It was a great privilege and pleasure to host a group of over 40 Masters of International Management students from Vlerick Business School at George Washington University’s School of Business today. I truly enjoyed our discussion on how to crack complex and open-ended strategy questions and hope the students took some ideas away from our session together!
Thrilled to announce that I received the 2023 Dean’s Teaching Award! Thanks to Dean Anuj Mehrotra and Vice Dean Jiawen Yang for this great honor!
Excited to be part of our next Graduate Student Meet & Greet at the George Washington University School of Business. At this event series, panels of graduate students, alumni, faculty and staff listen to a topical conversation between GWSB alumni and faculty scholars and then reflect on the discussion in small break out groups. This event’s conversation topic is “Dispelling Myths About Strategic Networking: Evidence from Theory and Practice,“ and I am teaming up with Christine Ayers, who is a partner and account leader in Guidehouse.
If networking is so important for our careers, why do we have mixed feelings about it, and why do we often find it difficult to do? In this workshop, we draw on both recent research and a wealth of practical experience to dispel common myths about networking and offer a step-by-step guide to strategic networking. We share insights on how to network smarter, not harder, by taking an investor’s perspective on networking.
For more information on this event, please see our website.
Thrilled to share that I have been awarded this year’s Outstanding Undergraduate Faculty Award!
By Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps, & Olivier Sibony (Palgrave Macmillan)
Just used this book for the first time in my undergraduate strategy capstone course with very positive student reactions…
Solving complex problems and selling their solutions is critical for personal and organizational success. For most of us, however, it doesn’t come naturally and we haven’t been taught how to do it well. Research shows a host of pitfalls trips us up when we try: We’re quick to believe we understand a situation and jump to a flawed solution. We seek to confirm our hypotheses and ignore conflicting evidence. We view challenges incompletely through the frameworks we know instead of with a fresh pair of eyes. And when we communicate our recommendations, we forget our reasoning isn’t obvious to our audience.
How can we do it better?
In Cracked It!, seasoned strategy professors and consultants Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps and Olivier Sibony present a rigorous and practical four-step approach to overcome these pitfalls. Building on tried-and-tested (but rarely revealed) methods of top strategy consultants, research in cognitive psychology, and the latest advances in design thinking, they provide a step-by-step process and toolkit that will help readers tackle any challenging business problem. Using compelling stories and detailed case examples, the authors guide readers through each step in the process: from how to state, structure and then solve problems to how to sell the solutions.
Written in an engaging style by a trio of experts with decades of experience researching, teaching and consulting on complex business problems, this book will be an indispensable manual for anyone interested in creating value by helping their organizations crack the problems that matter most.
Happy to share that I have been awarded a one-year Ave Tucker Fellowship at George Washington University’s School of Business.
Named after George Washington University’s Board of Trustee member Avram S. Tucker, this fellowship recognizes faculty members who “displayed good teaching performance, as well as recent scholarly productivity, prospects for continued publications in top outlets, and records of research leadership and mentoring of junior scholars.”
My wife Erin got me hooked onto this fascinating Podcast detailing the downfall of Theranos and its charismatic founder, Elizabeth Holmes.
Now I’m seriously considering to make this my first ever Podcast case study for my strategy capstone course (replacing my usual class discussion of the WorldCom case study…)
Just started listening to Adam Grants’ latest podcast series called WorkLife. Excellent and highly entertaining insights on how to, in Adam’s own words, make work not suck.
Had the great privilege to co-lead (with Jonathan Tuteur from Tsymmetry and Maria Sinagra from Deloitte) an undergraduate Mentoring & Immersion Program for Consulting (MIPC) session for our impressive MIPC students. Thanks to Milinda Balthrop for organizing–my co-leads and I are looking forward to Part II later this month!
Today, I hosted a workshop on social networks for Sophia’s FUTURA class at Cardinal Ridge Elementary School. And I have to say that I was more nervous before this workshop than about pretty much any other speaking engagement I’ve done over the last few years–but it turned out great, and the students were amazing! Thanks to Mrs. Bowers for inviting me!
Today, I was awarded this year’s “Outstanding World Executive MBA Faculty Award” at the George Washington University’s School of Business Award Ceremony. Thanks to our WEMBA students for bestowing this great honor on me!
I’m honored and thankful to our PhD students for nominating me again for this year’s Peter B. Vaill Outstanding Doctoral Educator Award!
I have just received notice from the GWSB Doctoral Student Association that I have been nominated for this year’s Peter B. Vaill Outstanding Doctoral Educator Award!
This represents my fourth nomination in the six years I’ve been here at GW (including winning this award in 2014). Thanks to our doctoral students for nominating me again!
Thrilled to share that I have recently been awarded a two-year Ave Tucker Fellowship at George Washington University’s School of Business.
Named after George Washington University’s Board of Trustee member Avram S. Tucker, this fellowship recognizes faculty members who “displayed good teaching performance, as well as recent scholarly productivity, prospects for continued publications in top outlets, and records of research leadership and mentoring of junior scholars.”
Thanks to the GWSB Executive Committee for bestowing this great honor on me!
This week, I accepted Markus Kreutzer’s kind invitation to join him and his colleagues for the European Business School’s Annual Off-Site Doctoral Workshop at Kloster Johannisberg in the beautiful Rhine Valley.
Besides the inevitable sightseeing and wine tasting, I learned a lot about the impressive research the EBS doctoral students are conducting. So thanks for having me!
Just returned from teaching my first Executive MBA seminar at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Besides feeling nostalgic about returning to my Alma Mater after more than 10 years, I was very impressed with the university’s executive education program as well as with the qualifications, experience, and interest of the attending executives.
Many thanks to my former doctoral adviser, Günter Müller-Stewens, for inviting me and to the executives for having me. I look forward to coming back next week for my second seminar.
Just returned from this year’s GWSB New York City Networking Trek with our undergraduate students. It was a great experience for both students and faculty, so thanks to Associate Dean Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou for her kind invitation!
I just received notice that, after being nominated twice (in 2011 and 2013), I was awarded the 2014 Peter B. Vaill Outstanding Doctoral Educator Award by the Doctoral Student Association of the School of Business of The George Washington University.
A sincere thanks to the doctoral students for this honor. I look forward to many more opportunities to engage with the GWSB doctoral program…
Just returned from teaching a session on “Social Network/Social Capital Theory” in Kennesaw State University’s DBA program.
Thanks to Torsten Pieper for inviting me and to the KSU doctoral students for having such an engaged conversation with me on social networks/social capital and research in general.
Congratulations to our students and good luck for all your future endeavors!
Thanks to my students from Delta Sigma Pi for nominating me!
Thanks to all the doctoral students for nominating me again this year!
Just returned from teaching a section of my long-time friend and colleague Franz Kellermanns’ doctoral seminar on “Designing Effective Organizations” at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN.
Thanks to the UT doctoral students for having me and to Franz and his lovely wife Laura for hosting me at their beautiful home!
According to the most recent specialty ranking from Bloomberg Businessweek, the George Washington University School of Business’s international business curriculum for undergraduates is ranked 8th in the nation, and the corporate strategy program (which I am part of teaching with my capstone on strategic management) is ranked 21st in the nation.
I just returned from a week in Tokyo where I joined my Master of International Management (MIM) students on the first part of their Asia Study Tour.
And it was an amazing experience, both personally and professionally. The program mixed lectures by Japanese managers on Japanese business history and production methods (just-in-time etc.) and company visits with social events, like a dinner with MIM alumni at a traditional Japanese restaurant.
Thanks to Cliff Allen and Jeff Millard for their generous invitation!
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