HBS Club Hub

VLS Speaker Lineup - 2011 - 2012

Each call features a topic of significant appeal to HBS alumni, followed by a Q&A session with the professor.

VLS calls are open to HBS Alumni Club members only. For more information and to register please see your local club.

Date/Time	Featured Speaker/Topic
DATE CHANGE May 9, 2012 12:00 - 1:00pm EDT	Professor David Bell Managing Risk in Uncertain Times During over thirty years on the faculty, Professor Bell has taught courses on managerial economics, risk management, marketing, retailing and agribusiness at both MBA and executive levels. Currently he is teaching the MBA Leadership and Corporate Accountability course (LCA). He chairs the annual Agribusiness Seminar. In this VLS session, Professor Bell will draw on his decades of research in the analysis of risk--and a series of four books he has written, with Arthur Schleifer Jr. The books are entitled: Decision Making Under Uncertainty, Data Analysis, Regression and Forecasting, Risk Management and Decision Making Under Certainty. Professor Bell’s most recent publications include a series of papers dealing with the integration of economic and financial theories of risk. His best-known papers are concerned with the incorporation of psychological aspects of risk taking, such as regret and disappointment, into formal decision making systems. Professor Bell is the George M. Moffett Professor of Agriculture and Business and is a Senior Associate Dean. He received his BA from Merton College at Oxford University and a PhD from MIT.
	*PAST VLS EVENTS*
December 8, 2011 11:00am - 12:00 noon EST	Professor William W. George Leadership Development and Support Networks: True North Groups and Personal growth Strategies Bill George has been a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School since 2004. He is the author of four best-selling books, the former chairman and chief executive officer at Medtronic, and currently serves as director of ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. Mr. George received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech and Bryant University. His research focuses on leadership development, where he has developed a series of leadership exercises for individuals and groups to use in developing their leadership. This research has resulted in George’s book, Finding your True North: A Personal Guide, which serves as a companion to his prior book True North: Discover your Authentic Leadership. George has been named one of the “Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years” by PBS; “Executive of the Year-2001” by the Academy of Management; and “Director of the Year 2001-2002” by the National Association of Corporate Directors. His experiences in leadership positions make him an exceptional resource for this discussion.
September 12, 2011 11:00am - 12:00 noon EDT	Professor F. Warren McFarlan Social Enterprise: Joining a Nonprofit Board and Other Ways to Get Involved Professor McFarlan’s most recent book, Joining a nonprofit board: What you need to know, coauthored with Marc J. Epstein, is a useful guide for nonprofit board members. When business executives serve as board members for nonprofit organizations, they often lack clear understanding of the internal workings of the organization. This can lead to frustration and can hinder success. The book provides a step-by-step guide to how board members should work with a nonprofit to achieve the organization’s mission, achieve financial stability, and develop and execute systems and processes to accomplish both. Joining a nonprofit board provides an explanation of the “board member’s life cycle”, which describes in detail the stages and phases that board members go through. This session will provide further insight for those who want to take their experiences in the business world and serve a nonprofit intelligibly and passionately. *This call is open to all HBS alumni. All other calls are open to HBS Club Members only.
September 27, 2011 12:00 - 1:00pm EDT	Professor Rebecca M. Henderson Accelerating Innovation: Lessons from Multiple Sectors Henderson is the Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management, with a joint appointment in the General Management and Strategy Units. She received her undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and a doctorate in Business Economics from Harvard University. Professor Henderson is also currently a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her work has been published in many scholarly journals, including Administration Services Quarterly, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Strategic Management Journal, and Management Science. Here at HBS, she teaches Leadership and Corporate Accountability, as well as the field study seminar Building Green Businesses. Professor Henderson’s current research focuses on the energy, information technology, and real estate sectors and the challenges firms encounter as they attempt to act in more sustainable ways. This work is directly related to her previous examinations of organizational and strategic issues that well-established companies face in responding to significant technological and competitive shifts across a variety of industries. The insight and knowledge that Professor Henderson has acquired over the decades will be apparent during this session, and her experiences will provide enormous insight for leaders interested in responding appropriately to major technological shifts, both strategically and organizationally.
October 7, 2011 10:00 - 11:00am EDT	Professor William C. Kirby The Chinese Century? Business and Education in the 21st Century William C. Kirby is the Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School as well as T.M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and from the Free University of Berlin and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Prior to joining Harvard in 1992, he was professor of History, Director of Asian Studies, and Dean of University College at Washington University in St Louis. He currently serves as Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Chairman of the Harvard China Fund. Professor Kirby’s work examines China’s business, economic, and political development in an international context. As an historian of Modern China, Kirby has written on the evolution of modern Chinese business, Chinese corporate law and company structure, the history of freedom in China, the international socialist economy of the 1950’s, and much more. He is currently working on cases studies of contemporary Chinese businesses and a comparative study of higher education in China, Europe, and the United States.
