Polly LaBarre

Polly LaBarre is a bestselling author, speaker and entrepreneur who specialises in helping organisations build the capacity to adapt, innovate and unlock human potential at scale. As co-founder of the Management Lab alongside Gary Hamel, and architect of the pioneering Management Innovation eXchange, she has shaped how leading organisations worldwide rethink leadership, change and collaboration for the 21st century. A founding member of Fast Company magazine and co-author of Mavericks at Work, published in 16 languages, Polly equips leaders with practical strategies to foster human flourishing, embed innovation as a core capability and break free from outdated structures that limit agility and growth.

As a founding member of Fast Company magazine, Polly LaBarre helped shape a publication that fundamentally changed how leaders think about work, innovation and success. That early work sparked a career-long commitment to exploring how organisations can build the capacity to adapt, embed innovation as a core capability, and unleash human potential in ever more powerful ways. Alongside Gary Hamel and her partners at the Management Lab, she now works with leading organisations worldwide to accelerate the shift towards a post-bureaucratic, 21st-century management model that prioritises human flourishing at work.

Polly's credibility rests on both intellectual rigour and real-world application. She co-authored the bestselling book Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, published in 16 languages, which spotlighted the organisations and leaders redefining competitive advantage. She also co-founded the Management Innovation eXchange, a pioneering open innovation platform supported by institutions including McKinsey & Company, Red Hat, Gartner and Harvard Business Review. The MIX serves as a discovery engine for progressive management practices, an active global community of change agents, and an experimental laboratory for bold new ideas. Through the platform, Polly designs and hosts the annual MIX Mashup, a gathering of management innovators, and oversees the M-Prize, the world's leading idea contest in the field of management. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review and McKinsey Quarterly, and her widely syndicated blog, Fresh MIX, delivers agenda-setting thinking about 21st-century organisations. A Yale graduate, she currently serves on the board of advisors for TakingITGlobal and is at work on a new book about the future of management and large-scale change with Gary Hamel.

Polly equips leaders with what she calls a Maverick Manual: practical, high-impact strategies to hack the status quo and ramp up originality, invention and game-changing disruption. She takes audiences on an inspiring journey through the people, organisations and ideas on the fringe that are creating the future, revealing how to rethink leadership, collaboration, employee engagement, organisational culture and accountability in ways that deliver lasting results. Whether addressing large corporate gatherings, association events or intimate top-management retreats, she helps leaders move beyond outdated structures that limit agility and growth. Audiences leave with clear methods to foster adaptability, embed innovation at a DNA level, and create environments where human flourishing drives competitive advantage and sustainable success.