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Philip Evans is a senior advisor at Boston Consulting Group and a BCG Fellow. He founded BCG’s media and Internet sectors and has done consulting work with corporations worldwide in the consumer goods, health care, financial-services, media, retail, and high-technology industries. He has also advised governments on military organization, homeland security, economic development, and digital policy.

Philip’s professional focus is on technology and business strategy. He has advised clients on community-centric marketing, tapping user-generated content, the architecture of open collaboration and innovation, network-based strategy, infrastructure economics, big data, privacy, and the deconstruction of value chains.

He is the author of many publications, including four Harvard Business Review articles. One of these—“Strategy and the New Economics of Information”—won a McKinsey Prize, which is awarded annually for the best contributions to the Review. Blown to Bits, Philip’s book on the new economics of information (coauthored with BCG's Tom Wurster), was the best-selling book worldwide on technology and strategy in 2000.

Philip is a frequent speaker on technology and strategy at industry, corporate, and academic conferences and has given keynote addresses at conferences convened by Bill Gates, Michael Milken, and the World Economic Forum. He has addressed closed-door sessions of the world’s telecommunication regulators in Geneva, privacy authorities in Uruguay, and the cabinet-level Senior Executive Council of the Pentagon. His TED talk has been viewed over a million times.

He contributed to an online course on Digital Transformation. The course, developed by BCG in partnership with the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and Coursera, enables students to examine the pace of digital change and the imperative it creates for businesses.

He was designated by Walter Kiechel as one of the 15 “Lords of Strategy” in Kiechel's book of that title.

Philip is a member of the British-North American Committee and on the Advisory Board of the Oxford Internet Institute.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

EDUCATION

  • MBA, Harvard Business School
  • Harkness Fellow, economics, Harvard University
  • MA, double first-class honours, Cambridge University

HONORS AND AWARDS

  • McKinsey Award, Harvard Business Review, 1997

Publications and Videos

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How to Embed Trust in Your Business Ecosystem

Trust can make or break a digital ecosystem. The digital trust network can help leaders develop and bolster sustainable trust among participants.
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Engaging Consumers in a Generative AI World

Large language model-powered virtual assistants are about to get between traditional companies and their customers, forcing executives to make tough choices sooner than expected.
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Beyond Blockchain: The Promise of Digital Trust Networks

In the digital era, the demand for trust is skyrocketing. So how does a company design a digital architecture to build trust among its stakeholders?
Retail Apocalypse Four Ways Physical Stores Can Survive

Retail Apocalypse: Four Ways Physical Stores Can Survive

To remain viable over the next decade, leading brands must reconceive the physical store by focusing on four functions where the in-person experience provides customers with clear and defendable value.
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Data Dominates

With powerful algorithms becoming table stakes, finding and gathering the right data to feed those engines will be the key to a company’s success.
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The Superincumbent’s Dilemma

New competitors are changing how the game is played. Traditional winners must adjust by adopting key strategies of digital natives.
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Designing the Tech Function of the Future

Companies have a choice: either transform IT to be able to work closely with business units in developing products and services or focus IT on its governance role.
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Thinking Outside the Blocks

Two complementary technologies—blockchain and digital tokens—give data the continuity of physical assets and help solve the challenges of digital identity and trust. And they have the potential to wipe out the middleman across a wide swath of industries.
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How Bitcoin Works

Bitcoin depends on two complementary technologies, digital tokens and blockchain, that together facilitate digital identity, ownership, transactions, contracts, and trust.
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Seven Possible Killer Apps for Blockchain And Digital Tokens

There are many applications that could benefit from decreased transaction costs, a neutral shared database, and the superior security of a shared ledger. Here are a few.
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Will Industry Stacks Be the New Blueprint for Banking?

The banking industry’s structure is moving to industry stacks, reflecting a shift from competition among vertically integrated companies to horizontal competition at each layer of the banking business.
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Borges’ Map: Navigating a World of Digital Disruption

Three distinct waves of digital disruption are transforming strategy. Changing information economics enable new strategies—as well as radically new structures for businesses and industries.