Rafael Ramirez

Rafael Ramirez is Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme and the University of Oxford’s first Professor of Practice at the Saїd Business School and 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 develop theories on the aesthetics of business and organisation; theories that help to clarify how scenario planning can be rendered more effective.

Rafael was Visiting Professor of Scenarios and Corporate Strategy at Shell International from 2000 to 2003, and from 2008 to 2010 was Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Strategic Foresight. As Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme he leads one of the most highly respected programmes on the subject in the world.

The programme was established in 2004 and has so far taught some 500 participants from all continents and walks of life, including senior professionals in government, academia, civil society, and business. The programme educates people to make sense, reframe issues, and re-perceive options in challenging and turbulent environments. It encourages them to engage stakeholders to co-produce plausible alternative views, forge common ground, and develop actionable new strategy.

As is apparent in the ‘research’ tab, Rafael has written a large number of published papers, books 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. This pioneering research provided an early conceptualisation of value creation as designed in what has become since the ‘social economy / business ecology / web interaction era. This he further developed in a paper in the Strategic Management Review (1999) on value co-production, which is the subject of his next book, expected in 2016. His 7th book, Strategic Reframing: The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach, co-authored with Angela Wilkinson, with Oxford University Press in 2016; the 8th book, Strategy for a Networked World, co-authored with Ulf Mannervik, was published by Imperial College Press in December 2016

As a researcher, consultant and management educator, Rafael has worked in some 30 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, BHP Billiton, BMW Group, The Canadian Labour Congress, EDF, the European Patent Office, the European Roundtable of Industrialists, Eurotunnel, the Financial Conduct Authority, HP, The NYC Department of Juvenile Justice, Nissan Europe, O2, Rolls-Royce, Scottish Water, Standard Chartered Bank, Statoil, Suez International, Trenitalia, the United European Gastroenterologists; UNDP, 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 co-hosts the Oxford Futures Forum which has so far convened four times to explore different theoretical frameworks with which to explore scenario planning.

Rafael speaks English, Spanish and French fluently.