Faculty & Research
Nancy F. Koehn

Nancy F. Koehn

James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration

James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration

General Management
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Nancy F. Koehn
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(617) 495-6483
Featured Work Publications Research Summary Teaching Awards & Honors

Nancy F. Koehn is a historian at the Harvard Business School where she holds the James E. Robison chair of Business Administration. Koehn's research focuses on crisis leadership and how leaders and their teams rise to the challenges of high-stakes situations. Her latest book, Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times, spotlights how five of history’s greatest leaders managed crisis and, in doing this, accomplished extraordinary missions.  She is currently working on a major study of civil rights leaders during the late 1950s and 1960s and what we can learn today from their bravery, commitment, methods and purpose.

Koehn has written numerous books and authored HBS cases on Starbucks Coffee Company, Ernest Shackleton, Oprah Winfrey, Bono and U2, Whole Foods, Wedgwood, Estée Lauder, Madam CJ Walker, Dell Computer, and other leaders and organizations.  She is currently writing an HBS case on John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement and another case on John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Koehn consults with many companies and speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival and the World Business Forum.  She has appeared on many television shows, including, "American Experience," "Good Morning America," "The PBS NewsHour," and A&E's "Biography.” She writes for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and the Harvard Business Review and is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio and the BBC.   In 2012, Poets and Quants ranked Koehn as one of the World’s 50 Best Business School Professors.  

Before coming to HBS, Koehn was a member of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences for seven years, first as a graduate student in history and then as a lecturer in the History and Literature concentration and the Department of Economics.  A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Koehn earned a Master of Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government before taking her MA and PhD in History from Harvard.

Koehn lives in Concord, Massachusetts and is a dedicated equestrian.

Featured Work
We need a COVID-19 D-Day—and the leadership to execute it

Two Harvard Business School professors declare that the U.S. is losing the battle against the pandemic but describe how effective leadership could still win the war. Two Harvard Business School professors declare that the U.S. is losing the battle against the pandemic but describe how effective leadership could still win the war.

Leadership in Times of Crisis
CBS: Face the Nation
Authors Robert Dallek, Ron Chernow, Nancy Koehn and Mark Updegrove joined "Face the Nation" Sunday for a conversation examining leadership in times of crisis.
What five extraordinary leaders during turbulent times can teach today's leaders
CBS This Morning

Historian Nancy Koehn says great leaders are not born, they're made.

Koehn, a Harvard Business School historian, is the author of a new book called "Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times." It examines the lives, successes and failures of five historical leaders including Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Koehn joined "CBS This Morning" to discuss what the leaders in her book have in common and how these lessons can apply today. 

