Senior Faculty Fellow

Mr. Foster is an emeritus director of McKinsey & Company, Inc. At McKinsey, Mr. Foster was a director and senior partner. While at McKinsey he founded several practices including the technology and innovation practice, the healthcare practice and the private equity practice. From 1995 to 1998 he led McKinsey’s worldwide knowledge development.

Mr. Foster’s research interests are in the relationships between capital formation, innovation, and regulation. Mr. Foster has written two best-selling books: Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (1986) and Creative Destruction (2001), as well as several dozen articles in research and popular journals. In 1999 – 2000, Mr. Foster was the external leader of the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on Innovation and Economic Power which led to the publication of Technological Innovation and Economic Performance, Princeton University Press (2001).

In the nonprofit sector Mr. Foster is an member of the executive committee of the board of directors of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center , a member of the Yale School of Medicine Dean’s advisory board, member of the Harvard Medical School Health Care Policy advisory committee, co-chair of the National Academies (of Science, Engineering and Medicine) President’s Circle, the National Research Council 's Policy and Global Affairs committee, and the executive committee of the W. M. Keck Foundation. He is a member of the board of the Council for Aid to Education and serves as chair of the strategy committee there.

In the profit sector, Mr. Foster is lead director at Innosight, LLC, a consulting firm focusing on advising large firms on how to capitalize on disruptive innovation. Mr. Foster is a venture partner at Lux Capital and a general partner at Mansa Capital, a growth equity investment fund focused on early stage healthcare services and technology. Mr. Foster is chair of the nominating & governance committee for athenahealth, a leading SaaS based healthcare information technology company. He is a member of the board and the audit committee of the Trust Company of the West. He is a founding member of the Goldman Sachs Chambers Street Executive Network.  Mr. Foster is a member of the Advisory Board of TEDMED.

In the past Mr. Foster has been a member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Santa Fe Institute and was the 2011 Chair of the Healthcare Data Initiative, a joint venture of the Department of Health & Human Services and the Institute of Medicine. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.

Mr. Foster received his BS, MS, and PhD from Yale University in Engineering and Applied Science.