Two Harvard Business School Professors Win McKinsey Awards
Michael Porter
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
BOSTON—Harvard Business School (HBS) professors Michael E. Porter and Rosabeth Moss Kanter have won the 2011 McKinsey Awards from the Harvard Business Review and the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Established in 1959, the annual awards recognize the best articles published each year in the magazine. Porter was awarded first place with his co-author Mark Kramer, cofounder and managing director of FSG, a nonprofit consulting firm, for their January-February 2011 article "Creating Shared Value: How to Reinvent Capitalism." Second place went Rosabeth Moss Kanter for "How Great Companies Think Differently," which appeared in the November 2011 issue. Porter and Kramer discuss the concept of shared value, which focuses on the connections between societal and economic progress and has the power to unleash the next wave of global growth. According to the authors, there are three key ways that companies can create shared value opportunities: By reconceiving products and markets, by redefining productivity in the value chain, and by enabling local cluster development. This, they argue, will lead to new approaches that generate greater innovation and growth for companies—and also greater benefits for society. In her article, Kanter explains that traditional theories of the firm are dominated by the notion of opposition between capital and labor, disconnecting business from society and posing conflicts between them. According to this view, companies are nothing more than money-generating machines. By contrast, great companies use a different operating logic. These organizations work to make money, but in their choices of how to do so, they consider whether they are building enduring institutions. To radically alter leadership and corporate behavior, Kanter says, companies need a common purpose, a long-term view, emotional engagement, community building, innovation, and self-organization. Michael E. Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, based at Harvard Business School. In 2001, Harvard Business School and Harvard University jointly created the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, dedicated to furthering Professor Porter's work. He is a leading authority on competitive strategy; the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions; and the application of competitive principles to social problems such as health care, the environment, and corporate responsibility. He is currently a co-leader of the Harvard Business School's U.S. Competitiveness Project. Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. Her strategic and practical insights have long guided leaders of large and small organizations worldwide through her teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations and governments. Her latest book, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good, a manifesto for leadership of sustainable enterprises, was named one of the ten best business books of 2009 by Amazon.com. She is currently one of several HBS faculty members involved with the School's U.S. Competitiveness Project. The awards were determined by a panel of ten judges, including Cathy Benko, Vice Chairman, Deloitte; Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group; Kenneth W. Freeman, Dean, Boston University School of Management; R. Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia University Graduate School of Business; Bill McDermott, Co-CEO, SAP; Nandan M. Nilekani, Cofounder, Infosys; Steve Reinemund, Dean of Business, Wake Forest University; Linda Rottenberg, Cofounder, Endeavor; Daniel Vasella, Chairman, Novartis; and Jaime A. Zobel de Ayala, Chairman and CEO, Ayala. |
Cullen Schmitt
617-495-6155
cschmitt+hbs.edu
About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School is located on a 40-acre campus in Boston. Its faculty of more than 250 offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and PhD degrees, as well as more than 175 Executive Education programs, and Harvard Business School Online, the School’s digital learning platform. For more than a century, faculty have drawn on their research, their experience in working with organizations worldwide, and their passion for teaching, to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. The School and its curriculum attract the boldest thinkers and the most collaborative learners who will go on to shape the practice of business and entrepreneurship around the globe.