November 10, 2011 12:00 - 1:00pm EST	Professor Teresa M. Amabile The Progress Principle: Igniting Joy, Engagement, and Creativity for Winning Performance Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit here at Harvard Business School, as well as Director of Research. Trained originally as a chemist, Dr. Amabile received her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. Her research examines how life inside organizations can influence people and their performance. Focusing on individual creativity and productivity, team creativity, and organizational innovation, Dr. Amabile has yielded a theory creativity and innovation; methods for assessing creativity, motivation, and the work environment; as well as a host of prescriptions for maintaining and stimulating innovation. Dr. Amabile is the author of The Progress Principle, Creativity in Context, and Growing up Creative, as well as over 150 scholarly papers, chapters, case studies, and presentations. Her recent book, The Progress Principle, summarizes the findings of her multi-study research findings and their practical applications. Great for business practitioners, as it takes an in depth look at how work environment affects creativity.
November 30, 2011 11:00am - 12:00 noon EST	Professor Clayton M. Christensen Turning Disruption into Opportunity: The Innovative University, Health Care, and Market Challenges Clayton Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. He earned his B.A. with highest honors from Brigham Young University, and an M.Phil in applied econometrics and the economics of less-developed countries from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He received his MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School, and was awarded his DBA from HBS as well. Professor Christensen currently teaches an elective course he designed called ‘Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise’, as well as teaches many courses in the Executive Education programs. His research and teaching interests center on the management issues related to the development and commercialization of technological and business model innovation. He is the bestselling author of five books, including his seminal work The Innovators Dilemma (1997). The book first outlined his framework of disruptive innovation, which he describes as the process by which a product or services takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors. Renowned as one of the world’s leading thinkers in innovation, Christensen has recently focused the lens of disruptive innovation on social issues such as education and health care.
February 9, 2012 11:00am - 12:00 noon EST	Professors Joe Bower, Dutch Leonard, and Lynn Paine Capitalism at Risk Drawing on their book, Capitalism at Risk: Rethinking the Role of Business, Professors Bower, Leonard, and Paine will discuss their perspective and findings about the state of capitalism worldwide. In Capitalism at Risk, the authors ask: How can the future of capitalism be secured? And who should spearhead the effort? Many observers point to government, but Bowers et. al. argue otherwise. “While they agree that governments must play a role, they maintain that businesses should lead the way. Indeed, for enterprising companies, the current threats to market capitalism present vital opportunities. Drawing on discussions with business leaders around the world, the authors argue that companies must stop seeing themselves as bystanders and instead develop innovative business strategies that address the disruptors, produce profitable growth, and strengthen institutions at the community, national, and international levels.” Professor Bower is the Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration and has been a leader in general management at HBS for 45 years. He is a graduate of Harvard College and received his MBA and DBA at Harvard Business School. Professor Leonard is Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at HBS and George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Sector Management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Professor Paine is the John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration and a Senior Associate Dean. She received a BA from Smith College, J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University.
March 21, 2012 11:00am - 12:00 noon EDT	Professor Noam Wasserman Founders’ Dilemmas At HBS, Noam Wasserman teaches a second-year MBA elective, entitled, “Founders’ Dilemmas,” for which he has been awarded both the HBS Faculty Teaching Award and the Academy of Management’s Innovation in Pedagogy Award. The course was also named one of the top ten entrepreneurship courses in the country by Inc. magazine. Noam will discuss his new book, The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, which is based on that course’s framework and draws on more than a decade of research. The focal point of his research has been the difficult, early decisions that founders face—decisions that have important, long-term implications for themselves and their ventures. The book integrates his research results, quantitative data (collected on over 4,000 ventures), case studies and the MBA course. Noam Wasserman is an Associate Professor and Tukman Faculty Fellow. He received a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University, a BSE from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BS from the Wharton School.

VLS Speaker Lineup 2007-2008
VLS Speaker Lineup 2008-2009
VLS Speaker Lineup 2009-2010
VLS Speaker Lineup 2010-2011
VLS Speaker Lineup 2011-2012