Rory McDonald

Google “how to build a brand” and you will be flooded with expert advice: how-to manuals, steps and tips for building a brand identity that is powerful, memorable and persuasive. Meanwhile, managers tend to focus on promoting a brand’s quality or its innovativeness or its environmental friendliness, attributes they think will prove meaningful to customers. But in the pursuit of building a strong brand identity, all too often managers lose sight of the relationship that matters most. Customers typically don’t buy products or services because they’re memorable or because they’re kind to the environment (of course these things can help, but they’re not persuasive in themselves). People buy products and services to solve a particular problem in their lives. They buy them to do a job. The frameworks UVA Darden School of Business professor and branding expert Rory McDonald shares during this session will help any organization understand this relationship when building a brand so they can improve their odds of success.

Does your company have what it takes to enter and conquer a new market? After meeting with more than 200 innovators in fields ranging from personal genomics and augmented reality to drones and technology-enabled finance, UVA Darden School of Business professor Rory McDonald discovered that the most successful of these pioneers follow a set of rules and patterns that defy conventional precepts of strategy and business-building. In this session, he explains why new market strategies are different from those presented in the traditional playbook and teaches participants how to compete and win in unfamiliar, uncharted territory. This course is a game changer for leaders at companies of all sizes, from corporate giants looking to diversify their brand to startups about to enter an already dominated market.

Industry leaders can get blindsided by disruptive innovations because they focus too much on their most profitable customers and businesses. Rather than being destroyed by them, UVA Darden School of Business professor and disruptive innovation expert Rory McDonald shows companies how to create their own disruptions, discover and nurture the best ideas, and create entirely new markets. He studies how firms compete in new markets—examining both stalwarts and startups—and offers leaders a new way of thinking about market forces and competitive strategy. McDonald explains why old models don’t apply, and how to modify innovation theories to fit new markets and best position companies for the future.

It’s a common challenge for companies to struggle to get innovation investments right. Mounting evidence suggests that the type of resources a new business venture secures is integral to its success, says UVA Darden School of Business professor Rory McDonald. Some resources help overcome constraints, improve internal operations and gain access to diverse audiences such as potential partners, the media and customers. Others create constraints, increasing competitive exposure and undermining efforts to innovate or commercialize a new technology. How can leaders ensure they acquire the right (combination of) resources to spur the right kind of innovation at the right pace? McDonald examines the value created—and oftentimes destroyed—by different resource combinations and identifies the most attractive configuration of sources to maximize innovation investment.

As companies continue to reconfigure and reboot, UVA Darden School of Business professor and disruptive innovation expert Rory McDonald works closely with leaders in every sector, helping them weather any kind of disruption – anticipated or unexpected. In this session, he teaches strategies for shaping and communicating a broader narrative around a company’s mission so their brand can pivot with more agility while their story still appeals to investors, the media and customers. McDonald shares real-world examples of companies like Netflix, Slack and Away that survived unexpected challenges to their business because they adhered to an original broader purpose. The frameworks he shares during this session will empower any organization attempting to pivot and reboot in the new economy.