Media Releases

Rotman Dean Honoured with a McKinsey Award by Harvard Business Review

April 21, 2011

Toron­to, ON — An arti­cle by Roger Mar­tin, Dean of the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, which appeared in Har­vard Busi­ness Review, was hon­oured with a sec­ond place prize in the 2010 McK­in­sey Awards. The arti­cle, The Age of Cus­tomer Cap­i­tal­ism,<http://hbr.org/2010/01/the-age-of-customer-capitalism/ar/1> from the magazine’s Jan­u­ary-Feb­ru­ary 2010 issue argued that the cur­rent era of share­hold­er val­ue cap­i­tal­ism should be aban­doned and that we should move to cus­tomer-dri­ven cap­i­tal­ism.

Mar­tin wrote in the arti­cle that deter­min­ing what your cus­tomers val­ue and focus­ing on always pleas­ing them is a bet­ter opti­miza­tion for­mu­la. In the arti­cle Mar­tin uses his­tor­i­cal stock prices from the S&P 500 to show that the focus on share­hold­er val­ue has­n’t done share­hold­ers any favors. They have actu­al­ly earned low­er returns since cor­po­ra­tions adopt­ed it as their guid­ing prin­ci­ple. Two com­pa­nies who have placed cus­tomers at the fore­front of their oper­a­tions, John­son & John­son and Proc­ter & Gam­ble, have gen­er­at­ed share­hold­er returns that are at least as high as, if not high­er than, those of lead­ing share­hold­er-focused com­pa­nies.

The annu­al McK­in­sey Awards, judged by an inde­pen­dent pan­el of busi­ness and aca­d­e­m­ic lead­ers, com­mend out­stand­ing arti­cles pub­lished each year in Har­vard Busi­ness Review. The awards were estab­lished in 1959 to rec­og­nize prac­ti­cal and ground­break­ing man­age­ment think­ing by deter­min­ing the two best arti­cles each year in Har­vard Busi­ness Review. Past win­ners include such dis­tin­guished nota­bles as Peter Druck­er, Michael Porter, Ros­a­beth Moss Kan­ter, and George Stalk.  This year’s announce­ment appears in the May issue of the mag­a­zine.

Clay­ton M. Chris­tensen received the first prize for his arti­cle “How Will You Mea­sure Your Life?” Chris­tensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Pro­fes­sor of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion at Har­vard Busi­ness School and a four-time recip­i­ent of the award.

A sec­ond place prize was also giv­en to Vijay Govin­dara­jan and Chris Trimble’s “Stop the Inno­va­tion Wars.”  Govin­dara­jan is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Pro­fes­sor of Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness and found­ing direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Glob­al Lead­er­ship at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Busi­ness, and Trim­ble is on the fac­ul­ty at Tuck and an expert on mak­ing inno­va­tion hap­pen in large orga­ni­za­tions.

The 2010 award win­ners were select­ed by a diverse and dis­tin­guished pan­el of lead­ers from busi­ness, finance, and acad­e­mia:

Ger­ald Cher­ta­vian, Founder and CEO, Year Up; David Col­lis, Thomas Hen­ry Car­roll, Ford Foun­da­tion Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion, Har­vard Busi­ness School; Alfred Lin. For­mer CFO, Zappos.com; Aditya Mit­tal. CFO, Arcelor­Mit­tal; Ann Moore, For­mer Chair­man and CEO, Time Inc.; and Vivian Schiller, For­mer Pres­i­dent and CEO, Nation­al Pub­lic Radio.

Har­vard Busi­ness Review is the lead­ing des­ti­na­tion for smart man­age­ment think­ing. Through its flag­ship mag­a­zine, 11 inter­na­tion­al licensed edi­tions, books from Har­vard Busi­ness Review Press, and dig­i­tal con­tent and tools pub­lished on HBR.org, Har­vard Busi­ness Review pro­vides pro­fes­sion­als around the world with rig­or­ous insights and best prac­tices to lead them­selves and their orga­ni­za­tions more effec­tive­ly and to make a pos­i­tive impact.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca<http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca>.

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For more infor­ma­tion:
Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool