Mark Greeven

Why organisations work with Mark Greeven

• He brings a working model of ecosystem competition built on close study of Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi and other Asian firms, not a Silicon Valley template.
• He has spent two decades inside Chinese innovation, which lets him translate what is happening in Asia into specific implications for European and North American boards.
• His „dual transformation“ frame gives leadership teams a way to fund and govern the next growth engine without starving the current business.
• He sits inside IMD’s executive teaching practice, so the work is shaped by senior operators, not abstracted from them.
• Thinkers50 has ranked him in 2023 and 2025 and described him as their „oracle for innovation in China,“ which gives buyers a defensible third-party signal.

Biography highlights

• Professor of Management Innovation and Dean of Asia at IMD; also CEO of IMD China.
• Author of Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs (MIT Press, 2019), The Future of Global Retail (Routledge, 2021), and Business Ecosystems in China (Routledge, 2018).
• Ranked on the Thinkers50 list in 2023 and 2025; Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2017.
• Contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, including a piece selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2023.
• PhD in Innovation Management from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University; former faculty at Zhejiang University and RSM.
• Founding member of the Business Ecosystem Alliance and research associate at China’s National Institute for Innovation Management.

Biography

Most established companies are organised to defend a position they already hold. The harder problem is running that business at full performance while building a different one beside it, in markets where competitors do not play by the same rules. Mark Greeven’s work sits squarely on that problem.

He is Professor of Management Innovation and Dean of Asia at IMD, and CEO of IMD China. Before joining IMD he held faculty positions at Zhejiang University and Rotterdam School of Management, where he also took his PhD in Innovation Management. Two decades of fieldwork in China give his arguments an empirical base that most innovation speakers do not have.

His three books, Business Ecosystems in China (Routledge, 2018), Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs (MIT Press, 2019), and The Future of Global Retail (Routledge, 2021), trace how named Asian firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, organise around platforms, partners, and continuous reinvention. He writes regularly for Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, and one of his HBR pieces was selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2023.

Thinkers50 has ranked him in 2023 and 2025, calling him their „oracle for innovation in China.“ For boards trying to read what Asian competition means for their next five years, and for executives trying to build a credible second growth engine without breaking the first, that combination of research, teaching, and access to Chinese firms is what gives his counsel weight.

Key speaking topics

• Business ecosystems and platform competition
• Innovation in China and Asia
• Dual transformation and second growth engines
• Future of retail and digital business models
• Strategy under sustained uncertainty
• Organising for innovation in large incumbents
• US-China commercial and technology dynamics

Ideal for

• CEOs and strategy leaders setting a multi-year growth agenda in the face of Asian competition.
• Boards and executive committees deciding how to fund and govern a second growth engine alongside the core.
• CSOs, CIOs, and innovation leads designing partner ecosystems rather than standalone product roadmaps.
• Multinationals with material exposure to China who want a clear read on competitive moves and policy direction.

Audience outcomes

• A clear read on how Chinese and Asian incumbents are competing, with named firms and specific moves.
• A working language for ecosystem strategy that boards can use without retreating to platform jargon.
• A practical view of how to run today’s business and build the next one in parallel, with the trade-offs named.
• Sharper questions for the next strategy cycle on innovation governance, partner choice, and capital allocation.