Thomas C. Lawton speaking in a boardroom workshop, standing beside a flipchart, with participants seated in the foreground.
Thomas C. Lawton

Professor of Strategy and International Business · PhD FRSA FCMI

When politics changes the rules of competition.

I work on how companies handle geopolitics, regulation, and power: how firms see change coming, and what they do when the rules move.

Speaking Books Advisory
Thomas C. Lawton, chest-up portrait in a navy suit, white shirt, and striped tie, photographed in a light corridor.

I am Co-Editor-in-Chief of Long Range Planning, author or editor of nine books, and founder and CEO of Rockbarra. Associate at the Møller Institute, Churchill College, University of Cambridge. Professorships in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Thirty years with executives: companies, family enterprises, investor rooms, state agencies, and business-school cohorts. The writing and the boardroom work ask the same questions.

Books

Nine books.

Author or editor, 1997 to 2027. Three jackets here. Each title links to its publisher.

Cover of the Cambridge Handbook of Nonmarket Strategy in a Global Context, navy jacket. Cambridge Handbook of Nonmarket Strategy in a Global Context Cambridge University Press · forthcoming January 2027 Cover of Aligning for Advantage, Oxford University Press, red cube on white. Aligning for Advantage Oxford University Press · 2014 Cover of Breakout Strategy, McGraw-Hill, exploding light bulb. Breakout Strategy McGraw-Hill · 2007
All nine
Thomas C. Lawton standing beside the Long Range Planning Elsevier banner.

LRPLong Range Planning

Since 2022

Co-Editor-in-Chief

I help steer the field’s oldest journal of strategic planning. Findings that matter for practice often surface there first.

The journal

Articles

Selected papers.

Thomas C. Lawton with an executive cohort in a tiered lecture hall.

Speaking

Keynotes and boardrooms.

Keynotes, board briefings, and multi-day executive programmes. Geopolitics, nonmarket strategy, and how leadership teams reassess when the rules move. Work reaches companies, schools, family offices, and investor audiences. What matters is what the room does next.

Speaking

Practice

Rockbarra.

Rockbarra is the advisory practice. I am founder and CEO. Retained work for companies, family offices, and investors lives on that site; school partnerships too.

Rockbarra Advisory here

Contact

Write to info@rockbarra.com.