dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter

About Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Dr. 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.