Senior Research Fellow

John C. Beck is Senior Advisor to the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.  There, he also is Director of two think tanks, the Information +Innovation Policy Research Centre, and the Asian Competitiveness Institute.  He is also President of the North Star Leadership Group, Inc. (www.nslg.net). Previously, he served as the Dean of Globis University (Japan) -- the first non-Japanese to lead a bilingual professional degree program in Japan, a Senior Research Fellow at University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, a Senior Advisor at Monitor Group, and formerly Director of International Research at Accenture.  He was also a Professor of Global Management & Director of Research at Thunderbird School of Global Management, where he is now a Global Financial Services Center Senior Research Fellow. 

John earned his B.A. in East Asian Studies and Sociology summa cum laude from Harvard University, and was the first graduate of Harvard’s integrative Ph.D. program in Organizational Behavior.  Dr. Beck is a Visiting Professor at IMD (Switzerland) and IPADE (Mexico). He has also taught at numerous other universities like: Harvard, UCLA, USC, and the Ivey School in Canada.

Dr. Beck served as the senior strategic advisor to the First Prime Minister, Prince Ranariddh, during Cambodia’s first three years as a democracy.  John previously was Co-Director of the "Project on Strategies of the World’s Largest 50 Companies" for the United Nations.  He has served on the Board of Directors of a variety of corporations and universities, including the Monterey Institute of International Studies (California) and Choice Humanitarian, a non-profit organization supporting village development programs in six countries around the world.
Dr. Beck has published hundreds of books, articles, and business reports on the topics of business in Asia, strategic management, globalization, leadership, and technology. He has appeared on CNN, CBS Evening News, and is a frequent guest on National Public Radio.  He is quoted and cited in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, New York Times and other leading papers and magazines.  His co-authored book, The Attention Economy, was named one of the best ten business books of 2001 by Amazon, Border’s and the Library Association.  DoCoMo: The wireless tsunami (with Mitchell Wade) was published in September 2002 and acclaimed as an excellent book on leadership.  His book (again with Mitchell Wade), Got Game: How a new generation of gamers is reshaping business forever has received wide press coverage. Japan’s Business Renaissance: How the world’s greatest economy revived, renewed and reinvented itself  (coauthored with Mark Fuller) was published by McGraw-Hill in 2005.  The Kids are Alright, released in late 2006, was listed as one of Harvard Business School Press’s “most popular” books.  His books have been translated into eleven languages.  He is currently writing a book titled,  The Eight Great Goods.