Robert D. Austin

Robert D. Austin is a Professor of Information Systems at Ivey Business School, and an affiliated faculty member at both Harvard Medical School and Aarhus School of Business and Social Science (Denmark). Prior to his current appointments, he was Professor of Management of Innovation and Digital Transformation at Copenhagen Business School, and before that, a professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. He is author or co-author of nine books, most recently The Adventures of an IT Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2016) and has published in many academic and practitioner journals, e.g. Harvard Business Review. In a more practical vein, he has held managerial positions at Ford and Novell, was CEO of the largest executive education provider in northern Europe, and has served as Dean of the Faculty of Business at the University of New Brunswick. His research focuses on innovation, managing creative companies, and on talent and performance management.William Kerr is a Professor at Harvard Business School. Bill is the faculty chair of the Launching New Ventures program and director of the Managing the Future of Work initiative. His work focuses on how companies explore new opportunities and generate growth. He has received Harvard’s Distinction in Teaching award and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship. Bill has worked with companies worldwide on the development of new ventures and transformations for profitable growth.

Joe Peppard

Working between Europe and Boston, I research, teach and consult in the domains of IT leadership, digital strategy and innovation, the execution of digital transformation programs, the creation of value from IT investments, and in the role, structure and capabilities of the IT unit in contemporary organizations. In an environment where hype is all too commonplace, I work to help business and IT leaders make sense of it all and navigate an appropriate route through what is an increasingly complex landscape. In my research, I study contemporary issues and challenges that mangers face in an environment of accelerating technological change. While my research is academically rigorous, I recognize that managers want frameworks and models to help them understand their own predicaments, insights to figure out options and consequences\ and clear actionable advice and guidance. While the majority of academics write articles for promotion, tenure and academic prestige, I write them to help the busy manager and executive to be successful.

Findings from my studies have been published in leading journals including California Management Review, MIS Quarterly Executive, European Management Journal, Journal of Information Technology,
MIT Sloan Management Review, and Harvard Business Review. My most recent book is The Strategic Management of Information Systems: Building a Digital Strategy (Wiley, 2016).

Previously, I was a Full Professor at ESMT Berlin, Germany and have also held academic appointments at Cranfield School of Management (where I was additionally Director of the Information Systems Research Center), Loughborough University (United Kingdom), Trinity College, Dublin (Ireland), Groningen University (the Netherlands), Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and University of Sydney (Australia).