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Photo of Jan W. Rivkin

Unit: Strategy

Contact:

(617) 495-6690

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Additional Information
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • U.S. Competitiveness Project
  • Disclosure of Outside Activities
  • Working Knowledge Articles

Areas of Interest

  • competitive advantage
  • competitive strategy
  • complexity
  • cross-functional integration
  • interactions

Additional Topics

  • business policy
  • cognition
  • competition
  • corporate strategy
  • decision-making
  • evolutionary theory
  • industry evolution
  • industry structure
  • knowledge management
  • managerial cognition
  • modularity
  • organizational design
  • strategic change
  • strategic planning
  • strategy
  • strategy formulation
  • tradeoffs

Industries

  • airline
  • computer
  • internet
  • music
  • transportation
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Jan W. Rivkin

C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration
Senior Associate Dean, Chair, MBA Program

Jan W. Rivkin is the Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program and a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. In the past, he has served as Senior Associate Dean for Research and head of the Strategy Unit. His research, course development, and teaching focus on two topics: business strategy and U.S. competitiveness.
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Jan W. Rivkin is the Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA Program and a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. In the past, he has served as Senior Associate Dean for Research and head of the Strategy Unit. His research, course development, and teaching focus on two topics: business strategy and U.S. competitiveness.

Business strategy.  Rivkin’s business strategy work examines the interactions across functional and product boundaries within a firm – that is, the connections that link marketing, production, logistics, finance, human resource management, and other parts of a firm. His work analyzes, first, how such interactions constrain managerial behavior and, second, how managers use cognitive devices and organizational design to cope with decisions whose ramifications span boundaries.

Rivkin's scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Management Science, Organization Science, the Strategic Management Journal, the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Research Policy. Much of this work uses simulations of complex adaptive systems to examine the theoretical implications of cross-cutting interactions. His empirical work on the topic employs a mix of large-scale statistical studies, field research, and case studies.

Rivkin has taught business strategy in the Advanced Management Program, in the first year of the MBA program, and in a second-year MBA elective that he developed, Advanced Competitive Strategy: Integrating the Enterprise. The elective course aims to improve students’ ability to integrate across the parts of the companies they will manage. A comprehensive description of Advanced Competitive Strategy is available to fellow educators via Harvard Business Publishing.

In support of his strategy teaching and research, Rivkin has completed case studies on Airborne Express, BMG Entertainment, Dell, Delta Air Lines, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Husky Injection Molding Systems, LEGO, Lycos, Microsoft, Ryanair, Whirlpool Corporation, and Yahoo, among others.

U.S. competitiveness.  Rivkin also co-chairs HBS's project on the competitiveness of the United States.  In that role, he has worked with a faculty team to explore steps that leaders--especially business leaders--can take to improve the ability of firms in the U.S. to win in the global marketplace and support American living standards. His work in this domain focuses on (a) how managers choose to locate business activities in the United States or elsewhere and (b) how business leaders can best work with policymakers, nonprofit leaders, educators, and others to bring shared prosperity to America’s cities. In support of his U.S. competitiveness work, Rivkin has developed case studies on Barry-Wehmiller, the Columbus Partnership, the city of Detroit, and Southwire Corporation.

Rivkin received his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard. Earlier, he studied chemical engineering and public policy at Princeton and obtained a M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics on a Marshall Scholarship. Prior to pursuing his doctorate, Rivkin led case teams and managed client relationships at Monitor Company, a strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rivkin and his wife live in Newton, Massachusetts with their two sons.

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Featured Work Publications Teaching Awards & Honors
  1. An Economy Doing Half Its Job

    This report presents the findings of HBS' 2013-14 survey on U.S. competitiveness. While HBS alumni saw strengths in elements of the business environment that influence firms' success, the weaknesses in elements that drive prosperity for the average American indicate that the American economy requires a strategy in order to do its full job. The survey delves into three elements of the business environment that play a key role in restoring U.S. competitiveness: K-12 education, workplace skills, and transportation infrastructure.
  2. The Challenge of Shared Prosperity

    Findings of Harvard Business School's 2015 Survey on U.S. Competitiveness

    In the 2015 survey on U.S. competitiveness, HBS alumni weigh in on the current state and future trajectory of U.S. competitiveness as well as the structural strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. business environment. In addition, alumni delve deeper into two aspects of competitiveness: the health of entrepreneurship in the U.S. and business leaders’ views on shared prosperity. Alumni are optimistic about the ability of U.S. firms to compete globally and they see entrepreneurship as more accessible today than it was a decade ago. But they doubt that firms in the U.S. will be able to lift the living standards of the average American. Alumni report that rising inequality, middle-class stagnation, economic immobility, and limited economic mobility are problems for their businesses, not just social issues. Business leaders would like to see the future gains in prosperity spread far more evenly among Americans than recent gains have been distributed.

  3. Partial Credit: How America's School Superintendents See Business as a Partner

    This report presents the findings of the first-ever national survey of school superintendents on U.S. competitiveness and the role of business in improving education outcomes in the U.S., including specific actions that business leaders can take to support transformative change.
  4. The Strategic Context

    Harvard Magazine, September-October, 2012

    An interview with Michael E. Porter, Lawrence University Professor and Jan W. Rivkin, Rauner Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for Research.
  5. U.S. Competitiveness Paths Forward

    Professors Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin of Harvard Business School address the audience of the U.S. Competitiveness Project.

  6. The Looming Challenge to U.S. Competitiveness

    The American economy is clearly struggling to recover from a recession of unusual depth and duration, as we are reminded nearly every day. But the United States also faces a less visible but more fundamental challenge: a series of underlying structural changes that could permanently impair America’s ability to maintain, much less raise, the living standards of its citizens. If government and business leaders react only to the downturn and fail to confront America’s deeper challenge, they will revive an economy with weak long-term prospects.

  7. Lasting Impact: A Business Leader's Playbook for Supporting America's Schools

    This booklet provides a practical approach for business leaders seeking to understand the complex issues involved in transforming PK-12 education. It lists actions that businesses can take, as well as best practices that they can follow, to help educators create meaningful change in America's education system.

In the News

14 Jun 2017
Boston Globe
Local leaders have a better chance of fixing the economy than Washington does
07 Mar 2017
Fortune
How Executives Should Really Respond to Trump’s Controversial Moves
21 Feb 2017
Washington Post
How today’s visa restrictions might impact tomorrow’s America
26 Sep 2016
Morning Consult
No More Excuses: Candidates Need to Address Tax Reform
15 Sep 2016
CNBC: Squawk Box
Harvard study show US losing competitive edge

See more news for Jan W. Rivkin »

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