Moving up, Finding Success, and Building a Career That Lasts
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Matthew Bidwell
In a world obsessed with flexibility, staying power is the key to sustainable success—for individuals and organizations alike.
Author, The Insider Advantage | Professor, Wharton | Faculty Director, Wharton People Analytics Initiative
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
We’ve spent decades predicting a future of work defined by job-hopping, freelancing, and endlessly flexible workforces. But the data tells a different story, says Wharton professor Matthew Bidwell: one where putting down deep roots is the key to success, both for employees and for their employers. As Faculty Director of the Wharton People Analytics Initiative and author of The Insider Advantage, Matthew has spent 27 years studying how careers and organizations actually work. Talent isn’t “plug and play,” he says: an individual’s effectiveness depends not only on their skills, but on the relationships, trust, institutional knowledge, and reputation they build over time. That means employees often have more to gain by growing inside an organization than constantly jumping between them—and employers have more to gain by developing and retaining talent than aiming for a highly flexible, “liquid” workforce. In practical, counterintuitive talks, he shows individuals how to build careers that compound over time and gives leaders a smarter, longer-term approach to talent management and organizational success.
Matthew Bidwell is the Xingmei Zhang and Yongge Dai Professor in Wharton’s Management Department. He is also the Faculty Director of the Wharton People Analytics Initiative and the Academic Director of Wharton’s CHRO program. His research examines new patterns in careers and employment.
In his book, The Insider Advantage, he draws on two decades of research and exclusive access to top executives, arguing that staying at one employer for longer won’t stall your growth, but actually help you rise faster, adapt easier, and find real fulfillment at work. Publishers Weekly calls it “an insightful resource for those contemplating the next step in their career.” In talks, Matthew draws on his book to show audiences how to capitalize on your connections and knowledge to climb the ladder and do truly meaningful work. Audiences also learn when to actually make the jump to a new company—though it won’t be when you think.
Matthew’s work has been published in a variety of academic journals and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street JournalI, and Financial Times. It has also been recognized with a Scholarly Achievement Award from the Academy of Management Human Resources Division, the John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association, and the Scholarly Contribution Award from Administrative Science Quarterly. He is currently an Associate Editor at Administrative Science Quarterly.
Matthew earned a Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School, an S.M. in Political Science from MIT, and an M.Chem from Oxford. Prior to Wharton, he taught at INSEAD and worked at McKinsey and Company.
Speech Topics
Corporate CultureRead more
The Long GameHow Great Organizations Build Talent
We’ve heard that the future of work is flexible: hiring the skills you need when you need them. But Wharton professor Matthew Bidwell says that the opposite is true—and the companies that get ahead right now will be the ones that invest in their employees for the long term and build the relationships, trust, culture, and organizational knowledge that enable sustained success.
Matthew has spent decades studying hiring, careers, and how people become effective inside organizations. In this practical talk, he shows leaders how to develop their talent strategy and get ahead of the competition. He explains simple steps to strengthen your onboarding and shorten the learning curve, why talent management is much more like steering a supertanker than a speedboat, why developing internal talent often beats relying on just-in-time hiring, how succession planning can become a tool for development, and much more. Audiences will leave better equipped to retain and develop the people they already have, plan for future hires, and build a workforce designed for success.
BusinessRead more
The Insider AdvantageBuilding a Career That Lasts
Conventional career advice tells individuals to keep moving: switch jobs, chase the next opportunity, and never stay anywhere too long. But decades of research suggest that some of our biggest career advantages come from doing the opposite.
Wharton professor Matthew Bidwell, author of The Insider Advantage, has spent three decades studying how people actually build successful careers. His research shows that success depends on more than skills alone: the longer we spend inside an organization, the more we build the relationships, reputation, institutional knowledge, and trust that make us more effective and open up new opportunities.
In this research-backed talk, Matthew shows audiences how to think more strategically about where they work, when to stay, and when it really is time to leave. Attendees will learn how to develop the internal relationships that accelerate their growth and build a career that compounds over time.
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