Bina Mehta charts route to sustainable growth in inaugural lecture

Businesses must navigate stakeholder challenges and deliver sustainable growth that is productive, resilient and adaptable, according to Bina Mehta, KPMG UK Chair and Visiting Professor at Bayes Business School, as she delivered her inaugural lecture.

Bina was appointed as Visiting Professor at Bayes in 2024. Her wide-ranging career with KPMG has spanned 30 years and seen her work with large companies across the world in India, US and Canada, predominantly focusing on M&A and restructuring.

Her lecture, titled ‘Sustainable Growth’, called on repeatable, responsible and ethical growth delivered in a way that balances the needs of people, planet and profit. She set out the context against which sustainable growth needs to be delivered– demographics, deglobalisation deleveraging, decarbonisation, and digitalisation – misalignments that prevent progress at the pace and scale required, namely timeframe or immediacy bias, competition bias, culture and skills. She also shared the qualities expected of future leaders.

Following the talk, Bina answered a wide-ranging set of questions from an engaged audience, chaired by Professor Amit Nigam, Head of the Faculty of Management at Bayes. This included a discussion about the role of government, educating people to accept and accelerate action to meet global targets, and whether or not more global incentivisation was required to generate collaboration. The role of AI in sustainability was also explored, with Bina  highlighting the significant opportunity that AI provides although adoption was low, partly due to concerns about the accuracy of the outcome and quality of data as identified in research by KPMG’s Board Leadership centre.

Another topic of conversation was the role academic institutions can play in being champions of sustainable growth, particularly in shaping the mindset of future leaders.

On delivering her inaugural lecture, Bina Mehta said:

“It was a pleasure to be back at Bayes – thank you for the engagement and lively discussion about how we can achieve, maintain and measure sustainable growth.

“Economic growth and sustainability must go hand in hand to deliver long term value. We have seen the inequality gap between countries reduce over the past 40 years, but within many countries it is rising sharply.

“Addressing some of the challenges presented will fall to younger generations – with 75 per cent of today’s managers being millennials. Future leaders need to be adept in influencing and building partnerships, while being flexible and, agile, demonstrate empathy and humility and develop resilience.

“They wil need to be change agents with the courage to chart  a new course, be able to thrive in uncertainty, lean into fear and inspire followership through purpose and values.”

Professor Nigam said:

“Building sustainable growth is one of the biggest challenges we face – as researchers, leaders and global citizens.

“It was wonderful to hear from somebody of Bina’s experience of driving social mobility and corporate structuring around the world, as well as pioneering change programmes to inspire future leadership.

“At Bayes we recognise our role in carrying out research that informs practice and helps to nurture tomorrow’s leaders, through responsible education that has diversity, equity and inclusion, and sustainability, at its core. Bina’s lecture provided plenty of food for thought as we strive to meet and succeed targets."