Scott D. Anthony

Managing Director, Innosight Asia-Pacific

Based in the firm’s Singapore offices, he leads Innosight’s Asian operations and venture-capital investing activities (Innosight Ventures).

Scott has written extensively about innovation. He is the author of The Little Black Book of Innovation, published by Harvard Business Review Press in January 2012. He is the co-author of the Harvard Business Review article "How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate." He co-authored Seeing What’s Next (2004) with Harvard Business School Professor and Innosight founder Clayton Christensen and was the lead author of The Innovator’s Guide to Growth and author of The Silver Lining. He has written articles for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Sloan Management Review, Advertising Age, Marketing Management and Chief Executive, and serves as a judge in The Wall Street Journal’s Innovation Awards. He has a regular column at Harvard Business Online.

Prior to joining Innosight, Scott was a senior researcher with Clayton Christensen, managing a group that worked to further Christensen’s research on innovation.

His passion is in enabling innovators around the world to realize their untapped potential. In early 2010 Scott and his family relocated from the United States to Singapore to take advantage of the booming opportunities for innovation in Asia. He has spent significant time on the ground in India, Singapore, Korea, and the Philippines, and believes these and other countries are poised to be true innovation powerhouses.

Scott is a sought-after strategic advisor who has worked closely with senior leaders in companies such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, General Electric, LG, Credit Suisse, and Cisco Systems on topics of growth and innovation. He joined the Board of Directors of Media General in 2009.

Scott chairs the investment committee for IDEAS Ventures, a SGD 10 million fund Innosight runs in conjunction with the Singapore government. The fund’s portfolio currently consists of four Singaporean companies: Versonic, The Mobile Gamer, WildFire and iTwin. Innosight intends to make another 10+ seed investments in the coming years.

Scott has served as an active Board member for two companies incubated by Innosight (Village Laundry Service, a laundry service company based in Bangalore, and Guaranteach, a US-based online education company), helping those companies develop and execute their strategy and raise external expansion capital.

Scott is a featured speaker on topics of growth and innovation. He has run more than 100 training workshops, and in 2008-2009 served on the faculty of the Leadership, Innovation and Growth program at General Electric Crotonville. He has appeared on Good Morning America, CNBC, and FOX Business.

Scott received a BA in economics summa cum laude from Dartmouth College and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. Previously he worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., a strategic planner for Aspen Technology, and a product manager for WorldSpace Corporation. While at McKinsey, he co-authored a publicly released report on the United Kingdom's economic prospects.

 

Most Memorable Innosight Moment

 

One of the most rewarding things about Innosight is that our delivery model allows us to have almost immediate client impact. A couple of years ago, we held a one-day workshop for a project team working on a truly game-changing disruptive innovation. The project was unusually complex, featuring a new-to-the-world technology, cross-company collaboration, an external partner, and an unknown business model. We worked with the team over two days, assessing different ways to frame their target market and address some of their critical assumptions. By the end of the session we had completely changed the team’s direction. The project leader sent me a note saying, “Thanks for the session. We are a forever changed team.” We don’t always have impact quite that fast, but it demonstrated the power of our models and approaches.

Publication Highlights

"How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate," Harvard Business Review, June 2011.

The Innovator’s Guide to Growth, Harvard Business School Press, 2008.

The Silver Lining, Harvard Business School Press, 2009.

“Finding the Right Job for Your Products,” Sloan Management Review, February 2007.

Seeing What’s Next, Harvard Business School Press, 2004.