Professor George Yip

• Strategic transformation
  Most company strategies are based on what has been done in the past, especially if it was successful. They go through long periods of relative continuity during which established strategy changes, but only incrementally. What companies find really difficult is to make radical changes or strategic transformations that change the existing business model. Managers need to be able to:
  • Recognize when strategies need to be changed or transformed.
  • Diagnose the organizational barriers to strategic change.
  • Learn a framework for strategic transformation.
  • Understand how to develop traditions for transformation (based on a study of the 20-year financial and strategic performance of 215 of the largest publicly listed British companies).

This talk will include the personal transformational experience of the speaker as Dean of the Rotterdam School of Management and as a leader of digital transformation to online learning at Imperial College Business School.

• Organizational intelligence for leaders
  Leaders with emotional intelligence (EQ), high IQ, and deep business knowledge (BQ) may get to the top, but often they aren’t successful once they get there. What makes a leader successful at creating change in large, complex organizations?
  In today’s ever more complex businesses, leaders seldom have the most business knowledge. Furthermore, in today’s technology driven businesses with many smart experts, leaders seldom have the highest IQ. They are likely to have high EQ, but leaders cannot rely on EQ to create change in large organizations as EQ mostly needs face-to-face interactions. So how do leaders at the top of large organizations make things happen?
  Leaders need OQ. The essence of OQ is knowing how to get a large organisation to do what you want. I describe five OQ competences that effective senior leaders need: the ability to foster an ethos, an understanding of action strategy, a penchant for sending messages that reinforce the strategy, an understanding of the importance of rebelling from the top, and the ability to stage moments of theatre.
• China innovation
  While China has long had a reputation for imitation, Chinese companies are now starting to innovate. This talk explains what Chinese companies do and what non-Chinese companies can learn.
• Internationalization strategies for companies from emerging economies
  How to identify bases of competitive advantage and use innovation for going international. How to evolve over time the international strategy and organisation of the company.
• Managing global customers
  Multinational companies no longer buy on a country-by-country basis, but increasingly on a global basis. The talk provides a systematic framework for developing and implementing global customer management programs.