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William H. Davidson
William H. Davidson (Bill) served as a tenured Professor at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, from 1985 to 1998, until his extracurricular activities prevailed and he entered the business sector on a full time basis. In academia, he was acknowledged as the most widely cited academic in international management during the 1985-1995 decade by the Journal of International Business Studies. His book 2020 Vision (with Stan Davis) was selected as the Best Business Book of the year by Fortune Magazine in 1992. He has written seven other books on management, including The Amazing Race. His latest book, Breakthrough, was published by John Wiley Press in 2004. He is currently finishing a new book entitled Great China, with Dumas Ting.
In 1984, Bill founded MESA Inc., a management consulting firm acquired by Deloitte & Touche in 1996. MESA’s clients included more than half of the US Fortune 100, and numerous global corporations. As a national partner at Deloitte, Bill had leadership responsibilities for its telecom and media consulting practice during 1996-98, when the practice experienced about ten-fold expansion.
Bill was a founding faculty member of the Kokusai Daigaku(International Business School of Japan); the US-Japan Friendship Society; and also the Dalian Institute, the first program in the PRC for training Chinese leaders in western management theory and practice, all in the 1980’s. More recently he was a founding faculty member of the School of Inspired Leadership, a new business school based on a triple bottom line model in Delhi, India.
Bill has served on six public company boards and a number of private boards. He has served as non-executive chairman of three companies, including Broadcast International(BCST), and Aquahydrate, a high-tech water company.
As a consultant, Bill has been actively involved in a number of projects, starting with the business plan and business design for the IBM PC in the early 1980’s. He was also a member of the core team that created IBM’s Services business in the 1990s. Bill has participated in a number of high tech start-ups, including his first venture company, PairGain, the developer of DSL technology, and most recently Autogenomics and Trendpoint.
He has assisted a number of companies with shaping and executing their overall strategic planning processes, and is currently engaged in several such efforts.
Bill continues to be active in the arena of global leadership development. His company, Management Education Services Associates, provides global leadership development services to a number of leading firms, including ExxonMobil, GDF Suez, Schneider, UTi Worldwide, Mahindra and Mahindra, Ingersoll-Rand and more.
He earned an AB in economics, an MBA, and a doctorate in business administration, all from Harvard University. He is an active surfer, golfer and skier, and he plays on an adult ice hockey team with his oldest son.
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