Professor Rafael Ramírez

Professor Rafael Ramírez is the first ever Professor of Practice named by the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme at the Saїd Business School and is a Governing Body Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford University.

He is one of the world’s leading experts on scenario planning, having developed the Oxford Scenarios Planning Approach with colleagues Angela Wilkinson and Kees can der Heijden. He has also been one of the first scholars to investigate networked strategy and to develop theories on the aesthetics of business and organisation; theories which help to clarify how scenario planning and strategizing can be rendered more effective. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2019.

Rafael was Visiting Professor of Scenarios and Corporate Strategy at Shell International from 2000 to 2003, and from 2008 to 2010 Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Strategic Foresight. He was a full tenured Professor of Management in HEC Paris from 1993 to 2009. As Director of the award-winning Oxford Scenarios Programme he leads one of the most highly respected programmes on the subject in the world.

Rafael has written a large number of published papers and chapters. A proven innovator, Rafael co-authored the first major journal articles attacking the ‘value chain’ view of value production (with R. Normann), published in the Harvard Business Review in 1993. That pioneering research provided an early conceptualisation of value creation as designed in what has become since the ‘social economy / business ecosystem / web interaction / platform organisation’ era. This he further developed in a paper in the Strategic Management Review (1999) on value co-production, which is still at the core of his research and engagement work, as well as in his 2016 co-authored book (with U. Mannervik) ‘Strategy in a Networked World’.

As a researcher, consultant and management educator, Rafael has worked in over 35 countries, with many corporations, governmental and inter-governmental organisations, trade union federations, NGO’s and professional associations. These include; Air Liquide, Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris, AT&T, AXA, BMW Group, The Canadian Labour Congress, Diabetes UK, the Financial Conduct Authority; the European Patent Office, the European Roundtable of Industrialists, Eurotunnel, HP, the IAEA, the IDB, the IMF, The NYC Department of Juvenile Justice, Nissan Europe, O2, Rolls-Royce, Scottish Water, Schneider-Electric, Standard Chartered Bank, Statoil, Suez International, Trenitalia, the United European Gastroenterologists; UNDP, UK Space, Wärtsilä, and the World Economic Forum.

Rafael holds a PhD from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Master’s degrees from the University of Oxford and from the Environmental Studies Faculty at York University in Toronto. He was Tenured Professor of Management in HEC-Paris until 2009. He also has held positions in the Wharton School, and the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations – CNRS in Paris.

Rafael speaks English, Spanish and French fluently.

Contact: Rafael.Ramirez@sbs.ox.ac.uk