Shapers and Founders: The Untold Stories of Asia’s Extraordinary Owner CEOs

Shapers and Founders: The Untold Stories of Asia’s Extraordinary Owner-CEOs, written by a team of McKinsey experts, reveals the leadership strategies behind Asia’s highest-performing entrepreneur-led companies. Drawing on rigorous empirical research, hundreds of hours of interviews, and deep personal relationships built over decades of advisory work, the authors distill the distinctive leadership playbook that has powered Asia’s rise.

Shapers and Founders explores how, in boardrooms and backstreets alike, these owner-CEOs have built national champions and global contenders, often from modest beginnings and in unforgiving markets. Through candid, in-depth conversations with entrepreneurs across Bangkok, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, and Tokyo, the book reveals the core behaviors and governing mindsets that truly set these founders and CEOs apart.

Readers will also discover:

• insights into Asia’s emergence as one of the world’s most dynamic regions, which accounts for most of the world’s population and global trade, with founder-led companies driving disproportionate value creation in the region
  
• one-on-one interviews with founders and CEOs of Asia’s most successful businesses, who reveal their own unique personal journeys and how they have helped shape Asia into what it is today
  
• the six core behaviors of Asia’s most extraordinary owner-CEOs, which offer a blueprint for building enduring institutions and leading with bold ambition, resilience, and purpose in any market
  
• practical leadership mindsets that professional CEOs, aspiring and existing founders, family-business executives, and next-generation leaders can apply in their own organizations
  

Written for global entrepreneurs, professional CEOs, investors, and board members seeking to understand what great stewardship looks like amid tremendous growth and change, Shapers and Founders delivers research-backed insights into the leadership behaviors and mindsets driving Asia’s most value-creating companies.

*********************

About the Author

GAUTAM KUMRA is the chairman and managing partner of McKinsey’s offices in Asia and has served on McKinsey’s Shareholders Council, the firm’s highest decision-making body. A co-founder of the McKinsey Center for CEO Excellence, he has spent 30 years advising Asian and global clients on growth strategy, organization transformation, leadership development, and governance.

CHERYL LIM is part of the founding leadership team of the McKinsey Center for CEO Excellence, where she helps design and deliver leadership programs for senior executives across Asia. Cheryl is also a global leader in the firm’s People and Organization Performance practice, and advises public- and private-sector clients on leadership development, talent management, culture change, and operating model transformations. Cheryl has led large-scale transformations across Asia and the Middle East.

JOYDEEP SENGUPTA is the founder of the McKinsey Center for CEO Excellence, where he helps CEOs and business leaders transform organizational performance and health. With nearly three decades in management consulting, he has served on McKinsey’s Shareholders Council and chairs the McKinsey Asia and Greater China Risk Committee. He has led McKinsey’s banking, strategy and organization practices and authored publications on CEO leadership, digital strategy, and organizational change.