an "up and coming business thinker" by The Financial Times and identified as one of the next generation of management gurus by the The Economist.

He has won teaching awards at the London Business School and Harvard University. He received his AB, MBA, and doctorate from Harvard University, and served as a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School before rejoining the London Business School faculty.

Professor Sull believes that in fast-paced industries, companies should think of strategy as an iterative loop with four steps: making sense of a situation, making choices, making things happen and making revisions.

His most recent book, Made in China: What Western managers can learn from trail-blazing Chinese entrepreneurs, (Harvard Business School Press, 2005) was named one of the top eight business books of 2005 by the Financial Times.
 
His book Why Good Companies go Bad (Harvard Business School Press, 2005) was a finalist for the Academy of Management's Outstanding Management Book Award and translated into eight languages.

Professor Sull's next book “The Upside of Turbulence”, Harper Collins, will be published in autumn 2009 and his article “Can your company go the distance?” will be published by the Harvard Business Review, in February 2009.

His academic research awards include the Dively Award for outstanding dissertation and the Newcomen Prize for the best business history article.

Prior to academia, Prof Sull worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, and as a management-investor with the leveraged buyout firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. He is an active investor in several technology start-ups, and advises executives in multinational firms.

Professor Sull was the faculty director of the Global Business Consortium, the longest-running and most successful program of its type in the world. The Global Business Consortium brings together senior executives from six world-class companies (Oracle, Emirates Airline, BT, Mars/Masterfoods, SKF, and Standard Chartered Bank) to develop global business leaders and accelerate the firms' ability to create and sustain radical performance improvement.

Professor Sull also works with senior executives from multinational clients to help them compete more effectively in unpredictable markets. Current and past clients include Procter & Gamble, Nokia, Coca Cola, Ericsson, TDC Mobile, the Royal Bank of Canada, and Baker & McKenzie among others.

Furthermore he has designed and taught executive education programs and consulting services for clients including:

•    Telecommunications: Nokia, Ericsson, UTStarcom, Samsung Electronics, BT, TDC
•    Financial services: CSFB, Standard Chartered, RBC, Actis, Investcorp, UBS
•    Consumer products: Procter & Gamble, Mars/Masterfoods, Danone, Coca Cola
•    Pharmaceuticals: Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, Millenium Pharmaceuticals
•    Professional Services: PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Accenture, Siemens Business Services

Strategic agility is the ability to consistently spot changes in the environment and exploit them to create value.

Is your firm in an unpredictable market? By ‘unpredictable market,’ Don Sull means, for example:

•    established industries undergoing swift change and high uncertainty (e.g., banking, pharmaceuticals, airlines, telecommunications, fast moving consumer goods),
•    high-tech sectors (e.g., enterprise software, consumer electronics),
•    regulated technology-intensive industries (e.g., medical devices,
•    telecommunications), and
•    emerging markets (especially, China, India & Brazil).

The key to thriving in environments like these is strategic agility—developing the capacity to:
•    strategically anticipate the changes that are about to affect your business—and understand them;
•    adapt your strategy with a balance of offense and defense and a portfolio of internal initiatives; and
•    absorb uncertainty with traditional strategic shock absorbers.

Books

Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Managers Remake Them
Donald N. Sull unveils a new model for change that centers around transformational commitments-specific actions that help eliminate status-quo behaviors in five areas: strategic frames, relationships, processes, resources, and values. He introduces practical tools that managers can use to diagnose and fight active inertia and successfully implement the right commitment for the right dilemma.

Made in China: What Western Managers Can Learn from Trailblazing Chinese Entrepreneurs
Executives worldwide have studied and emulated U.S. entrepreneurs from Bill Gates to Michael Dell. Yet, we know next to nothing about the pioneers who are reshaping the world's second largest economy: China. In Made in China, Donald N. Sull profiles eight of these formidable ventures to reveal the secrets behind their surprising success.

Success againt the Odds: What Brazilian Champions Teach us about Thriving in Unpredictable Markets
This book describes how Brazil's champions beat the odds. Through their rigorous research, the authors found striking similarities among the successful firms in how they prepared for and responded to threats and opportunities. The comparison with less successful competitors revealed common pitfalls that can lead to corporate extinction in unforgiving markets like Brazil.

Strategic Transformation through Quality
Written by Don Sull, Ki-Chan Kim and Jin-Young Sirh. Published by Seoul National University Press and available in Korean and English.

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