Lincoln’s School of Management
New York Times
The legacy of Abraham Lincoln hangs over every American president. To free a people, to preserve the Union, “to bind up the nation's wounds”: Lincoln's presidency, at a moment of great moral passion in the country's history, is a study in high-caliber leadership.
Books
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
  • Koehn, Nancy F. "Gates: The Right Place at the Right Time." In Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders, edited by Michael Kinsley and Conor Clark. Simon & Schuster, 2008. View Details
  • Koehn, Nancy F. "The Fallacy of Perfection: Let a New Image of Yourself Emerge." In Remember Who You Are: Life Stories That Inspire the Heart and Mind, edited by Daisy Wademan. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004. View Details
  • Koehn, Nancy F. "Estee Lauder: Self Definition and the Modern Cosmetics Market." In Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender and Culture in Modern America, edited by Philip Scranton. Routledge, 2001. View Details
  • Koehn, N. F. "Consumerism and Consumption." In The Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Morton Keller. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000. View Details
  • Koehn, N. F., T. K. McCraw, and H. V. Nelles. "Business History." In The Intellectual Venture Capitalist: John H. McArthur and the Work of the Harvard Business School, 1980-1995, edited by T. K. McCraw and J. L. Cruikshank. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999. View Details
  • Koehn, N. F. "Josiah Wedgwood and the First Industrial Revolution." In Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions, edited by Thomas K. McCraw. Harvard University Press, 1997. View Details
  • Koehn, N. F. "Michael Milken." In Management Past and Present: A Casebook on the History of American Business, edited by Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Thomas K. McCraw, and Richard S. Tedlow. South-Western College Publishing, 1996. View Details
  • Koehn, N. F. "Patricia Ostrander." In Management Past and Present: A Casebook on the History of American Business, edited by Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Thomas K. McCraw, and Richard S. Tedlow. South-Western College Publishing, 1996. View Details
  • Koehn, N. F. "Economic Policy: The Twentieth Century." In The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress. Vol. 2, edited by Donald C. Bacon, Roger H. Davidson, and Morton Keller, 674–681. Simon & Schuster, 1995. View Details
  • Koehn, N. F. "The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981." In Macroeconomic Decision Making in the World Economy, edited by Michael G Rukstad. Dryden Press, 1989. View Details
  • Koehn, N. F. "The Capital Gains Tax Cut of 1978." In Macroeconomic Decision Making in the World Economy, edited by Michael G Rukstad. Dryden Press, 1989. View Details
Working Papers
  • Koehn, Nancy F. "Michael Dell: Winning on the Demand Side of the Information Revolution." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 00-021, September 1999. View Details
  • Koehn, Nancy F. "Marshall Field, 1834-1906: The Retail Brand as a Customer Experience." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 00-020, September 1999. View Details
  • Koehn, Nancy F. "Henry Heinz, 1844-1919: Connecting with Customers during Great Economic Change." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 00-019, September 1999. View Details
  • Koehn, Nancy F. "Josiah Wedgwood, 1730-1795: Brand Creation in the First Consumer Society." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 00-018, September 1999. View Details
Cases and Teaching Materials
Research Summary
Overview
My research focuses on crisis leadership and how leaders and their teams rise to the challenges of high-stakes situations. Using the lens of history, my work examines how individual leaders from business, government and other walks accomplish important—often seemingly impossible--missions; how they navigate both failure and great turbulence; how they use their emotional intelligence to help them do this; and how they inspire others to do the same.
The foundation that underlays my research, writing and speaking is the understanding that great leaders are made rather than born, and that some of the most critical experiences in the making of iconic leaders involve adversity, especially failure, loneliness and fear. In more than 20 years of studying courageous leaders, I have worked extensively on individuals such as Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, the Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the environmental activist Rachel Carson, and Nelson Mandela among many others. I am currently researching a major study of civil rights leaders during the late 1950s and 1960s, with an eye to what we can learn today from their bravery, commitment, methods and purpose.
Keywords: Courageous Leadership In Turbulent Times; Emotional Experience Of Leaders; History Of Leadership; Leadership; Entrepreneurship; History; Media And Broadcasting Industry; Health Industry; Beauty And Cosmetics Industry; Fashion Industry; Advertising Industry; United States; Europe
Teaching
Overview
My teaching and research focus on crisis leadership and how men and women use crises to make themselves better leaders. I currently teach a module in the Advanced Management Program and an HBS Online LIVE course on Courageous Leadership. The purpose of each course is to help participants become more courageous, resilient, focused, and self-aware individuals as well as leaders. We accomplish this goal in two, related ways. First, each course spotlights a number of crisis leaders and the lessons they learned as they each pursued a big, worthy mission. We examine these insights, experiences, and tools, with each participant focusing on those that are most relevant and useful to him or her. Equally important, we engage in a series of grounded, disciplined, and meaningful conversations about who we each are, how each participant can be even better as a person and as a leader, and the purpose or mission each of us is pursuing on our respective path. Throughout the course, participants are encouraged to examine the choices each leader made, the path he or she traveled—including the mistakes and failures each experienced—the values and goals he or she nurtured, and the larger stage on which that person acted.
Keywords: Crisis Management; Change Management; Entrepreneurship; History
Awards & Honors
Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times (Scribner, 2017) was selected by Strategy + Business as one of the Best Business Books on Leadership in 2018.
Recipient of the 2017 Jennie F. McLaughlin Award for Lifelong Learning from the Kingston Public Library and Kingston Council on Aging.
Selected in 2012 as one of the World's Best Business School Professors by Poets and Quants.
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