McKinsey & Company

Confidence 0.95 · 13 sources · last confirmed 2026-07-09

Global management consulting firm; runs QuantumBlack as its AI arm and MGI as its independent economics-and-business-research arm (established 1990; explicitly not commissioned or funded by clients — funded by McKinsey partners, with editorial direction owned by MGI directors). A recurring data partner of the AI Index (the McKinsey Global AI Survey is the underlying instrument behind many AI Index adoption numbers — see methodological notes on the AI Index entity page). The wiki holds five complementary first-party McKinsey sources as of May 2026: Rewired 2nd ed (practitioner playbook), Sternfels 2026 (HBR IdeaCast) (firm-as-vendor self-narrative), and the MGI triplet [[2026-03-25-russell-bradley-mgi-race-takes-off-next-big-arenas|MGI The race takes off in the next big arenas of competition]] (March 2026, industry-and-competition layer) + the 12 May 2026 virtual event companion + [[2025-11-25-yee-mgi-agents-robots-and-us-skill-partnerships|MGI Agents, Robots, and Us: Skill Partnerships in the Age of AI]] (Nov 2025, workforce-and-skills layer). The MGI two-layer panorama (industry × workforce) is now the wiki’s most comprehensive single-publisher anchor on AI-and-the-economy. As of 26 May 2026 MGI is promoted to its own entity page (McKinsey Global Institute) per the 3rd-mention rule; this page retains the firm-level coverage.

