About Rebecca

Providing solutions – and hope – for a world in crisis. We must change the rules to bring business back into balance with the planet.

It is possible to create a better, more sustainable future. But only if we act with urgency – and in concert with one another. This belief has driven Rebecca’s work for the last ten years and is at the heart of her latest endeavor: “Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire,” (Hachette, 2020) a soon-to-be-published book that spells out how business can become a critical ally in the battle to rethink capitalism.

A prominent economist and influential professor (The John and Natty McArthur University professor at Harvard), Rebecca is one of the world’s most articulate, insightful and persuasive scholars focused on driving large-scale change. A leading authority in organizational and strategic change for more than thirty years, today her research, teaching and speaking centers on purpose-driven capitalism and the role that business leaders at every level can play in reimagining our current system.

In the classroom, Rebecca inspires her students in “Reimagining Capitalism,” the most successful MBA elective course launched at HBS in the last five years. She also teaches in HBS’ Executive Education program. Additionally, she is a Research Fellow at the National Bureau for Economic Research, a sustainability advisor to several of the world’s largest companies, and a board member at Amgen and IDEXX Laboratories, both S&P 500 Companies. Now she’s bringing her ideas mainstream. “Reimagining Capitalism” (Hachette, 2020) offers both a new intellectual framing and a plausible path forward for a capitalism that has lost its commitment to freedom and prosperity in the single-minded pursuit of maximizing shareholder value.

Books

Ideas for advancing innovation, sustainability and economic transformation

Reimagining Capitalism (2020)

It’s the most successful economic system to have ever existed, but capitalism is in danger of destroying itself – and our world. Reimagining Capitalism gets to the heart of what’s wrong with modern capitalism and lays out a pragmatic roadmap for how business can help to catalyze the systemic change we need to build a capitalism that works for everyone.
Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective (2015)

Business leaders are increasingly pressured to transform their companies into sustainable organizations – not just by an environmentally conscious public but by investors as well. Through a sequence of case studies, including IBM, DuPont and Cemex, this book shows readers how to lead impactful change.
Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors (2011)

From agriculture to IT, our world has seen many transformations that have improved our quality of life. This National Bureau of Economic Research report shows how a mixture of government policy and private sector initiatives have driven rapid change across a wide range of industries, and how a similar set of policies can be used again to transform our energy markets, addressing the looming threat of climate change while making energy more sustainable and affordable over the long term.