Thomas Thurston is CEO and Founder of Growth Science, an empirical analytics firm that helps corporations predict if businesses will survive or fail. He’s best known for using empirical research to discover counterintuitive breakthroughs in the notoriously challenging domains of strategy and innovation. Recently the subject of The Innovator’s Manifesto: Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth by bestselling author Michael Raynor, Thomas has counseled thousands of executives, venture investors, scholars and innovators across the globe.
Authoring multiple academic and peer reviewed articles, Thomas’s work has been referenced in scholarly and popular literature such as Think Twice: Harnessing The Power of Counterintuition by professor and investment strategist Michael Mauboussin.
Growing up in Honduras, Bolivia, India, Nepal and Indonesia, Thomas is avid about the interdependence of business, innovation and social wellbeing. He believes the world’s understanding of business has a larger impact on society than just about anything else within humanity’s power to influence. This has translated into a lifelong passion to advance the scientific rigor with which the world practices strategy, innovation and growth.
Formerly, Thomas was a corporate venturing professional at Intel where he guided new business growth and investment. He helped found a high performance computing venture that was later acquired and has been a popular columnist for publications such as InsideHPC, a leading industry blog for high performance computing.
Thomas is also noted for his industry leadership in revenue-based venture funding. He was the Founder, Executive Director and is a current Board Member of the Revenue Capital Association - the nonprofit trade association for revenue-based investing.
In 2007 he was invited by Professor Clayton Christensen to collaborate as a Fellow at the Harvard Business School. In addition to his fellowship at Harvard, Thomas holds a BA, MBA and Juris Doctor. Currently a non-practicing Attorney, Thomas is licensed to practice law in Oregon and previously practiced corporate and intellectual property law. He’s a Member of the Forum for Growth and Innovation at the Harvard Business School has been a guest lecturer at schools including Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Predictive Reduction
A discipline in management and complexity science emphasizing empirical predictive and reductionist methodologies to improve strategic outcomes. It’s the science of business predictions.