Ranjay Gulati Keynote Speaker

Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. He is an expert on leadership, strategy, and organizational issues in firms. His recent work explores leadership and strategic challenges for building high growth organizations in turbulent markets. Some of his prior work has focused on the enablers and implications of within-firm and inter-firm collaboration. He has looked at both when and how firms should leverage greater connectivity within and across their boundaries to enhance performance.

Professor Gulati is the recipient of the 2024 CK Prahalad Award for Scholarly Impact on Practice. The award “recognizes excellence in the application of theory and research in practice,” honoring a scholar whose research generates learning from practice, who authors publications that substantively affect the practice of management, and who integrates research and practice. He was ranked as one of the top ten most cited scholars in Economics and Business over a decade by ISI-Incite. The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit have listed him as among the top handful of business school scholars whose work is most relevant to management practice. His most recent book, Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High Performance Companies (Harper Collins, 2022) offer a compelling reassessment and defense of purpose as a management ethos, documenting the vast performance gains and social benefits that become possible when firms get purpose right. It was picked to be among the best business books of 2022 by Forbes, Thinkers 50, the Next Big Idea Club, and Axiom business books.  His previous managerial book,  Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Organization (Harvard Business Press, 2009), which was a finalist for the George Terry Best Book in Management Award, Professor Gulati explores how “resilient” companies—those that prosper both in good times and bad—drive growth and increase profitability by immersing themselves in the lives of their customers.

Professor Gulati is the past-President of the Business Policy and Strategy Division at the Academy of Management and an elected fellow of the Strategic Management Society. He has been a Harvard MacArthur Fellow and a Sloan Foundation Fellow. His research has been published in leading journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, American Journal of Sociology, Strategic Management Journal, Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, and Organization Science. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, strategy+business, and the Financial Times.

Professor Gulati advises and speaks to corporations large and small around the globe. He is the former Chair of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. He has received a number of awards for his teaching including the Best Professor Award for his teaching in the MBA and executive MBA programs at the Kellogg School where he was on the faculty prior to coming to Harvard.

Ranjay regularly speaks to executive audiences around the world. The groups he speaks to range in size from small senior leadership teams and corporate boards to large company off-sites. He has worked with companies in a range of industries and spoken with groups across a variety of functional areas. His clients range from large well-established companies to high-growth entrepreneurial ventures.

Through executive seminars and open lectures, Ranjay creates a forum for the development and implementation of business strategies for the challenging market conditions we face today. Each lecture is customized to fit the audience and their circumstances. Much of his speaking focuses on helping firms discover growth opportunities in dynamic and uncertain markets. He explores the dilemmas and enablers for building actionable strategies that encompass making strategic choices and architecting organizations to drive chosen strategies. His systemic approach also emphasizes the requisite leadership skills and pipeline that is essential to support strategy.

He has been a frequent guest on CNBC as well as a panelist on several of their series on topics that include: the Business of Innovation, Collaboration, and Leadership Vision.  Professor Gulati holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a Master’s Degree in Management from M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, and two Bachelor’s Degrees, in Computer Science and Economics, from Washington State University and St. Stephens College, New Delhi, respectively. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.