Seminar with visiting professor Robert D. Austin from Harvard Business School

"Artful Process and Business Innovation: What Managers Can Learn from Artists about 21st Century Value Creation."

Thursday, September 22, 2005 - 14:00 to 17:00

Programme

 

*Download the presentation by Robert D. Austin*

Presentation

By Visiting Professor Robert D. Austin from Harvard Business School (U.S.)

Short abstract

Managers understand the need to innovate but often struggle to support creative processes within demanding business contexts. Artists often face similarly demanding contexts- few business deadlines are as insistent as opening night for a theatre company, for example- but support creative process more successfully and often innovate more reliably.  

In this seminar, Professor Austin argues that managers can learn from artists about the process of innovation and that the need for this learning grows as economic activity moves into the realm of knowledge work, where materials are intangible and innovation is the primary source of value creation.

Debate

Reception

Language: English

The presentation is free of charge and anyone interested is welcome but please indicate your interest in participating by mailing to Rikke Ørtved - roe.lpf@cbs.dk

 

About Robert D. Austin

 

Professor Austin has been a professor at the Harvard Business School since 1997, where he has taught subjects such as economics, financial reporting, IT, and operations management to MBAs and executives. He chairs the school's executive program targeted at Chief Information Officers and teaches the IT module in the program for owner managers. Currently, he serves on the advisory boards or boards of directors of several IT industry firms, and he advises major corporations worldwide. Before joining the Harvard faculty, Dr. Austin was a technology manager at the Ford Motor Company.

Professor Austin's research focuses on IT management and more generally on management of knowledge-intensive activities.

Professor Austin earned his doctorate in management and decision sciences from Carnegie Mellon University, where his dissertation received the Herbert A. Simon Award. He holds a master's degree in industrial engineering from Northwestern University and bachelor's degrees in engineering and English literature from Swarthmore College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi.

Robert D. Austin is the author of four books:

  • Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations; Creating Business Advantage in the Information Age (coauthored with Lynda Applegate and Warren McFarlan)

  • Corporate Information Strategy and Management (also coauthored with Applegate and McFarlan)

  • Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work (coauthored with Lee Devin).

  • His next book, about the telecoms industry, co-edited with Professor Stephen Bradley and tentatively titled The Broadband Explosion, will be published by Harvard Business School Press in the spring of 2005.

The page was last edited by: Sekretariat for Ledelse og Kommunikation // 09/23/2005