Rebecca Henderson

Business and Technology Strategist, Educator, Researcher

BIG IDEAS

• Strategy that Creates Value
  How to break the vicious circle of strategic ambiguity and overload in your company, and replace it with a virtuous cycle of clear direction and disciplined execution.
• Removing Obstacles to Innovation
  Many organizations face execution and innovation logjams, which arise from project overload, program gridlock, and subsequent “firefighting” behavior. Rebecca addresses the necessary but painful regimen needed to free up these logjams.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Rebecca Henderson is the Eastman Kodak Professor of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School. Her focus is harnessing technology to support corporate strategy that creates value for business enterprises. An award-winning educator, she works with management teams in workshops and learning programs to transfer her groundbreaking ideas to the next generation of technology and business leaders. In 2001, she was named Sloan’s “Teacher of the Year.” She speaks frequently on a variety of topics, including Doing Strategy Right, Getting More Mileage from Your Innovation Resources, and Worse Before Better: Unjamming the R&D Project Queue. Her corporate clientele include Fortune 100 organizations and emerging technology-based enterprises. “With her colleague Nelson Repenning she is currently working on her first book‚ which highlights the role of overload in keeping organizations that are attempting to do significantly new things trapped in a recurrent cycle of stress and sub par performance.”

A Closer Look at Rebecca

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Rebecca's current research agenda?

• Corporate Strategy in High-Technology Business
• Removing Obstacles to Innovation

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Rebecca's expertise, and what's ahead on her schedule?

• Helping senior executives create and execute winning strategies in high-growth industries
• Removing bottlenecks in the new product development process for R&D intensive businesses
• Educating executives on a comprehensive process to identify, create, and capture value in their business models

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Rebecca's thinking and inspires her work

Says Rebecca, “My students—and the many executives that I meet over the course of my work with firms—are continuously inspiring. MIT is an amazing place, and the campus buzzes with smart people and intriguing ideas. On the media front, I’m surprisingly old fashioned—I’ll use the web for targeted searches, but for input on a daily basis I rely on print. I read The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Financial Times and try to get a sense for what’s in all of them before I start my day, and I take most of the business periodicals and a number of political magazines.”

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Rebecca's must-read list?

The Dark Heart of Italy, Tobias Jones
“My mother was raised in Italy, so I’ve spent many holidays there. It’s a fascinating and beautiful country and I’m looking forward to learning more about how it’s run.”

The Only Kayak: A Journey into the Heart of Alaska, Kim Heacox
“I’ve just finished this. It’s a marvelous account of living and working in Glacier Bay, raising many questions as to how we should think about preserving the natural world.”

The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David Shipler
“Sometimes I feel as if I live in a very beautifully designed bubble. I picked this up as one way to remind myself that many people are much less fortunate than I am.”

Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment, James G. Speth
“My brother is an environmental journalist, so I’m very much aware of the problems facing our planet. He recommended this to me as a summary of current thinking as to how we might move forward. I much enjoyed it, although it’s rather somber reading.”

Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics and Art in Fifteenth Century Florence, Tim Parks
“I’ve been fascinated by money and by history for as long as I can remember. I’m an economist!”

The Smartest Guys in the Room, Bethany Mclean and Peter Elkind
“I finished Conspiracy of Fools, another book about the Enron collapse, last month.”

The NYT Essential Library of Jazz: A Critic’s Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings, Ben Ratliff
“I’m a (not very good amateur) cellist, and I’ve recently become interested in learning more about jazz. This is designed to be a toe in the water.”

Many, many murder mysteries by Deborah Crombie.
“I love British procedural mysteries, and Deborah Crombie is my latest find.”

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Rebecca tap into to feed her mind and fuel her creativity?

Rebecca’s primary inspiration continues to be Kim Clark (retired professor and former Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Business School), who was her thesis advisor and who started her on a path she continues to follow.

Her current thinking is influenced largely by fellow academics including Bengt Holmstrom, Robert Gibbons, and Nelson Repenning (MIT colleagues), and her friends and colleagues Tim Bresnahan (Stanford) and Michael Tushman (Harvard).

OUTREACH
What are Rebecca's pressing questions, and on which topics does she seek your feedback?

Rebecca has been studying the same question for 20 years, and it continues to fascinate her. Namely, what makes it possible for some firms to use new ideas to grow, while others remain hopelessly stuck in old patterns and old ways of behaving? Recently, she has been working closely with a colleague (Nelson Repenning) as to whether one of the key issues is the control of “overload.” More successful firms seem to be much, much better at prioritization, and Rebecca and Nelson would love to find out more about how they do it.