186: Harvard Business School Professor Rebecca Henderson | Focus, Focus, Focus, Embrace Change, & Treat People Well

Rebecca Henderson is a professor at Harvard Business School and is 1 of only 25 professors at Harvard given the distinction of University Professor, which is the highest honor a professor can receive at Harvard. She is the author of the book Reimagining Capitalism which explores how the private sector can help build a more sustainable economy.

Rebecca is also a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also sits on the boards of several companies, including AMGEN.

Rebecca earned a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a PhD in business economics from Harvard.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• I love the story Rebecca shared about the book contract she had lined up. She was going to write a book about how we are prone to take on too much stuff, and then she had to cancel the contract because she had taken on too much stuff.
• Finding the right balance between staying focused and embracing change is a never-ending struggle. Rebecca worked with Nokia, Kodak, and Motorola. All of them were at the cutting edge of technology and poised to dominate the cell phone and camera market. But none could adapt quickly enough to the changing technology.
• I thought it was fascinating to hear how some firms got superior results to other firms, even though they had the same inputs. The economists hated the finding because the research showed that leadership and management practices could make such a difference. The best firms took care of their people.

Here are two of Rebecca's papers:

Innovation in the 21st Century: Architectural Change, Purpose, and the Challenges of Our Time

Moral Firms?

And here is a link to her book website for Reimagining Capitalism. 

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