Bill Bigler, Founder and CEO
Bio
Bill Bigler is Founder and CEO of Bill Bigler Associates and is retiring as Associate Professor of Strategy and the MBA Program Director in the College of Business at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, Louisiana on June 30, 2016. He returned to full time academia in January 2008 after 25 years in strategy consulting to accomplish his next set of objectives of continuing as thought leader and contributor to research and teaching around his passion of robust strategy formulation, world class strategy execution, innovation, profitable growth, and risk management with their impacts on firm valuation. He was the 2012-2013 President of the Board of the Association for Strategic Planning, one of the leading professional societies in strategy. With Bill Bigler Associates Bill wants to return to helping firms with opportunities and challenges in growing Total Shareholder Return for the publicly traded firm and owner wealth for the private for-profit firm.
He has thirty years of Strategy and Organizational Effectiveness consulting experience working in numerous and diverse industries such as light bulb manufacturing, digital imaging, medical imaging, industrial gas, consumer and industrial products, home improvement products manufacturing, retail, financial services, defense components manufacturing, commercial construction and real estate development and education, to name a representative sample.
Bill was a Director in the Strategic Change practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and led the practice in the Southwest Region. Bill was a principal in the Strategy arm of the Hay Group, President and founder of his own strategy boutique for five years – Southwest Management Consultants, principal in Ernst and Young’s Business Change Implementation practice and co-director of the Strategy practice for Thomas Group, an operations excellence consulting firm, before joining PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Virtually all of Bill’s assignments have been to partner with CEOs and their direct reports in the area of business unit strategy formulation and implementation and the interactions of the functional/process areas of marketing, sales, fulfillment, operations, customer service and R&D/new product development. These assignments have helped to affect planned gains in sales growth, profit increases, capital avoidance, agility and response times and risk reduction. Bill is a sought after facilitator when clients need to conduct periodic key “strategy summit” meetings of key top executives and board of directors members. Bill served on the Board of Directors for Nitro Security, Inc. of Idaho Falls, Idaho in the 2003-2005 time frame. Nitro was acquired by MacAfee in 2011.
Bill’s first book entitled The New Science of Strategy Execution: How Established Firms Become Fast, Sleek Wealth Creators was published in January 2004 by Praeger. Bill is working on his second book tentatively titled The Business Performance Engine, inspired by his experience on the board of Nitro Security
Educational Background
Bill received a BS in Civil Engineering and Construction Management, an MBA, and a PhD in Strategic Management (minor in finance), all from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Prior University Positions
Bill has served on the faculty of the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in the early 1980s and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Strategic Management there through 1997 teaching in their EMBA program. He has also taught in the EMBA program at the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Other – Bill served in the Combat Corps of Engineers Reserves in the 1972 to 1980 time frame and was Honorably Discharged as Captain in 1980. He has served on the statewide board of directors for Texas Special Olympics for five years and three other key not-for-profit boards throughout the state of Texas and supports several community endeavors. He is the Founding President of the Dallas Area Chapter of the Association for Strategic Planning in 2005 and was elected to the national Board of Directors of ASP in June 2011 and served as president of the board in 2012-2013.
He is married and is the father of two great children and the stepfather of two great children and is an avid golfer and hobbyist rock and jazz drummer when he has the time.