Appears in this wiki via

• 2026-05-03-rewired-second-edition-sample — Rewired, McKinsey’s flagship Tech & AI transformation playbook (2nd edition, Wiley 2026). Authors: Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje, Rob Levin (with Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky from QuantumBlack). Headline empirical claims drawn from McKinsey client work: 20% EBITDA uplift on average, $3 of incremental EBITDA per $1 invested, 1–2 year breakeven, across ~20 deep-dive AI-leader companies (drawn from a study set of ~200 companies).
• 2026-02-09-sternfels-mckinsey-survive-ai-and-reinvent-consulting — How McKinsey Plans to Survive AI (and Reinvent Consulting) (HBR IdeaCast, 9 Feb 2026). Bob Sternfels (Global Managing Partner) interviewed by Adi Ignatius (HBR editor-in-chief). The firm-as-vendor self-narrative. Surfaces the 40k humans + 20k agents = 60k workforce datapoint (up from 3k agents 18 months prior; on track for 1:1 human-to-agent ratio in ~18 months), the outcome-underwriting business model migration (~33% of revenues today; aspirationally majority by end-of-Sternfels-term), the post-controversy compliance overhaul ($1B invested; head of internal audit hired from Apple, head of compliance from Walmart; publicly-traded-equivalent governance standards adopted despite remaining private), and the hiring-process overhaul based on 20-year self-applied analytics (now indexes on resilience / team-sport-experience / aptitude-to-learn rather than perfect-marks credentials).
• AI Index — recurring analytics/research partner; the 2025 and 2026 editions explicitly disclose McKinsey instruments behind adoption data.
• 2026-04-28-mit-sloan-ai-maturity — MIT CISR’s Total AI Effectiveness measure draws on a McKinsey survey for adoption baselines.
• 2026-03-25-russell-bradley-mgi-race-takes-off-next-big-arenas — The race takes off in the next big arenas of competition (MGI, March 2026, 127 pp.). Six authors: Kevin Russell, Chris Bradley (MGI director), Naveen Sastry, Suhayl Chettih, Kweilin Ellingrud (MGI director), Natalya Goryunova. The 2026 update of MGI’s October 2024 The next big arenas of competition. Headline findings: 18 future arenas added $18T in market cap and $1.4T in revenue since 2022 (29% market-cap CAGR vs 8% for non-arenas; 11% revenue CAGR vs 1%); the AI foundation three-arena cluster (semiconductors + cloud + AI software) accounts for $11T of that market-cap accretion; coins “omniscalers” for nine cross-arena platform firms (Amazon, Tesla/X, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Samsung, Alibaba, Huawei) generating $700B operating cash flow + $800B R&D+capex in 2025 alone. Introduces the arena-creation potion (3-ingredient foresight heuristic) and arenas radar (firm-level diagnostic). Three swing factors for 2040: geopolitics / AI development pace / electrification pace.
• 2026-05-12-mgi-virtual-event-race-takes-off-next-big-arenas — MGI virtual event presenting the above report (12 May 2026, ~60 min). Bradley moderates; Russell + Ellingrud present; panel is Brendan Gaffey + Naveen Sastry + Gayatri Shenai (Suhayl Chettih is a PDF co-author but not on the panel). Transcript was re-fetched 2026-05-15 at --timeout 180000 after an initial 90s attempt timed out — the live-event session carries substantive Q&A material not in the PDF, including the Apollo-program-vs-omniscaler-capex comparison, the Anthropic/xAI infrastructure deal as live data point, NVIDIA’s $5T print, and Naveen Sastry’s “omniscalers are not conglomerates” defence with the founder-control structural claim (founders in direct operational control at 7 of 9; heavy cultural fingerprint at the other 2).
• 2026-06-18-ramaswamy-mckinsey-every-company-software-company — AI Is Turning Every Company Into a Software Company (the McKinsey Podcast, YouTube, 18 Jun 2026). The wiki’s first McKinsey-Podcast-channel ingest — distinct from the Rewired playbook, the Sternfels HBR self-narrative, and the MGI reports. McKinsey’s Eric Kutcher (North America Chair) interviews Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy on the cost-of-software collapse, “uber programmers,” enterprise change management, and AI pricing. Here McKinsey is the interviewer/host, not the claim-maker; the substantive content is Ramaswamy’s. (Editorial: Lucia Rahilly + Roberta Fusaro per the channel description.)
• 2026-06-24-mckinsey-ai-supercharging-software-development — AI Is Supercharging Software Development. Humans Determine Its Impact. (McKinsey & Company YouTube channel, 24 Jun 2026). A three-expert panel (Janaki Palaniappan, Martin Harrysson, Matt Linderman) diagnosing why AI coding-agent gains fail to convert to org-level value without workflow redesign — a software-engineering-specific restatement of the micro-productivity-trap thesis — plus which SWE skills are becoming obsolete vs. durable, and a claim that AI-generated code has so far been more verbose and less secure than human-written code.
• 2026-07-01-bello-mckinsey-podcast-serial-builder-advantage — The Serial Builder Advantage: Why Repeat Innovators Win (The McKinsey Podcast, YouTube, 1 Jul 2026). Jason Bello (Senior Partner) interviewed by Roberta Fusaro on new McKinsey research on corporate venture building: companies building 3+ ventures at once dramatically outperform one-shot builders; average break-even cost fell $125M (2024) → $77M (2025); a two-flavor taxonomy of AI in venture building (“AI as a business” vs. “AI in the background”); milestone-tranche funding; and a fact-based, blame-free culture as the enabling condition for fast pivots. The wiki’s sharpest quantified case yet for the dynamic-capabilities balancing-digital-portfolios microfoundation.
• 2026-07-09-catlin-mckinsey-podcast-real-ai-advantage — The real AI advantage (The McKinsey Podcast, YouTube, 9 Jul 2026, published the same day it was ingested). Tanguy Catlin (Senior Partner and MGI Director) interviewed by Roberta Fusaro on why AI-driven productivity gains get competed away and real competitive advantage comes from reinvention — explicitly names Rewired as the underlying framework. Introduces a three-lever theory of future advantage (proprietary data, habit-embedding, “metabolic rate of learning”), the knowledge-based → outcome-based organization shift, and a strategy/technology/people three-lens diagnostic for CEOs.
• 2025-11-25-yee-mgi-agents-robots-and-us-skill-partnerships — Agents, Robots, and Us: Skill Partnerships in the Age of AI (MGI, November 2025, 60-page report + 6-page technical appendix). Seven authors: Lareina Yee (MGI director, Bay Area; lead author), Anu Madgavkar (MGI partner, New Jersey), Sven Smit (MGI chairman, Amsterdam), Alexis Krivkovich (senior partner, Bay Area), Michael Chui (QuantumBlack senior fellow, Bay Area), Maria Jesus Ramirez (MGI senior fellow, Bay Area), Diego Castresana (engagement manager, New York). Academic advisers: Nobel laureate Sir Christopher Pissarides (LSE) + Matthew J. Slaughter (Tuck Dean). The workforce-and-skills layer companion to Race Takes Off’s industry layer — 7 occupation archetypes, Skill Change Index built using OpenAI GPT-4o for ~3.4M skill→DWA mappings, 57% technical-automation potential, $2.9T US economic value by 2030 (midpoint scenario). The wiki’s first MGI workforce panorama.

