Founder & CEO
Ascendant Growth Partners
Mark W. Johnson is the founder and CEO of Ascendant Growth Partners. He co-founded the strategy and innovation management consultancy Innosight with Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen in 2000, which was acquired by Huron Consulting Group in 2017. From 2022-2025, he was Huron’s Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer.
With over 30 years of experience, he has been a strategic adviser to Global 1000 companies and startups across industries including automotive, healthcare, aerospace, energy, and consumer goods, as well as the government of Singapore on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Mark is the author of "Lead from the Future: How to Turn Visionary Thinking Into Breakthrough Growth" (2020), a manifesto for “Future Back” thinking that was named of the 10 best business books of 2020 by Forbes and Inc Magazine and was an Axiom Business Book Awards gold medal winner in 2021. Mark is also the author of Reinvent Your Business Model: How to Seize the White Space for Transformative Growth (2018) and a co-author of Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future (2017). He has written and co-written numerous articles for a wide range of publications, including the McKinsey Award-winning “Reinventing Your Business Model” for Harvard Business Review, one of HBR’s 50 best-selling articles of all time. Prior to Innosight, Mark was a nuclear power-trained surface-warfare officer in the U.S. Navy.
Mark has an MBA from Harvard Business School, a master’s degree in civil engineering and engineering mechanics from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy.
Keynote Address: Leading From the Future through Future-Back Strategy
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
9:30 AM - 10:30 AM