Max Mckeown: “The best strategy for the future is adaptability”

We are all familiar with the famous quote of even more famous Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary thought, that it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most adaptable to change. Max Mckeown, an English strategy and innovation expert, writer, consultant and researcher, takes a step further – he is certain that adaptability could be a deliberate winning strategy.

Max Mckeown, whom David Burkus, the author of The Myths of Creativity, described as a new breed of business guru, impressed the world of innovation and strategy with his books The Strategy Book, The Innovation Book and Adaptability, among others. In the books he highlights that the ability to adapt smarter and faster than the situation changes is what makes the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win, or in other words: “Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. Mark Zuckerberg, while at Harvard, built a website called Facemash ‘for fun’. Even today, Facebook believe that ‘done is better than perfect’.” 

“If there are no new ideas, there is no innovation. And if there is no creativity, there are no new ideas,” is one of his most known quotes.

When asked in one of the interviews, if he could have lunch with any business leader, past or present, who would that be, he answers that it wouldn’t be a business lunch. “It would have to be an after-hours party with a group of people that are not often thought of as leaders but are strategists, creators or innovators.” Among those he names Thomas Starzl, renowned transplant surgeon, Jay Z, David Beckham, the late American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison, the Indian industrialist Ratan Tata and the chairperson of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi.

“Sometimes people forget that the great innovators are almost always great strategists. The two things have to be brought together, and they affect all walks of life, not just the boardroom. It really is that powerful,” argues Mckeown.

You will have a chance to listen to this “new breed of a business guru” at this year’s SEMPL, where the strategy and innovation will collide.