Affiliated authors in this wiki

• Eric Lamarre — Rewired 2nd ed lead author
• Kate Smaje — Rewired 2nd ed co-author
• Rob Levin — Rewired 2nd ed co-author
• Alex Singla — QuantumBlack global co-leader; Rewired contributing author
• Alexander Sukharevsky — QuantumBlack global co-leader; Rewired contributing author
• Bob Sternfels — Global Managing Partner since 2021. First wiki source mention by name in Sternfels 2026. Per the author-entity-promotion rule, do not promote on a single source — listed as Dangling. Promote on second-source mention.
• Gil Clee (likely; ASR-uncertain rendering “Gil Klee” in the manual transcript) — McKinsey Managing Director ~1967–1973 (Marvin Bower’s successor); author of a 1959 HBR paper Sternfels names as the precursor to the matrix-organization concept. First wiki mention; defer entity promotion (single source).
• Kevin Russell — MGI lead co-author on the 2026 Race takes off report. First wiki mention; deferred.
• Chris Bradley — MGI director; co-author on the 2026 Race takes off report; moderated the 12 May virtual-event panel. First wiki mention; deferred.
• Naveen Sastry — MGI co-author on the 2026 Race takes off report; panelist on the virtual event; McKinsey software practice lead, Bay Area; PhD computer science (voting-machine security). First wiki mention; deferred.
• Suhayl Chettih — MGI co-author on the 2026 Race takes off report. First wiki mention; deferred. Not a panelist on the live-event companion — earlier framing has been corrected.
• Kweilin Ellingrud — MGI director and co-author on the 2026 Race takes off report; presented the findings at the virtual event. First wiki mention; deferred.
• Natalya Goryunova — MGI co-author on the 2026 Race takes off report. First wiki mention; deferred.
• Brendan Gaffey — McKinsey TMT practice lead; PhD electrical engineering. Live-event panelist only (not on the report author list). First wiki mention; deferred.
• Gayatri Shenai — McKinsey New York senior partner; data-center / cloud authority; women-in-tech advocate. Live-event panelist only (not on the report author list). First wiki mention; deferred. ASR-rendering variability across the transcript (Shennai / Shanai / Guyry / guy tree); YouTube description’s Shenai is canonical.
• Shubham Singhal — MGI chair (named on report front matter). First wiki mention; deferred.
• Eric Kutcher — McKinsey North America Chair; host/interviewer on the McKinsey Podcast episode with Sridhar Ramaswamy. First wiki mention; deferred (single source).
• Jason Bello — McKinsey Senior Partner; interviewee on the serial-builder-advantage episode, the source of the corporate-venture-building research discussed there. First wiki mention; deferred (single source).
• Tanguy Catlin — McKinsey Senior Partner and MGI Director; interviewee on [[2026-07-09-catlin-mckinsey-podcast-real-ai-advantage|The real AI advantage]], source of the productivity-vs-reinvention thesis discussed there. First wiki mention; deferred (single source).
• Lucia Rahilly — named in the stock sign-off outro on the Ramaswamy episode, the Bello episode, and the Catlin episode — three mentions, still sign-off-only every time. Promoted to an entity page on this ingest per the MGI-precedent 3rd-mention threshold, rather than deferring indefinitely; her actual role (fixed co-host vs. rotating interviewer) remains an open question on her page.

MGI directors and partners

Detailed MGI org structure, research themes, and full author/adviser roster now live on the dedicated McKinsey Global Institute entity page (promoted 26 May 2026 per the 3rd-mention rule). Brief continuity note: the MGI chairmanship transitioned from Shubham Singhal (named on the March 2026 Race Takes Off front matter) to Sven Smit (named as chairman on the November 2025 Agents, Robots, and Us front matter) — chronologically Smit’s chairmanship was earlier; the March 2026 report’s front matter likely reflects a later mid-2026 transition. Note: this is a chronology note worth refining as more MGI sources are ingested.

Methodological notes

• McKinsey’s annual Global AI Survey is the underlying instrument for several AI-adoption headline numbers across the wiki (most visibly the 78%/88% organizational adoption figures in the AI Index 2025 / 2026 editions).
• Rewired’s 20% EBITDA uplift comes from McKinsey’s deep-dive case work on AI-leader companies, not from a representative sample. This is vendor-of-deployment data, useful but selection-effect-aware. Independent corroboration: see the AI Index 2026’s 14–26% productivity-gain range in customer support and software development, and the OpenAI HBR 2026’s 10–25% EBITDA range.