De Gruyter and Boston Consulting Group’s Henderson Institute Launch Book Series on Inspiring the ‘Next Game’ for Business Leaders

BOSTON—De Gruyter and Boston Consulting Group’s Henderson Institute, BCG’s think tank, today launched Inspiring the Next Game, a series of books on emerging themes in business. The first book, Mastering the Science of Organizational Change, is published today. Forthcoming books in the series include Winning the 20s: A Leadership Agenda for the Next Decade and The Resilient Enterprise: Thriving Amid Uncertainty, among others.

As the technological, social, and economic context changes rapidly, the demands on businesses and leaders are also changing faster than ever. The series explores the implications for business strategy, taking a broad view of strategy that reflects the multifaceted challenges faced by today’s leaders. Going beyond the traditional strategy function, it includes new perspectives on technology, organizational design, and management broadly.

To do so, the series includes insights from the intersection of business, science, technology, economics, and society. It draws on the work of dozens of BCG Henderson Institute fellows, ambassadors, and collaborators over several years.

“Business strategy is ultimately about defying the average, but what it takes to outperform the average is changing faster than ever. Leaders, therefore, need not just new strategies, but new ways of thinking about strategy. This collection provides different perspectives on strategy and leadership to inspire leaders to think differently about their businesses and thrive in the long run. We are looking forward to our collaboration with De Gruyter to make these ideas broadly accessible to those interested in learning more about strategy and leadership,” said Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute and an editor of the Inspiring the Next Game series.

The first volume, Mastering the Science of Organizational Change, is a set of perspectives on the increasing need for and challenge of business transformation. The need for organizational change is frequent: at any time, about one-third of large companies are experiencing a significant multiyear decline in their ability to create shareholder value. And the odds of success are slim: within that group, one-third fail to recover within the following five years.

The book contains perspectives from science, analytics, and business to show how leaders can improve their chances across several areas. Research demonstrates that preemptive transformation is more successful than transformation in reaction to a crisis—companies that transform preemptively achieve 3 percentage points greater total shareholder return per year. Several steps are given that can enhance preemptive change. Science also points to the need to de-average change programs rather than applying the same toolkit for every challenge. Finally, the perspectives explore emerging issues in organizational change, such as traps and opportunities in digital transformation.

Mastering the Science of Organizational Change is available now. The second volume in the series, Winning the ’20s: A Leadership Agenda for the Next Decade, will be available in summer 2021.

“We are proud to publish this exciting new series in partnership with Boston Consulting Group's Henderson Institute. Inspiring the Next Game offers fresh perspectives on business strategy and leadership by presenting insights from some of the world’s leading companies, making it a perfect addition to our business and economics program,” said Stefan Giesen, Editorial Director of Business and Economics at De Gruyter.

CONTACTS

De Gruyter: Dr. Pablo Dominguez Andersen, Pablo.Dominguez@degruyter.com.

Boston Consulting Group: Amanda Wikman, Wikman.Amanda@bcg.com.

About De Gruyter

De Gruyter publishes first-class scholarship and has done so for more than 270 years. An international, independent publisher headquartered in Berlin—and with further offices in Boston, Beijing, Basel, Vienna, Warsaw, and Munich—it publishes over 1,300 new book titles each year and more than 900 journals in the humanities, social sciences, medicine, mathematics, engineering, computer sciences, natural sciences, and law. The publishing house also offers a wide range of digital media, including open access journals and books. The group includes the imprints De Gruyter Akademie Forschung, Birkhäuser, De Gruyter Mouton, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, De Gruyter Saur, Düsseldorf University Press, Deutscher Kunstverlag (DKV) and Jovis Verlag, as well as the publishing services provider Sciendo. For more information, visit: www.degruyter.com.

About The BCG Henderson Institute

The BCG Henderson Institute is Boston Consulting Group’s business think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, economics, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration from the Institute, please visit bcghendersoninstitute.com. To receive BHI’s latest research publications, please sign up here.