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."
Rebecca A. Karp
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
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 companies formulate and execute strategies for growth. In particular, she focuses on the role innovation and differentation play in product development, integration, strategy execution, and oragnizational change. Professor Karp’s research spans the healthcare, financial services, video gaming, media and creative industries. She has also studied how large companies and entrepreneurs can develop and implement AI technologies to reshape their competitive differentation.
Professor Karp’s research has been published in the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal and Harvard Business Review. 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 Yum Brands, Nestle, 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, where she was awarded a Questrom teaching award. She also received her MBA from Cornell University and a BA in English with honors from the University of Michigan.
- Journal Articles
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- Karp, Rebecca, and Aticus Peterson. "Find the Right Pace for Your AI Rollout." Harvard Business Review Digital Articles (August 25, 2022). View Details
- Karp, Rebecca. "Gaining Organizational Adoption: Strategically Pacing the Deployment of Digital Innovations." Academy of Management Journal (forthcoming). (Pre-published online June 14, 2022.) View Details
- O'Mahony, Siobhan, and Rebecca Karp. "From Proprietary to Collective Governance: How Do Platform Participation Strategies Evolve?" Strategic Management Journal 43, no. 3 (March 2022): 530–562. View Details
- Book Chapters
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- 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
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- 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
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Karp, Rebecca. "What Do You Bring to the Game? Understanding Competitive Advantage." Harvard Business School Module Note 723-412, January 2023. View Details
- Awards & Honors
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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.Recipient of the Questrom Teaching Award from Boston University in 2018.
- Areas of Interest