Keith McFarland

Keith R. McFarland is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal and New York Times Bestseller The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers, as well as Bounce: The Art of Turning Tough Times into Triumph.

A technology CEO, business school dean, consultant, and writer, McFarland has provided management insight to organizations for more than 20 years. He writes a monthly online column for BusinessWeek and is the founder of McFarland Strategy Partners, which provides strategic advisory services to companies such as Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, The Los Alamos National Laboratory, Vans, House of Blues, Motorola, and scores of middle market growth firms.

Prior to establishing his consultancy, he served as CEO of two technology firms including, most recently, Nivo International, the exclusive provider of certification services for Microsoft Office products through 2,000 testing centers in 56 countries worldwide.

McFarland previously served as chairman and CEO of Collectech Systems, a two-time Inc. 500 company in Westlake Village, California. He led the transformation of Collectech into the leading customer contact and accounts receivable management service provider for the telecommunications industry. As a result of his efforts, Collectech's revenues grew from $10 million to $100 million in four years as it secured multi-year contracts with Verizon, AT&T, DIRECTV, and many other leading telecommunications firms. He successfully sold the company to buy-out firm Harvest Partners and GE Capital.

While running Collectech, McFarland pursued his lifelong dream of studying with management theorist Peter Drucker. He has since completed his coursework and qualifying exams for a doctorate from the Drucker School of Business at Claremont University.

At the age of 26, McFarland became one of the youngest business school deans in the nation. As a dean for the Pepperdine University School of Business and Management (recently named the 11th best executive program in the world), he developed joint-venture executive education programs in the US, Europe, and Asia, and founded the quarterly business journal Management Insight. He ranked consistently as one of Pepperdine's top professors in executive student evaluations.

McFarland's first book, The Breakthrough Company – which has been heralded as the Good to Great for growth companies – represents the most exhaustive study of successful growth companies in history. He and his research team spent five years assembling and analyzing a database of more than 7,000 companies – every company to ever be named to Inc. magazine's annual list of 500 fastest growing companies. In addition to debuting as #1 on the Wall Street Journal list, the book also listed on the national bestseller lists of The New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. Chris Gardner – made famous in the Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness – called McFarland's new book, Bounce, "an indispensible guide for leadership and life."