Roger Martin
Professor Emeritus, Rotman School of Management. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
academicauthorfounderother@rogerlmartin ↗LinkedIn ↗rogerlmartin.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Roger Martin served as Dean of the Rotman School of Management from 1998 to 2013 and has advised CEOs at corporations including Procter & Gamble, Ford, and Lego. He is known for pioneering concepts in integrative thinking and co-authoring the strategy book Playing to Win.
2shows
2appearances
58statements
10resolved
5supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
10said about them ↓ Everything Roger Martin said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Martin: Richard Rumelt does not know much about business
“I don't think that he, like most business academics, he doesn't know much about business, right? Like he hasn't gone out and practiced a lot.”
Martin: Strategy education in business schools generally sucks and is overly theoretical
“The training aspect of it, the knowledge aspect of it, which is what's taught now in strategy in business schools generally sucks. It's gone on a crazy theoretical bent. The strategy academy as a whole has fallen in love with a theory called the resource-based…”
Martin: Major strategy consulting firms do almost no actual strategy work
“The strategy consulting firms, the so-called strategy consulting firms do almost no strategy anymore because it's a little business compared to post-merger integration, digital transformation, and a bunch of other, other other things.”
Martin: Top 50 US business schools refuse to hire faculty questioning RBV
“If you took the other, the 49 other top business schools in America, and if asked the question, do you swear allegiance to the resource-based view of the firm? If you don't answer an enthusiastic yes, you have no chance of being hired. Zero.”
Martin: Rumelt's Procter & Gamble case study had zero connection to reality
“He gave a example of Procter and Gamble. I've been consulting at Procter and Gamble. And know everything about Procter & Gamble, basically. And what he said about Procter & Gamble had zero to do with reality, like zero. It was just completely, utterly, absolut…”
Martin: Modern US capital markets harm American competitiveness
“I think in 2020, now America has got a capital market that is a detriment to American competitiveness because it is causing companies to behave in ways that aren't good for the company, its employees, America over overall.”
Roger Martin: The era of widely held public corporations will end
“I think we're going to look back, twenty-fifty, we'll look back on this period, 19, 40 ish, 35, 40 ish to say 20, 20, 25 or 30 as this insane period where we thought the widely held publicly traded corporation was the optimal form. And we're going to look back…”
Martin: Public Company Boards Disciplining Management Is an Absolute Fantasy
“The idea that, that a board will discipline management is, is just an absolute fantasy. And that's a core kind of element of the logical structure that guides the workings of the capital markets, the equity markets, and the widely held publicly traded companie…”
Roger Martin: Rating agency analysts are inherently worse at assessing bonds than market traders
“The only reason they would be in that chair is that they're not particularly good at rating bonds, right? Because if they had a skillset that made them good at rating bonds, what chair would they be sitting in? ... They'd be either sitting in a chair at Goldma…”
Martin: App developers willingly joined Apple's ecosystem and shouldn't complain about fees
“All the apps complain about what cut Apple is taking, but they made a choice, a value chain choice. We are going to design something that will appear on an iPhone or an Android device if that is. And then good luck to you. You can complain like crazy that they…”
Martin: Niche cost leadership is almost impossible without dominant scale
“If you want to be the cost leader, it is rare that you can be the cost leader without having dominant scale in the territory in which you're operating. So if you want to be a niche. Cost leader, you know, good luck to you. That's almost never going to happen.”
Martin: Google's monopoly power and market cap cannot hold back AI search
“So to me, if Google thinks they can, because of their power and the fact they're got a multi-trillion dollar Market cap, and they've got a near monopoly position on, on something they can hold back the tide. You see, the water finds a way to flow, right?”
Roger Martin: Business dramatically and vastly overuses the scientific method
“We dramatically, vastly overuse science.”
Roger Martin: Creative domains require creating causes, not analyzing past data
“Analyze data, collect as much data, analyze it rigorously to determine causes of effects in this other part of the world. Imagine possibilities and choose the one for which the most compelling argument can be made. And he said, the job of human beings in that …”
Roger Martin: Motivations like pay and prestige undermine corporate board effectiveness
“I think the only useful reason for wanting to be on a board is is that you think a well-functioning board is integral to the success of democratic capitalism. Now, how many people think that that's the reason for being on a board? Not, not many. Like, and most…”
Roger Martin: Massive Founder Delusion Is Essential for Economic Innovation
“The economy is underpinned by delusion in, in, in that we do know that nine out of 10 kind of startups expire with a hundred percent of the resources kind of wasted.
If anybody
Thought those were the odds that they personally were facing.
They wouldn't do i…”
Roger Martin: Frontline employees must make strategic choices, not just execute
“So I'm a big believer that people down organization have to make really important strategic choices or bad things are going to happen. If they make really great ones, good things are going to happen and they get trained to be a CEO someday. So I'm with your th…”
Martin: In 42 years of consulting, resource-based view analysis was used once
“I've only seen it used a minute. Consulting companies for 42 years, and I've seen it used once.”
Martin: Michael Porter never claimed market competition is stable
“Mike Porter never in his entire life has said competition is stable. He's repeatedly said the opposite”
Martin: Michael Porter's 'Competitive Strategy' provides no process for achieving advantage
“So Mike Porter says you have to be either differentiated or low cost. Good. And if you look through competitive strategy is landmark seminal book to say, how would you do that? There is no answer.”
Martin: Southwest is the only US airline to earn its cost of capital over 50 years
“And now it's number one in passenger seat miles in, in America and the only airline that's earned its cost of capital over the last half, half century. All the rest are losing money for their shareholders over, over time.”
Martin: Operating system market share should be measured by smart screen minutes
“The right measure of share, in my view, in that industry is your share of minutes spent staring at a smart screen. Like that, that, that's what the share of operating systems that you should care about.”
Roger Martin: Education System Prioritizes Knowledge Dumping Over Teaching Thinking
“I mean, I think the education System, you know, has got a fundamental assumption that the job is to, you know, unzip the top of your head and pour knowledge in rather than to teach you how to think.”
Roger Martin: Business schools fail to teach cross-domain problem solving
“Business schools do not teach the fundamental problems of business. I mean, that's pretty bad, right? What they teach are finance. What they teach is marketing to teach us HR. And as the great, greatest management thinker of all time, Peter Drucker said, there…”
The other half of the tape: Roger Martin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 10 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jag Duggal 3Christopher Lochhead 3Rory Sutherland 2Lenny Rachitsky 2
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Lenny's Podcast 8
the Knowledge Project 2
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2024 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Roger's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Professor Emeritus, Rotman School of Management | 1 | 31 | — | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Professor Emeritus, Rotman School of Management | 1 | 27 | 50% 5/10 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |