Rebecca A. Karp

Rebecca Karp is an Assistant Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. She teaches Strategy in the MBA required curriculum. Professor Karp is a field researcher and ethnographer. Her research examines how firms execute on their strategies and grow. In particular, she focuses on the role innovation plays in supporting strategy execution, fostering change in organizational work practices and in shaping the way firms grow. Professor Karp’s research spans the healthcare, financial services, media and creative industries and focuses on both entrepreneurial and incumbent firm settings. 

Professor Karp’s research has been published in the Strategic Management Journal. Her paper “Gaining Organizational Adoption: Discovering New Uses for Existing Innovations” won the 2020 Academy of Management William H. Newman Award for best paper based on a dissertation. Her dissertation was also a finalist for the 2020 Organization Science INFORMS best dissertation award. 

Prior to HBS, Professor Karp served as a Principal at Booz and Company. Her portfolio of clients included JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, State Street, Barclays, Citibank and other financial institutions. She has also worked with non-profits including the Screen Actors Guild and Boston Partners in Education. She was a board member of Symphony NH.

Professor Karp received her doctorate from Boston University, MBA from Cornell University and a BA in English from the University of Michigan. 

Journal Articles

• O'Mahony, Siobhan, and Rebecca Karp. "From Proprietary to Collective Governance: How Do Platform Participation Strategies Evolve?" Strategic Management Journal (forthcoming). (Pre-published online March 25, 2020.) View Details

Book Chapters

• Karp, Rebecca, Amisha Miller, and Siobhan O'Mahony. "Governing for Growth in Scope: Cultivating a Comparative Understanding of How Peer Production Collectives Evolve." Chap. 11 in The Handbook of Peer Production, edited by Mathieu O'Neil, Christian Pentzold, and Sophie Toupin, 137–152. John Wiley & Sons, 2021. View Details

Working Papers

• Karp, Rebecca, and Siobhan O'Mahony. "Expanding the Entrepreneurial Cultural Toolkit: The Temporal Interplay of the Substantive and the Symbolic." Working Paper, September 2021. View Details

Awards & Honors

Won the 2020 William H. Newman Award from the Academy of Management for outstanding paper based on a recent dissertation for "Gaining Organizational Adoption: Discovering New Uses for Existing Innovations."

Finalist for the 2020 INFORMS Best Dissertation Proposal Competition for “From Conceptual to Commercial: How Novel Innovations Gain Market Traction.”

Recipient of a 2018 Dissertation Research Program Award and Grant from the Strategic Research Foundation at the Strategic Management Society for "What Kind of Village Fosters Venture Development?"

“Gaining Organizational Adoption: Discovering New Uses for Existing Innovations” was selected for publication in the 2020 Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.