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 guided leaders of large
and small organizations worldwide for over 25 years, through teaching, writing,
and direct consultation to major corporations and governments. The former
Editor of Harvard Business Review (1989-1992), Professor Kanter has been named
to lists of the "50 most powerful women in the world" (Times of London), and
the "50 most influential business thinkers in the world" (Accenture and
Thinkers 50 research). In 2001, she received the Academy of Management's
Distinguished Career Award for her scholarly contributions to management
knowledge, and in 2002 was named "Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year"
by the World Teleport Association.
Professor Kanter is the author or co-author of 17 books, which have been
translated into 17 languages. Her latest book, America the Principled: 6
Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again (published on October 23,
2007), offers a positive agenda for the nation, focused on innovation and
education, a new workplace social contract, values-based corporate conduct,
competent government, positive international relations through citizen
diplomacy and business networks, and national and community service.
Her previous book, Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End
(a New York Times business and #1 Business Week bestseller), describes the
culture and dynamics of high-performance organizations as compared with those
in decline, and shows how to lead turnarounds, whether in businesses,
hospitals, schools, sports teams, community organizations, or countries. Her
classic prizewinning book, Men & Women of the Corporation (C. Wright Mills
award winner for the year's best book on social issues) offered insight to
countless individuals and organizations about corporate careers and the
individual and organizational factors that promote success; a spin-off video, A
Tale of 'O': On Being Different, is among the world's most widely-used
diversity tools; and a related book, Work & Family in the United States, set a
policy agenda (in 2001, a coalition of university centers created the Rosabeth
Moss Kanter Award in her honor for the best research on work/family issues).
Another award-winning book, When Giants Learn to Dance, showed how to master
the new terms of competition at the dawn of the global information age. World
Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy identified the rise of new
business networks and analyzed the benefits and tensions of globalization.
She has received 22 honorary doctoral degrees, as well as numerous leadership
awards and prizes for her books and articles; for example, her book The Change
Masters was named one of the most influential business books of the 20th
century (Financial Times). Through Goodmeasure Inc., the consulting group she
co-founded, she has partnered with IBM to bring her leadership tools,
originally developed for businesses, to public education as part of IBM's
award-winning Reinventing Education initiative and she is a Senior Advisor for
IBM's Global Citizenship portfolio.. She advises CEOs of large and small
companies, has served on numerous business and non-profit boards and national
or regional commissions, and speaks widely, often sharing the platform with
Presidents, Prime Ministers, and CEOs at national and international events,
such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Before joining the
Harvard Business School faculty, she held tenured professorships at Yale
University and Brandeis University and was a Fellow at Harvard Law School,
simultaneously holding a Guggenheim Fellowship.
She chairs a Harvard University group creating an innovative initiative on
advanced leadership, to help successful leaders at the top of their professions
apply their skills not only to managing their own enterprises but also to
addressing challenging national and global problems.
