A Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management deeply involved in Action Learning and consulting across industries such as Construction, Healthcare, Finance, IT, Oil & Energy, and Pharma, Undheim has strong expertise in the functional domains of strategy, policy/regulatory, marketing, and entrepreneurship with a focus on the role of technology in the workplace.

Undheim runs MIT Startup Exchange (STEX), a service of the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, connecting industry to startups, which joins up the innovation leaders of 220 of the world’s largest companies with about 1000+ MIT-connected startups who, each and every one, are reshaping the very industries they are entering.

Undheim founded Yegii Inc., the insight network. People have called Yegii “the McKinsey of the digital age”, as it provides pathbreaking digital knowledge analytics software as a service (SaaS), providing a hybrid of technology and strategy expertise on demand. Yegii is part of the so-called “sharing economy”, akin to the way Uber is transforming transportation or Air BnB is revolutionizing lodging. In fact, Yegii makes use of, spare, clustered brain capacity among global professionals, i.e. produces top tier strategy consulting at a significant discount because it is based on outsourced, and typically virtual, expert teams, but with a selection methodology and technology that maintains superior quality without the inefficient partner/junior model and without the fixed costs of traditional consulting.

Undheim has worked with multinational companies, with mid-caps and startups in Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Norway, and the US. In a previous role at Oracle Corp. he was the Director of Standards Strategy and Policy, a role largely dedicated to relationship management and business development.

While working for the EU, he led a major digital learning initiative (ePractice.eu) and was in charge of benchmarking the economics of e-government across 27+ countries. A serial entrepreneur who has run a business incubator, he has a proven ability to build an organization from scratch and manage strategic initiatives through important growth cycles. The author of Leadership From Below (2008), a book on distributed management, he is an expert on strategy frameworks, action learning, virtual teamwork, knowledge management, cleantech strategy, and e-government. In 2002, he was awarded an interdisciplinary PhD from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, on the thesis What the Net Can’t do. Undheim speaks six languages and is a frequent public speaker.

In the past, Trond Arne Undheim has conducted the following work:

In 2014, Trond adviced GDF Suez Energy North America on the future of the Energy industry and the technology and business trends that are reshaping its evolution.

In 2012, Trond conducted a strategy study of MIT Sloan’s approach to experiential learning. He interviewed 100+ people and benchmarked the program against 10 other management schools to identify key differentiators. The report, A Study of MIT Sloan Action Learning: Status, Opportunities, Challenges, was widely circulated internally. Implementing its recommendations has led to tangible improvements. The interview process itself contributed to a greater sense of a common purpose.

In 2011, Trond conducted a study of Cloud Computing standardization initiatives for Oracle Corporation. Trond categorized industry activities in an innovative matrix. The study led to renewed efforts to better rally around the opportunity provided by cloud computing standardization efforts in-house and externally.

In 2003, Trond took over a failing web initiative, a good practices framework. By enlisting support from unlikely sources, by partnering with other agencies that in some ways even were competitors, Trond managed to turn it around. In turn, several people started seeing it as their own initiative. They developed pride in it. ePractice.eu is now the world’s largest best practice initiative of its kind: 100 thousand members. It had 700% growth the 1st year, and has well over 1637 cases (valued at € 1 billion) from 35 countries. A few years ago, the 3-year initiative was renewed for another decade.

In 1998, Trond spearheaded a regional innovation study called Trøndelag 2030, where he brought  a multitude of regional stakeholders together to think about a future of increased collaboration across what has been called the triple helix (government, academia, and business) around the university town of Trondheim, Norway. As a result of the work, he started a consulting firm as well as a business incubator. InnnoVisionHouse was an incubator for 20 new media companies, two examples include graphics company Falanx which was acquired by ARM and Plasus Technologies which was acquired by DEFA Group. More importantly, the interviewees began to think of themselves as actors in the same ecosystem and collaboration has since intensified.