This seminar is run by The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School
Speaker: Dr Richard Foster, Emeritus Director, McKinsey & Company, Inc.
About the speaker
Dr Richard Foster is and Emeritus Director of McKinsey & Company, Inc. At McKinsey Dr Foster was a Director and Senior Partner. While at McKinsey he founded several practices including the healthcare practice and the private equity practices, the technology practice and innovation practice. From 1995 to 1998 he led McKinsey’s worldwide knowledge development. Current Dr Foster is teaching at the Yale School of Management and is Special Advisor to the President of Yale for Healthcare Innovation.
At Yale, Dr Foster teaches "Managing In Times of Rapid Change" and serves as the Executive in Residence at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. Dr Foster’s research interests are in the relationships between capital formation, innovation, and regulation. Dr Foster has written two best-selling books: Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (1986) and Creative Destruction (2001), both of which were cited as among the “ten best books of the year” when they were published by the Harvard Business Review. Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage was voted by CEO surveyed by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best books of the year. Dr Foster’s work has also appeared in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times as well as several dozen articles in research and popular journals. In 2012 Creative Destruction was cited by the Harvard Business Review as one of the “Great Moments in Management” in the past century. Dr Foster was also recognised as one of their ten “Masters of Innovation” in the past century. Dr Foster was the external leader of the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on Innovation and Economic Power which led to the publication of Technological Innovation and Economic Performance, Princeton University Press (2001).
In the for-profit sector Dr Foster is a venture partner at Lux Capital, an early venture fund, and a general partner at Mansa Capital, a growth equity investment fund focused healthcare services and technology. He is a founding member of the Goldman Sachs Chambers Street Executive Network. He is a member of the ZocDoc Advisory Board. He was a member of the board of the Trust Company of the West until it was purchased by Carlyle, and a member of the board of athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN).
In the non-profit sector Dr Foster is co-chair of the National Academies (of Science, Engineering and Medicine) President’s Circle, the National Research Council's Policy and Global Affairs committee, and the executive committee of the W. M. Keck Foundation, where he is Chairman of the Medical Research Committee. He is also a member of the Yale School of Medicine Dean’s advisory board, a member of the Harvard Medical School Health Care Policy advisory committee, and a member of the board of directors of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where he is a member of the Technology, Finance and Audit Committees. He is a member of the board of the Council for Aid to Education and serves as Chair of the Strategy Committee. Dr Foster was an American delegate to the Australian American Leadership Dialogues, Sydney Australia, 2013.
Dr Foster has been a member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratories. He was the co-chair of the Healthcare Data Initiative, a joint venture of the US Department of Health & Human Services and the Institute of Medicine in 2011, 2012 and Dean of the Healthcare Data University in 2013. He was a member of the TEDMED Advisory Board.
Dr Foster was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008. Dr Foster received his BS, MS, and PhD from Yale University in Engineering and Applied Science.