Professor Lynda Gratton
Lynda Gratton is Associate Professor of management practice at London Business School. Lynda actively advises companies around the world and sits on the advisory board of Royal Bank of Scotland. In 2006 she founded the Hot Spots Movement. Since that time the Hot Spots Movement has become the focus of a global community of many thousands of people all of whom share a passion for bringing energy and innovation to people at work.
Areas of Specialisation
Lynda specialises in a number of areas of which include; The Leading Edge Research Initiative: Identifying and articulating how business strategy is developed through people, human resource strategy, corporate culture, organisational change, strategic management, the future of work and innovation, and strategic management (organisational learning).
Client Organisations
Between 1996 and 1998 Lynda developed and co-directed, with Sumantra Ghoshal, the Global Consortium Programme. This involved senior executives from ABB, BT, Lufthansa, SKF, Standard Chartered Bank and LG. The programme was designed to increase participant’s skill in managing complex global businesses by visiting China, India, Brazil and Europe to study global companies.
Additionally the Hot Spot movement has engaged with many companies including ARM, BT, Fujitsu, Generali, Philips and Unilever. Lynda is currently engaged with her colleagues on research commissioned by the Singapore Government to examine innovation and team performance across 10 companies in the country and to draw up recommendations for the government.
Career Background
Before joining London Business School in 1989 Lynda was Director of Human Resource Strategy at PA Consulting where she had responsibility for the world-wide HRS practice development. She is a trained psychologist with a doctorate in individual psychology and worked for some years with British Airways as an occupational psychologist.
Professor Gratton was appointed a Senior Fellow of the UK’s Advanced Institute of Management Practice in 2004. She was the founding director of the Lehman Centre for Women in Business at the London Business School and as such directed a number of important research programmes on work, life balance; women’s routes to the top and the attitudes and aspirations of Gen Y.
Qualifications/Achievements and Publications
In 2007 she was ranked by The Times as one of the top 20 Business Thinkers in the world today and in 2008, The Financial Times selected her as the business thinker most likely to make a real difference over the next decade, she was also in the top two of the Human Resources Magazine’s “HR Top 100: Most Influential” poll and actively advises companies across the world.
Professor Gratton’s book Living Strategy, originally published in 2000, has been translated into more than 15 languages and rated by US CEOs as one of the most important books of the year. Her book, The Democratic Enterprise, was described by Financial Times as a work of important scholarship and has provided a fascinating insight into how companies will change over the coming decades.
Lynda has received a number of awards for her research and writing. For example, in 2002, her article “Integrating the Enterprise,” which examined cooperative strategies, was awarded the MIT Sloan Management Review best article of the year. Her 2005 case study of BP’s peer assist integration practices won the ECC Best Strategy Case of the year award and went on to win the best case of the year.
Her book, published in 2007 is Hot Spots – why some teams, workplaces and organisations buzz with energy and others don’t, focused on bringing innovation and energy to organisations. The book has already been translated into more than 10 languages and the Financial Times rated it as one of the most important business books of 2007; and her latest book for 2009 is Glow: how to bring energy and innovation to your life.
