personnel profile

Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Title: Professor; Stanford Warren Ascherman Professorship in the School Engineering Department(s): Management Science and Engineering Affiliation(s): Member, Woods Institute for the Environment; Co-Director, Stanford Technology Ventures Program Location: Terman 415 Mail Code: 4026 Phone: 650.723.1887        Fax: 650.723.1614 E-mail: kme@stanford.edu URL: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/MSandE/people/faculty/eisenhardt/index.html Administrator: Yvonne J. Hankins

Research Statement

KATHLEEN M. EISENHARDT is Professor of Strategy and Organization at Stanford University and the Research Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. She is widely known for her work on strategy, strategic decision making, and innovation in rapidly changing and highly competitive markets. She is the coauthor (with Shona L. Brown) of the book Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos, published by Harvard Business School Press. Using analogies from The Grateful Dead to the Tour de France and scientific underpinnings from complexity and time-paced evolutionary theories, this book describes how to compete successfully in dynamic markets. For thoughts and course material for using the book in teaching, please see the link above.

Professor Eisenhardt's current research centers on collaboration and competition in the converging computing, telecommunications, and semiconductor industries, from the perspectives of complexity, evolutionary and game theories. For her past research on fast strategic decision making, she won the Pacific Telesis Foundation Award. She has also received the Whittemore Prize (with D. Charles Galunic) for her writing on organizing global corporations in high velocity markets, and the Stern Award (with Claudia B. Schoonhoven) for her work on the formation of strategic alliances in entrepreneurial companies. She was Co-Principal Investigator on the Global Electronics Study for Andersen Consulting.

At Stanford, Professor Eisenhardt has received several teaching awards including selection as one of the Top 8 Professors at Stanford and her course has been selected by students as one of the top 10 at the University. She also serves as the Associate Director of the Stanford Computer Industry Project (SCIP).

Professor Eisenhardt has consulted for a number of major corporations on topics surrounding strategy and organization in rapidly changing markets with particular emphasis on strategy, strategic decision making, product innovation, creation of cross-business synergies, and top management team dynamics. Her clients have included Intel Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, and SAP. She is a member of the McKinsey Strategy Forum.

Professor Eisenhardt is a Fellow of the Academy of Management and President of the OMT Division of the Academy. She is a former Senior Editor of Organization Science, a co-editor of the upcoming special issue on complexity theory, and a member of the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly and Strategic Management Journal. Her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering is from Brown University and her Ph.D. is from Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

Professor Eisenhardt recently received the Schendel paper prize (with Jeff Martin of UT Austin), for their paper: Dynamic capabilities: What are they? This annual award, sponsored by the Strategic Management Society and Wiley-Blackwell, recognizes the paper published at least 5 years ago that has had the highest and most enduring impact on the field of strategy. She was also elected as an inaugural Fellow of the Strategic Management Society, 2007, the premier honorary society in the strategy field.

Academic Honors & Awards

• Fellow, Strategic Management Society
• Fellow, Academy of Management
• C.L. Dexter Award for Best International Paper, 2006
• Richard Irwin Outstanding Strategy Educator Award, 2007
• Schendel Best Paper Award, 2007

Articles

• Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. and Brown, Shona L., "Time Pacing: Competing in Markets that Won't Stand Still", Harvard Business Review, 1998.
• Brown, Shona L. and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, "The Art of Continuous Change: Linking Complexity Theory and Time-paced Evolution in Relentlessly Shifting Organizations", Administrative Science Quarterly, 1997.
• Eisenhardt, Kathleen M., Jean L. Kahwajy, and L.J. Bourgeois III, "How Teams Have a Good Fight", Harvard Business Review, 1997.
• Galunic, D. Charles and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, "The Evolution of Intracorporate Domains: Losing Divisional Charters in High Technology, Multidivisional Corporations", Organization Science, 1996.
• Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. and Claudia B. Schoonhoven, "Resource-based View of Strategic Alliance Formation: Strategic and Social Explanations in Entrepreneurial Firms," Organization Science, 1996.
• Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. and Behnam N. Tabrizi, "Accelerating Adaptive Processes: Product Innovation in the Global Computer Industry", Administrative Science Quarterly, 1995.