Roland Kupers is an Independent Consultant on Complexity, Resilience and Energy Transition, as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University. A theoretical physicist by university training, Roland spent the first 11 years of his career with AT&T in the Netherlands and in Italy, holding different business management positions. His last assignment there was as Regional Managing Director for Northern Europe.
After AT&T, Roland spent a sabbatical year looking at new developments in understanding the dynamics of organisations, as well as publishing and lecturing on the topic of complex systems. In 1999 he joined Royal Dutch Shell in various senior executive functions, including Vice President for Sustainable Development and Vice President Global LNG. He was closely involved with strategy and scenario planning.
He has published widely, including in HBR, on Project Syndicate and co-authored The Essence of Scenarios: Learning from the Shell Experience (Amsterdam 2014) and Complexity and the Art of Public Policy (Princeton 2014). Roland was a co-author of a report commissioned by the German Government on a New Growth Path for Europe. In 2013 he was the Director for the inception phase of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.