RICHARD FOSTER is a Senior Partner and Director at McKinsey & Company, a leading global management consulting firm. He joined the Firm in 1973, was elected Partner in 1977 and Senior Partner in 1982. In his primary client service role within McKinsey & Company he has worked in more than fifty industry segments , but primarily in the medical products, pharmaceuticals, imaging, electronics. chemicals, consumer products, retail, and asset-management industries. He has focused special attention over the past twenty-five years on improving the growth and innovative performance of large organisations.
Mr Foster has written articles on innovation and business performance for Business Week, The Wall Street Journal and The Harvard Business Review. His 1986 book, Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage, was voted onhe of the best five best business books of the year in a Wall Street Journal CEO poll.
A Trustee of the Santa Fe Institute, he is also a board member of the Keck Foundation and serves on the Advisory Board of the Whitehead Institute. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Yale University in Engineering, and Applied Science. He lives in New York City with his wife and three sons.
SARAH KAPLAN was an Innovation Specialist at McKinsey & Company
Consulting for more than a decade with firms around the world in industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, airlines and consumer products on issues of growth and renewal. She received her B.A. from UCLA and M.A. from Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Management of Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management and resides in Cambridge, MA.