Stephen Cummings is Professor of Strategic Management at Victoria University of Wellington. He also holds, or has held, visiting or adjunct positions at Warwick Business School, ENPC Paris, Ecole Hassania Casablanca, the University of Melbourne, Stockholm University and Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of a number of books on creativity and strategy including Recreating Strategy (2002), Images of Strategy (2003), Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation (2010), The Strategy Pathfinder (2011) and the Handbook of Management and Creativity (2014). His latest book Strategy Builder, with illustrations from Wellington company Visory (2015), shows how it can be more effective to draw a strategy rather than write or speak it.
Stephen has also published in a wide range of academic fora (see list below) and has twice been awarded 'best critical paper' at the international Academy of Management, in 2008 for Strawman: the Reconfiguration of Max Weber in Management Textbooks and Why it Matters and in 2014 for The Origin of Management is Sustainability.
Stephen teaches strategy on the undergraduate and MBA programs and was awarded ‘Outstanding MBA Teacher for 2009’ at Warwick Business School. He has developed and taught on executive courses for many organizations, including Philips, HSBC, The Financial Times, GKN Westland, Prudential, Air Services Australia and Callaghan Innovation, and his frameworks such as the Next Practice Matrix, the Strategic Leadership Keypad, and Six Degrees of Strategic Innovation are widely used by management consultants. In 2013 The Financial Times named the Orientation-Animation Matrix (developed with David Wilson) as one of the top 80 strategy frameworks of all time. He was recently named an Academic Fellow of the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes
He got his PhD from Warwick Business School, UK (1999), his BA(Hons) in Classical Studies, Victoria University (1991), BA in Classical Studies, Victoria University (1990), BCA in Management and Marketing, Victoria University (1989) and Diploma of Design, Massey University (1986).
Strategy Builder: How to create and communicate more effective strategies