Education

BC, Annamalai University, 1969; MBA, Harvard University, 1976; DBA, Harvard University, 1978. At Tuck since 1985.

Area of Expertise

Global strategy, with particular emphasis on strategic innovation, strategic execution, and stategic controls.

Consulting/ Executive Education

Professor Govindarajan works with CEOs and top management teams in global Fortune 500 firms to discuss, challenge, and escalate their thinking about strategy. He advises senior executives in all industries on how to modify their organizations to achieve their strategic ambitions. Representative clients include AT&T, Boeing, British Telecom,  Corning, Ford, Gap, Hewlett-Packard, The Home Depot, IBM, J.P. Morgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, The New York Times Company, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sony, and Wal-Mart. He has been a keynote speaker at the BusinessWeek CEO Forum, and The Economist Conference.

Awards

Recognized as one of today’s leading business strategists, Professor Govindarajan has been named among Outstanding Faculty, BusinessWeek's Guide to the Best B-Schools; Top 5 Most Respected Executive Coaches on Strategy, Forbes; Top 10 Professors in Corporate Executive Education, BusinessWeek; and 8 Leading Executive Advisors, The Wall Street Journal Online. He has also been voted Outstanding Teacher of the Year, by Tuck MBA students, and named one of four “superstar” management thinkers from India in Across the Board. One of Professor Govindarajan’s papers was recognized as “one of the ten most-often cited articles” in the Academy of Management Journal’s 40-year history.

Publications

He has published seven books, including Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators (Harvard Business School Press, November 2005) focused on teaching corporations to build breakthrough businesses while simultaneously sustaining excellence in their core business. Articles by Professor Govindarajan have appeared in journals such as Harvard Business Review; Strategy+Business; California Management Review; MIT Sloan Management Review; Accounting, Organizations and Society; Decision Sciences; and Journal of Business Strategy. He currently writes a column for FastCompany.com.

Background

Prior to joining the faculty at Tuck, Professor Govindarajan was on the faculties of The Ohio State University and the Indian Institute of Management. He has also served as a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, INSEAD, the International University of Japan, and the Helsinki School of Economics.