Videos
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Christian Ketels, Harvard Business School: “Catalonia is an example of successful cluster policy”
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CHRISTIAN KETELS - COMPETITIVIDADE PORTUGUESA
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Plenary Talk on “India: Will the Giant Emerge” by Christian Ketels
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Dr. Bibek Debroy In Conversation with Christian Ketels, Principal Associate, Harvard Business School
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Thinkers Dialog with Christian Ketels
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Dr. Christian Ketels - Future competitiveness of Ukraine in the global context
Learn More About Christian Ketels
Christian Ketels, Ph.D., is a senior advisor and affiliated researcher at the Center for Resilient Health and the House of Governance and Public Policy at the Stockholm School of Economics. He is an expert on the relationship between company strategy and location as well as competitiveness at different geographic levels, especially in Europe.
In addition to his academic appointments, Ketels is a special advisor on competitiveness to the European Commission, editor-in-chief of Competitiveness Review, and chairs the advisory board of TCI Network. During his more than 20 years at Harvard Business School, Ketels worked closely with strategy trailblazer Michael E. Porter while serving as principal associate at the esteemed Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. In addition, he was Boston Consulting Group’s chief economist and head of the BCG Henderson Institute’s Center for Macroeconomics.
Ketels has worked as an international strategy consultant for Monitor Group in the UK, Germany, and Scandinavia, and was part of the team that founded Cell Strategy, now part of Sweden-based internet strategy consultancy Adcore AB.
He received his Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics where he developed microeconomic models analyzing the relationship between international competition and firm efficiency.
Christian Ketels is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group®.
Why Your Country/Region Needs a Strategy: Competitiveness Under New Global Circumstances
The global economic and political system is in the midst of a fundamental transformation as climate change, rapid technological advances, societal tensions and a re-ordering of geopolitical structures undermine the effectiveness of existing policy paradigms. Christian Ketels, Ph.D., long-time head of Michael Porter’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School and a senior advisor to the European Commission, argues that countries and regions need to adopt a strategic mindset to deal with these multiple challenges in a coherent fashion. Locations need to review their positioning against a backdrop of changing societal goals and a shifting global marketplace. The traditional advice to optimize individual policies on their own and politically balance different interest groups no longer works. What is needed, is a coherent overall set of actions that aligns across different policy areas and contributes to multiple objectives in parallel. In this fascinating presentation, Ketels outlines how leaders can drive transformative changes by anchoring their strategies in a clear locational value proposition that drives the prioritization of actions. Attendees will learn practical steps for building highly competitive, globally informed programs and institutional structures that deeply embed effective execution as an essential part of overall strategy.
From Macroeconomic Trends to Microeconomic Impact: Driving Success in a Fractured Global Economy
As the global business, economic and societal environments become more complex than ever, the impact of this external context on firms’ success is rising. How can business leaders achieve insights into how these intersecting trends affect their firm and position their organizations to compete successfully? According to Christian Ketels, Ph.D., long-time head of Michael Porter’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School and former global Chief Economist of the Boston Consulting Group, it is vital to differentiate short-term cyclical from long-term structural dynamics and to disaggregate the broad macroeconomic trends dominating the headlines into the often highly heterogeneous implications for individual sectors and firms. In this fascinating presentation, he outlines how leaders can navigate the emerging geopolitical and economic landscape, gaining concrete recommendations for how to raise the strategic capacity of your organization to deal with the new realities. Attendees will learn practical steps for analyzing how global events affect their specific circumstances and how to interpret new data to track the evolution of a highly volatile global environment.
The Power of Location in a Globalized World: Understanding and Leveraging High-Performance Clusters
How does location impact innovation and productivity, why is a firm’s location so important even though it competes and collaborates globally, and what’s behind the recent shift to place and sector-based industrial policies, especially in the US? In this engaging talk that can be customized for both business and public sector leaders, Christian Ketels, Ph.D., former research team leader at Michael Porter’s iconic Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School and an advisor to a wide range of governments and international institutions, breaks down the ingredients to effective cluster-based economic development. Helping leaders understand “the DNA of clusters,” he dissects the forces that allow clusters to achieve levels of productivity and innovation far ahead of the competition. Drawing on a wide range of sectors and countries, he shows how globalization and new technologies have changed the nature and identity of leading clusters, while increasing rather than reducing the value of clusters for firms and economies. In this fascinating presentation, he outlines how business leaders can identify, leverage and strengthen clusters, defining their role in achieving effective collaboration with government, academia, and others. Drawing on his extensive experience with governments around the globe in designing and implementing such efforts, audiences will learn Ketels’ astute insights into the potential of place-based industrial policies around clusters.
