About the Authors

Get to know the authors and their passion for the future of work!

Simon L. Dolan

"I was born in Israel in the late 1940s to parents that survived six years of Nazi concentration camps. There is no doubt that growing up in this resilient family made me a better person over the years. But perhaps this was also the impetus to my being a very curious person and a modern “Don Quixote” who wishes to change the world and make it a better place to be and live. I have limited experience working for real organizations in an executive position; hence, I have spent most of my life in academia and the other half of my life acting as a consultant to companies and senior executives throughout the globe.

"I speak several languages and have written many books in these languages. I have written over 85 books, ranging from textbooks for university students, books for professionals, and even tales about values for children. I have also published over 160 papers in scientific journals and was the editor-in-chief of "Cross Cultural and Management" for over seven years. I graduated from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota and taught at some of the leading business schools, including Montreal and McGill (in Canada), Boston University and Colorado (in the US), ESSEC and HEC (in France), and Cadiz, Pablo de Olavide and ESADE Business School in Spain. Currently, I am affiliated with Advantere School of Management in Madrid. In 2024, I was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Huelva and was the recipient of the Award for Excellence in Societally Relevant Management Scholarship from the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management (IFSAM).

"In my professional life, I was a consultant for my own company, Gestion M.D.S. Management Inc., based in Montreal for over 40 years. I have developed modern tools and apps for managers, coaches and consultants in the fields of values, stress, leadership and resilience. I also founded the Global Future of Work Foundation, a think tank dedicated to unfolding the future.

"For my full bio, visit www.simondolan.com or www.learningaboutvalues.com."

Mario Raich

I think I am a creative person. I think that true living is all about creativity! Or maybe not? In any event, since my early youth, I have been looking for ways and methods to reinforce and develop my creativity. Very early in my life, I learned self-hypnosis. Later on, I used hypnosis to influence large audiences during my presentations. In my mid-twenties, I had the opportunity to expose thousands of people to waking dreams and self-hypnosis in groups, from dozens to five hundred people in four languages: German, French, Italian and English. In the 70s, I came across waking dreams and other methods from psychosynthesis. I have also studied Lateral Thinking from the de Bono Group and have used active brainstorming techniques probably over a thousand times—although I was never fully satisfied with the results of the brainstorming method and process. At the same time, I became interested in the development of intuition. Unsurprisingly, I have since developed my own methods for blending creativity with intuition. One of the methods is “intuitive brainstorming” and is based on awake dreaming.

I have a long history of practicing as an executive in large corporations and offering services as a professor at multiple global business schools. In the past five years, I have begun to withdraw from consulting and coaching work to focus on future research and publishing, using my experience and expertise to explore the design of the future. I have developed a specific framework for future design, which can be deployed for many purposes, like designing future business, life, innovation, talent development, and so on. Some of the work surrounding the impact of contextual changes on work and business has been published in The European Business Review. Some are still in development. And some of these articles are also incorporated into this course; hence, my dream is to develop a new generation of students who are trained to develop creative solutions.

Dave Ulrich

For many decades, I have been obsessed with understanding and improving how organizations create value for stakeholders. I also have an addiction to writing (a friend told me I have hypergraphia) and a passion for teaching. My professional values are to continually learn ways that add value to others. Learning means exploring new ideas by collaborating with my close friends and by putting myself outside my comfort zone. Learning also means generating and generalizing insights from observing complex and often unsolved problems, articulating new theories to explain phenomena, doing rigorous research to test ideas, and discovering solutions to shape practice.

Trained as a numerical taxonomist, I especially value data that allows me to define patterns and make knowledge productive. We have collected data from very large samples of individuals, leaders, and organizations around the world. Lately, I have labeled the overall content of my work “human capability,” which has four pathways: (1) talent, (2) leadership, (3) organization, and (4) human resources. Each of these four pathways has an abundance of theories, research, and practice. I try to be on the leading edge of these ideas to discover how these agendas create value for all stakeholders. I have written over 30 books and engage frequently on LinkedIn to continue to learn.

In this work, I have partnered with incredible colleagues. Colleagues who I admire and learn from have coauthored all but two of my books. I have been privileged to have a 40-year “perch” at the Ross School of Business and the University of Michigan, where I am the Rensis Likert Professor with a part-time appointment teaching in Executive Education. I am honored to have established a firm, The RBL Group www.rbl.net, with great partners and colleagues who turn ideas into impact. I end most of my presentations with the line, “The best is yet ahead,” because that is where I like to play. I hope this course, with its incredible coauthors, builds the next generation of OCD colleagues with ideas that have even more impact.

Chad O. Albrecht

I am currently a Full Professor of Strategy and the MBA Program Director at the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. I have produced more than fifty publications, including several books and many research articles. My research has been used by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the Institute of Fraud Prevention (ACFE) in training, research, and other educational initiatives. My research has been quoted more than 3,000 times and appeared in various news agencies, including The Times of London and In-Flight Magazine.

Over the years, I have received numerous awards for my teaching and research. Some of these awards include the Huntsman School of Business Researcher of the Year Award, the Huntsman School of Business Graduate Mentor of the Year Award, and the Huntsman School of Business Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year Award (three-time recipient). Before becoming a professor, I worked as a licensed stockbroker for The Harris, a subsidiary of the Bank of Montreal.

I am also the cofounder of MyEducator as I really believe in the harnessing of the latest digital technology to benefit students in the sector of higher education.