Gordon Hewitt

Gordon Hewitt CBE, FRSE, MA(Hons), DBA

Gordon Hewitt is an internationally experienced business school Professor of Strategic Management. His global reputation was developed in both academic and corporate institutions during his appointment as Visiting Distinguished Professor in Strategic Management at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. His research, teaching and consulting interests cover the fields of organisational competitiveness, new frontiers for business strategy, and the changing demands of strategy execution in today’s dynamic, complex markets. At the Ross School he consistently received the highest participant ratings in Executive Programmes for senior leaders in both public offering and customised courses.

He formed a powerful partnership with the late CK Prahalad, and their ideas have been at the leading edge of global thinking about corporate value-creation, corporate innovation, and strategic transformation in a “game changing” world. He has developed pioneering methods for analysing disruptive dynamics in markets, extending the boundaries of conventional strategy models to include service and informatics competition. Gordon was appointed as Professor of Strategy Practice in the recently established Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow. Over many years he has also given guest lectures and keynote speeches at the Said Business School, Oxford University, Texas A&M Business School, Singapore Institute of Management, and NorthEastern University in Boston.

In his private consulting capacity, he has extensive experience of coaching at CEO and Board level with many major global corporations. He has delivered business strategy and senior leadership sessions for companies such as Pfizer, Philips, IBM, Sony, Honeywell, PwC, Astra Zeneca, Verizon, Ericsson, Telstra, NAB. HSBC, Deutsche Post/DHL, Time Warner, Humana, Syngenta, Biocon, and PepsiCo. Gordon has also coached top leaders in the UAE and Oman on rethinking strategic choices for the future. He has been involved recently in major organisational transformations for financial institutions such as HSBC, Credit Suisse, and Humana (USA).

Still resident in Glasgow, Scotland, where he was born and educated, Gordon’s consulting work is conducted on a global basis. He has been a member of the International Advisory Board to Scottish Enterprise and was appointed Chairman of Court, the Governing Board, at the University of Abertay Dundee. It has become one of the world’s leading developers of computer game systems and technology. Gordon has extensive experience with global healthcare firms and was invited to join Pfizer’s Healthcare R&D Global Innovation Advisory Council in 2017.

Gordon Hewitt was awarded the Royal Honour of CBE for his impact and reputation in the field of international business – one of the very few business academics and executives to receive such a high honour. He is also a peer-elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), Scotland’s National Academy of Science and Letters. His coaching/subject content includes

• “adapting strategy to a game-changing world”
• “strategy as a thinking system, not just a planning process”
• “profiting from strategic collaboration
• “early insights into the economics of disruption”
• “the real meaning of customer centric systems”
• “the need for transforming transformation and innovating innovation”
• “reengineering mind sets as well as processes”
• “avoiding the mental prison of ‘dominant logic’
• “overcoming industry and organizational orthodoxies”
• “developing corporate leaders with sophisticated strategic insights”

As a postgraduate student at Glasgow University, Gordon won the prestigious Observer Mace prize for the best speaker/debater from UK and Irish universities. He was also one of the inaugural faculty chosen by the UK Government to launch public policy programmes for the Civil Service College in London, Sunningdale and Edinburgh.