Business and strategy

I was the analytics manager at the BCG Henderson Institute, BCG’s internal think tank on the future of business strategy, through 2021. I led a team of several consultants and data scientists at the BHI’s Strategy Lab, guiding research from ideation through writing for publication and presenting to corporate leaders. I have published on a number of quantitative and qualitative topics including business resilience, recession strategy, Covid-19 responses, business longevity, and the changing nature of competitive advantage.

Selected publications are highlighted below; you can find more of my recent work on my BCG page.

Selected publications:

The Power of Anomaly

Harvard Business Review, July/Aug 2021 issue - Identifying the next big thing is often treated as an exercise in analyzing trends. But that’s misleading. By the time a trend is established, any opportunities it presents have most likely already been captured by competitors. To take advantage of emerging trends, companies must identify them when they are just anomalies—not purely speculative, but not yet named or widely known. We propose a methodology for spotting poignant anomalies and acting on them to capture new opportunities. By Martin Reeves, Bob Goodson, and Kevin Whitaker.

Inspiring the Next Game: Strategy ideas for forward-looking leaders

De Gruyter, 2021 - The Inspiring the Next Game series is a set of perspectives on emerging themes in business from the BCG Henderson Institute. This series takes a broad view of strategy, reflecting the multifaceted imperatives that leaders face. It goes beyond the static view of classical strategy and explores the dynamic side of strategy that is necessary for a complex, uncertain context. And it goes beyond the traditional role of the strategy function to explore implications in other areas, such as technology, organizational design, and management and leadership broadly. Books edited by Martin Reeves and Kevin Whitaker

The 2020 Fortune Future 50

Fortune, Dec 2020 - The BCG Henderson Institute and Fortune magazine partnered to develop an index that identified companies with the greatest capacity for future long-term growth. By quantifying the financial and nonfinancial factors that predict growth with novel analytics, our fourth annual ranking shows that ‘vital’ companies have outperformed during the Covid-19 crisis — and identifies the 50 businesses best positioned for future success. By Martin Reeves and Kevin Whitaker

Becoming an All-Weather Company: The value of resilience

BCG, Aug 2020 - Many companies are now expressing an intention to rebuild their business more resiliently, but it remains to be seen whether they will be able to respond effectively to the current crisis — and whether they will maintain resilient practices during good times in the future. Our quantitative study of nearly 1800 companies for over 25 years shows that resilience in unfavorable periods accounts for nearly 30% of long-term outperformance and offers clues about how to build and sustain resilience. By Martin Reeves, Saumeet Nanda, Kevin Whitaker and Edzard Wesselink

A Guide to Building a More Resilient Business

Harvard Business Review, Jul 2020 - COVID-19 has revealed the need to design businesses for resilience, but there is not yet a playbook for doing so. We demystify organizational resilience and offer six ways for leaders to harness its benefits. By Martin Reeves and Kevin Whitaker

How Chinese Companies Have Responded to Coronavirus

Harvard Business Review, Mar 2020 - As the Covid-19 crisis spreads to new epicenters in Europe and the U.S., companies are scrambling to mobilize responses. There are no easy answers, due to the unpredictability of disease dynamics, a lack of relevant prior experience, and the absence of plug-and-play instructions from government or international authorities. With China having experienced the outbreak several weeks ahead of other countries, we distill a dozen lessons from Chinese companies’ experience that the rest of the world can learn from. By Martin Reeves, Lars Fæste, Cinthia Chen, Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Kevin Whitaker

Fighting the Gravity of Average Performance

MIT Sloan Management Review, Jan 2020 - In the past, companies with a track record of success could generally ride that momentum for a while into the future. But our new analysis in MIT Sloan Management Review shows that success in business has become less persistent: high-performing companies regress to the average faster than before. Companies now need to frequently reinvent their business and organizational models to stay ahead in a rapidly changing environment. By Martin Reeves, Kevin Whitaker and Tom Deegan

Companies Need to Prepare for the Next Economic Downturn

Harvard Business Review, Apr 2019 - As the health of the global economy continues to be watched carefully, business leaders are naturally considering how to best position themselves for potentially harsher conditions. Our research demonstrates that, while economic downturns are challenging for many companies, others are able to gain advantage. Based on historical success factors, as well as new complexities of today’s business environment, we identify several things business leaders should consider in preparing for the next economic downturn in an article in Harvard Business Review. By Martin Reeves, Kevin Whitaker and Christian Ketels

5 ways for business leaders to win in the 2020s

World Economic Forum, Jan 2019 - The keys to success in business are likely to be very different in ten years’ time. How should leaders prepare their companies to emerge as a winner in a rapidly evolving landscape? With BCG CEO Rich Lesser and BCG Henderson Institute director Martin Reeves, we identify five powerful emerging imperatives that will cut across industries and geographies. By Rich Lesser, Martin Reeves and Kevin Whitaker

The Truth About Corporate Transformation

MIT Sloan Management Review, Jan 2018 - Given the high stakes of corporate transformations, leaders should rely on the hard evidence of what works and what doesn’t, rather than basing their actions on anecdotes and intuitions. We analyzed more than 300 large US companies over more than a decade, finding that success in transformation is rare, but some evidence-based factors improve the odds of success. (#1 most popular article from MIT Sloan Management Review in 2018.) By Martin Reeves, Lars Fæste, Kevin Whitaker and Fabien Hassan