Inside the Strategy Room

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian joins us Inside the Strategy Room for a wide-ranging conversation where he discusses how he has grown Google's cloud business, how he manages innovation, and how he thinks about talent management. Thomas also shares insights on sustainability and the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

This episode is an excerpt of a conversation Thomas and Adrian Booth, a senior partner in our Silicon Valley office, had at a recent gathering of global business leaders. 

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Israel’s start-up ecosystem is already a powerhouse—how can the country continue to scale it up? This episode is the second on Israel’s vibrant start-up scene, and a continuation of McKinsey innovation leader Erik Roth's conversation with Avi Hasson and Chemi Peres. 

Hasson leads a not-for-profit, Startup Nation Central, that promotes Israel’s start-up sector, while Peres leads a venture capital firm, Pitango, and a not-for-profit, The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, that promotes peace and innovation which was started by Chemi’s father, Shimon Peres, the former prime minister of Israel.

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Despite its small domestic market, Israel has managed to build a vibrant start-up scene that competes with those of much larger countries. In this episode, two leaders of Israel’s innovation culture, Avi Hasson and Chemi Peres, talk with McKinsey’s innovation leader Erik Roth in this first in a series of episodes on innovation in Israel. Hasson leads a not-for-profit, Startup Nation Central, that promotes Israel’s start-up sector, while Peres leads a venture capital firm, Pitango, and a not-for-profit, The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, that promotes peace and innovation which was started by Chemi’s father, Shimon Peres, the former prime minister of Israel.

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The risk and ambiguity inherent in innovation can make employees shy away from it. Creating an innovation culture where risk-taking is embraced must start at the top.

Most executives will agree that fear—of criticism, of uncertainty, of career consequences—can paralyze innovation. In this episode, three innovation experts discuss ways to create an environment of psychological safety that rewards creative initiative and destigmatizes failure. Laura Furstenthal, Alex Morris, and Erik Roth, all leaders in McKinsey’s innovation practice, are the co-authors of the recent article, Fear factor: overcoming human barriers to innovation.

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AI tools can help executives avoid biases in decisions, pull insights out of oceans of data, and make strategic choices more quickly. And that’s just the beginning.

Can machines automate strategy development? The short answer is no. However, there are numerous aspects of strategists’ work where AI and advanced analytics tools can already bring enormous value. Yuval Atsmon is a senior partner who leads the new McKinsey Center for Strategy Innovation, which studies ways new technologies can augment the timeless principles of strategy. In this episode, he explains how artificial intelligence is already transforming strategy and what’s on the horizon. 

Read Yuval's articles on strategic decision-making:

• Where, how much, and how: Answering the hardest questions of resource allocation 
• How nimble resource allocation can double your company’s value 

Connect with Yuval on LinkedIn.
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One of the surest signs of a thriving enterprise is robust and consistent revenue growth. That has not been easy to accomplish over the past 15 years. Now, with a slowing global economy, rising inflation, and geopolitical uncertainty, growth may become more elusive still.

To help business leaders buck these trends, our guests Chris Bradley and Rebecca Doherty conducted an in-depth study of the growth patterns and performance of the world’s 5,000 largest public companies over the past 15 years. Their findings suggest ten rules that should guide organizations seeking to outgrow and outearn their peers. 

Chris is a senior partner based in our Sydney office and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute. Rebecca leads our work on growth and innovation and is based in the Bay Area. They joined Sean Brown to discuss how business leaders can unlock the growth code. 

Read Chris and Rebecca's article on McKinsey.com

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In this episode we discuss strategy in an age of volatility. How are business leaders honing their edge in three critical areas–insights, commitment, and execution–to successfully navigate this period of uncertainty? How should executives manage the downside while aggressively pursuing the upside in times of crisis and disruption?

To answer these questions, Sean Brown is joined by Michael Birshan and Ishaan Seth. Michael and Ishaan recently cowrote an article on this topic with Bob Sternfels, our global managing partner.

Michael and Ishaan are the co-leaders of our Strategy and Corporate Finance Practice. Ishaan joins us from New York, and his client work has focused banking and securities and financial services. Michael joins us from London, and he works with clients in energy, natural resources, and industrials. He also serves on the McKinsey Global Institute Council, which advises on research on global economic, business, and technology trends. 

What if the world’s highest-performing CEOs held a master class to share the skills and practices that have driven their success over the years? Learn more in CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest

Unlock big strategy moves to beat the odds in business.  Learn more in Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick.

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Corporate resilience requires both protecting against the downside and preparing to capture the upside from any shocks.  In this episode, three experts discuss the board's role in building that resilience. Asutosh Padhi is a senior partner in our Chicago office who helps industrial companies with functional, business unit, and enterprise-wide transformations. Celia Huber, a senior partner in our San Francisco Bay Area office, leads our board services work in North America. Finally, Ida Kristensen is a senior partner in our New York office who coleads our Risk and Resilience Practice in North America, as well as our Global Cybersecurity Practice. 

Here is the board survey Celia mentions during this episode: How boards have risen to the COVID-19 challenge, and what’s next

Here is the episode on board resilience from April 2021.

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The elements of an effective performance-management system are relatively simple, but integrating them into a business’ fundamental operating system can be more complex than it seems.

In this episode, we discuss recent innovations in performance management that business leaders can implement across the planning and performance management cycle. We share best practices for how to incorporate energy transition and ESG themes into performance management, how to adopt an agile goal-setting approach, and we look at how best-in-class companies are adopting a single digital approach to reporting. 

Our guests include Christian Grube, who leads our CFO service line in Germany and serves clients in the automotive, healthcare, and manufacturing Industries. Roel Hoyer, who co-leads McKinsey's O&G strategy service line, focusing on serving oil and gas, and OFSE clients, and Rohan Jain, who serves South East Asian clients on sustainability transformations, new business building, and tech-enabled transformations.

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Few business leaders have more experience in M&A than Brad Jacobs. Over a four-decade-plus career, he created several billion-dollar corporations. The most recent three he built largely through acquisitions: United Rentals, an industrial equipment rental company; United Waste Systems, involved in garbage collection; and XPO, the logistics company he currently leads. At both United Rentals and United Waste, he executed more than 200 deals each. At XPO, he has created a digital-forward logistics leader in an industry that has tended to lag in technology adoption.

Brad will soon transition from CEO to executive chairman of XPO. We thought it’d be a good time to ask him to share the lessons he has learned over the course of his extensive deal-making experience. Brad sat down with Andy West, a senior partner based in Boston who co-leads McKinsey’s M&A practice globally.

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