Robert Austin

Robert D. Austin is Professor of Management of Creativity and Innovation. He leads the Design and Entrepreneurship cluster within the school’s Entrepreneurship platform, and teaches Information Technology (IT) Leadership in the executive summer program. He is also an Adjunct Research Professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business at Western University (Ontario, Canada).
Before his appointment at CBS, Austin was, for more than a decade, a professor of Technology and Operations Management at the Harvard Business School, where he taught MBA courses and also extensively in Executive Education, in programs ranging from the Advanced Management Program to specialized programs for Women Leaders. He chaired the school’s executive program for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from 2002 through 2011, and was a member of the Executive Education Faculty Advisory Committee. He continues to teach in some programs at HBS, such as “Managing Healthcare Delivery.”
Professor Austin has authored, coauthored, or co-edited nine books, published by Harvard Business Review Press, Financial Times Prentice Hall, Stanford University Press, McGraw Hill, and others. He has also published widely in both academic and professional journals, such as Harvard Business Review, Information Systems Research, MIT Sloan Management Review, Organization Science, and the Wall Street Journal. He is author, with various coauthors, of many “Most Popular” Harvard Business School cases, more than 60 published cases and notes in total. In addition, he is the faculty author of the “Project Management Simulation: Scope, Resources, Schedule” (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2009, version 2, 2013), and the Case Analysis Coach (an on-line case analysis tutorial, HBS Publishing, 2012).
Professor Austin has extensive management experience, at Ford Motor Company and Novell, as CEO of CBS-SIMI Executive (now CBS Executive, the largest executive education provider in northern Europe), and as Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton (Canada). Over the years, Dr. Austin has consulted and delivered education experiences for many multinational corporations, working mostly with C-level executives, and he has served on numerous boards, especially for technology companies. He is a member of the international jury for the CIO 100 Awards, which selects for recognition the best examples of IT projects that “[create] new business value by innovating with technology” and he has advised the European Commission on “e-Competencies for Innovation” and “e-Leadership.”

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