Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, specializing in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. She is Founding Chair & Director of the Harvard-wide Advanced Leadership Initiative (2005-2018), an innovation she co-founded that helps successful leaders at the top of their fields apply their skills to national and global challenges in their next life stage, to build a new leadership force for the world. She is currently finishing a new book, Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Small Innovation at a Time, scheduled for publication in February 2020, and conducting research on digital disruption, organizational transformation, and the local entrepreneurship revolution.
Her strategic and practical insights guide leaders of large and small organizations worldwide, through teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations and governments. The former chief Editor of Harvard Business Review, Professor Kanter has been repeatedly named to lists of the “50 most powerful women in the world” (Times of London), and the “50 most influential business thinkers in the world” (Thinkers 50, and is now in their Hall of Fame). She has received 24 honorary doctoral degrees, as well as numerous leadership awards, lifetime achievement awards, and prizes, which include Distinguished Career Awards from the Academy of Management and also the American Sociological Association (Organizations, Occupations and Work Section); the World Teleport Association's “Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year” award; the Pinnacle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce; the International Leadership Award from the Association of Leadership Professionals; the Warren Bennis Award for Leadership Excellence; the Everett Rogers Innovation Award from the Norman Lear Center for media and society; and several Harvard Business Review McKinsey Awards for the years’ best articles.
She is the author or coauthor of 19 books. Her recent book, MOVE: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, is a sweeping look across industries and technologies shaping the future of mobility and the leadership required for transformation. Her book The Change Masters was named one of the most influential business books of the 20th century (Financial Times); SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good, one of the ten best business books of the year by Amazon.com; Evolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow, one of the five best books of the year by the Toronto Star. Confidence: How Winning & Losing Streaks Begin & End, a New York Times bestseller (also a #1 Business Week bestseller), describes the culture of high-performance organizations compared with those in decline and shows how to lead turnarounds, whether in businesses, schools, sports teams, or countries. Men & Women of the Corporation, winner of the C. Wright Mills award for the best book on social issues and called a classic, offers insight into the individual and organizational factors that promote success or perpetuate disadvantage for women; a spin-off video, A Tale of ‘O’: On Being Different, is a widely-used tool for diversity training. A related book, Work & Family in the United States, set a policy agenda, honored by a coalition of university centers creating in her honor the Rosabeth Moss KanterAward for the best work/family research. Another award-winning book, When Giants Learn to Dance, showed how to master the new terms of competition at the dawn of the global information age. World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy identified the dilemmas of globalization for cities, a theme she continues to pursue in her book MOVE.
She advises numerous CEOs and senior executives, including co-founding and leading a consulting group and serving as a Senior Advisor for IBM’s Global Citizenship portfolio from 1999-2012. She serves many business and non-profit boards, such as City Year, the urban “Peace Corps” addressing the school dropout crisis through national service, and has served on many commissions including the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors. She speaks widely, sharing the platform with Presidents, Prime Ministers, and CEOs at major events, such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and national industry conferences in over 20 countries. Before joining the Harvard Business School faculty, she held tenured professorships at Yale University and Brandeis University and was a Fellow at Harvard Law School, simultaneously holding a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Michigan.
Americans are stuck. We live with travel delays on congested roads, shipping delays on clogged railways, and delays on repairs, project approvals, and funding due to gridlocked leadership. These delays affect us all, whether you are a daily commuter, a frequent flyer, an entrepreneur, an online shopper, a job-seeker, or a community leader. If people can't move, if goods are delayed, and if information networks can't connect, then economic opportunity deteriorates and social inequity grows.
We have been stuck for too long, writes Harvard Business School professor and best-selling author Rosabeth Moss Kanter. In Move, Kanter visits cities and states across the country to tackle our challenges―and reveal solutions―on the roads and rails, and in our cities, skies, and the halls of Washington, D.C. We meet a visionary engineer and public servant spearheading an underwater tunnel in Miami to streamline port operations and redirect constant traffic from the city center. We see mayors partnering with large corporations and nimble entrepreneurs to unveil parking apps, bike-sharing programs, and seamless Wi-Fi networks in greener, more vibrant, more connected cities. And we learn about much-needed efforts―such as dynamic tolls on highways and fees based on vehicle miles traveled―to reduce our dependence on the outmoded gasoline tax in our new electric car age.
It all adds up to a new vision for American mobility, where local leaders shape initiatives without waiting for Congress to act, and ambitious companies partner with governments to tackle projects that serve the public good, create jobs, and improve quality of life while providing healthy sources of investment. With unique insight and unrivaled expertise, Kanter gives us a sweeping look across America, revealing the innovative projects, vital leaders, and bold solutions that are moving our transportation infrastructure toward a cleaner, faster, and more prosperous future.
Is success simply a matter of money and talent? Or is there another reason why some people and organizations always land on their feet, while others, equally talented, stumble again and again? There's a fundamental principle at work -- confidence -- that makes the difference between winning and losing in any competition. Based on investigation of success and failure in companies such as Continental Airlines and Verizon and sports teams such as the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles, as well as the arenas of education, health care, and politics, Kanter expores a new theory and practice of success and provides people in leadership postiions with a prescriptive program for maintaining a winning streak or turning around a downward spiral.
Supercorp is based on a 3-year study involving more than 350 interviews in 20 countries to identify the leadership practices and operating methods of major companies seeking profitable growth through innovation that benefits society. For example, when the tsunami and earthquake struck India in 2006, IBM did not just write a check. It used its core competence-expertise in technology-and its skilled people to accomplish what government and relief agencies could not: an information system and supply chain that tracked and managed the flow of relief supplies. Its efforts were crucial in avoiding the all-too-familiar problem in disaster relief-chaos and mobs of desperate people. IBM's actions, as well as many others reported on by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, capture the emerging zeitgeist of business: the vanguard company simultaneously pursuing-and creating synergy between-opportunity, growth, profit, humanistic values and social good. Vanguard companies have a sense of mission enabling them to deliver what their customers want in a way that is significantly better than the competition. As a formula for the future it brings together the necessity of financial success shareholders demand and the social conscience demanded from the new generation moving up the corporate ranks.
Innovation & Entrepreneurship in the American Corporation
The Change Masters looks behind the scenes at some of the most important companies in America, including Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, Polaroid, General Motors, Wang Laboratories and Honeywell, to describe their organizational structures, their corporate cultures, and their specific strategies.
At Harvard, Rosabeth Moss Kanter is chair and director of the Advanced Leadership Initiative, a University-wide faculty group aimed at deploying a leadership force of experienced leaders who can address challenging national and global problems in their next stage of life.
The goal of the Advanced Leadership Fellowship is to prepare experienced leaders to transition from their primary income-earning years to community and public service for their next years of life. The Fellowship is designed to enhance and leverage the skills of already accomplished leaders for maximum impact on significant social problems, including those that affect health and welfare, children and the environment.
