About Sven
Sven Smit is a Director in the Amsterdam office. He leads the development of knowledge for the firm’s Strategy Practice. He also co-leads McKinsey’s Growth Practice and works with many leading companies on developing strategies for growth. His experience includes analysis of the success factors required for growth; the impact of megatrends on business growth, and defining lessons learned from “diversified growth” building on the work in the book “Granularity of Growth” he co-authored.
Sven also works with the Center for Managing Uncertainty (CMU) and helps develop McKinsey’s perspective on the economy. By building and applying macro scenarios, he helps develop the firm’s point of view on core issues such as economic volatility, inflation and fluctuations in oil pricing and defines ways to help clients navigate this volatility.
In both the telecommunications and high tech industries, Sven has helped engineer the turnaround of multinational companies through organization and performance management initiatives; lean operational improvement; governance/organization and budgeting processes.
Published work
“The perils of best practice: Should you emulate Apple?,” McKinsey Quarterly, September 2012
“Managing the strategy journey,” McKinsey Quarterly, July 2012
“Have you tested your strategy lately?,” McKinsey Quarterly, January 2011
“The granularity of growth,” John Wiley & Sons, 2008
Past experience
| Philips Research Laboratories |
Engineer/Researcher |
Education
| INSEAD |
MBA |
| Delft University of Technology |
Degree in mechanical engineering |