Bio: Kathleen Eisenhardt is the Stanford W. Ascherman M.D. Professor and Co-Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Her recent book (w/Don Sull) is Simple Rules: How to Survive in a Complex World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) which explores how simplicity tames complexity in business, life, and nature. She is also co-author (w/Shona Brown) of Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos (Harvard Business School Press), winner of the George R. Terry Book Award for outstanding contribution to management thinking and an Amazon Top 10 Annual Business and Investing book. Professor Eisenhardt is also author of over 100 articles in research and business journals, and the first author featured in Harvard Business Review’s OnPoint collection. She is a Distinguished Visiting Professor with Insead’s Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise area.
Professor Eisenhardt’s research focus is strategy and organization, especially in technology-based companies and high-velocity industries. She is currently studying the use of heuristics and other cognitive strategies, strategic interaction in new markets and novel ecosystems, and strategy making by boards of directors. She has received the career Scholarly Contribution Award from the Academy of Management and the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. She has been honored by many other awards including the Irwin Award for her contributions in strategy, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Organization Theory and Management (OMT) and Technology and Innovation Management (TIM) divisions, the ASQ Scholarly Contribution award for the most influential paper five years after publication, and Strategic Management Society’s Schendel Best Paper prize. She was recently noted as most cited research author in strategy and organization studies for the past 25 years. Professor Eisenhardt consults at senior levels with firms in industries ranging from Internet, telecommunications, software, and biotech to agribusiness, semiconductors, and clean tech.
Professor Eisenhardt was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management and of the Strategic Management Society, and is an INFORMS member. She has served on the editorial boards of ASQ, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. She has been a Fellow of the World Economic Forum (Davos) and Clinton Global Initiative, a member of General Motors’ Science Advisory Committee, and a board member of MWH Global, an international engineering design and construction firm. She serves on the Advisory Board of Start-Up Chile. Eisenhardt received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Brown University, cum laude and with honors). She holds an M.S. in computer science. Her Ph.D. is from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Professor Eisenhardt has several honorary degrees including from London Business School, Aalto University, and Chalmers University of Technology.
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Kathleen M. Eisenhardt is an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of International Business as the recipient of the 2016 AIB Fellows Eminent Scholar Award.
Last Updated: August 2016