Robert S. Kaplan
Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School, Boston, USA
Main Topics:
- Activity-based costing and management
- Balanced scorecard
- Performance management
- Strategy implementation
- Business transformation
- Customer profitability analysis
- Customer relationship management
Professional Profile:
Robert S. Kaplan is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School.
Kaplan joined the HBS faculty in 1984 after spending 16 years on the faculty of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA), Carnegie-Mellon University. He served as Dean of GSIA from 1977 to 1983.
Kaplan’s research, teaching, and consulting focus on linking cost and performance management systems to strategy implementation and operational excellence. He has been a co-developer of both activity-based costing and the Balanced Scorecard. Recently he published, together with David Norton Strategy Map, which describes the “strategy map” as a new powerful visual tool for aligning processes, people and information technology with desired outcomes and evaluates the effectiveness of companies implementation efforts.
He has authored or co-authored 11 books, 13 Harvard Business Review articles, and more than 120 other papers. In 2002 and 2003 the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change named him among the Top 50 Thinkers and Writers on Management Topics and The Financial Times included him in its list of Top 25 Business Thinkers.
Kaplan received the Outstanding Accounting Educator Award in 1988 from the American Accounting Association (AAA), the 1994 CIMA Award from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (UK) for “outstanding contributions to the accountancy profession”, and the 2001 Distinguished Service Award from the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) for contributions to the IMA and the academic community.
Kaplan has consulted on the design of performance and cost management systems with many leading companies. He regularly offers seminars in North and South America, Europe, Middle East, South Africa, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand. He currently serves on the board of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative and Acorn Systems.
Prof. Kaplan is surely one of the most significant contributors to the science of business strategy and can be considered one of the most valuable speakers in this field and the one of Leadership.
Education:
- B.S. e M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Ph.D. in Operation Research, Cornell University
- Honorary Doctorate, Stuttgart Universität, 1994
Selected Works:
- R. S. Kaplan, Management Accounting, with A. Atkinson e M. Young, Prentice-Hall, 2003
- R. S. Kaplan, Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes, with David P. Norton, Harvard Business School Publishing, 2003
- R. S. Kaplan, The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment, with David P. Norton, Harvard Business School Press, 2002
- R. S. Kaplan, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action, with David P. Norton, HBS Press, 1996
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