Author Bio
Robert I. Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, an active researcher and cofounder in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and a cofounder and active member of the new "d.school," a multi-disciplinary program that teaches and spreads "design thinking." Sutton is also an IDEO Fellow and a Professor of Organizational Behavior, by courtesy, at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Sutton received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from The University of Michigan and has served on the Stanford faculty since 1983. He has also taught at the Haas Business School and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences during the 1986-87, 1994-95, and 2002-03 academic years. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly publications, and as an editor for the Administrative Science Quarterly and Research in Organizational Behavior. Sutton's honors include the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal in 1989, the best paper published in the Academy of Management Review in 2005, induction into the Academy of Management Journals Hall of Fame, the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching, the McGraw-Hill Innovation in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award, the McCullough Faculty Scholar Chair from Stanford, and selection by Business 2.0 as a leading "management guru" in 2002.
Sutton studies the links between managerial knowledge and organizational action, innovation, and organizational performance. He as published over 100 articles and chapters in scholarly and applied publications. He has also published eight books and edited volumes. In particular, Sutton (and Jeffrey Pfeffer) wrote The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge Into Action (Harvard Business School Press, 2000), which was selected as Best Management Book of 2000 by Management General. His most recent book is Weird Ideas That Work: 11-1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (The Free Press, 2002), which was selected by the Harvard Business Review as one of the best ten business books of the year and as a breakthrough business idea. Sutton (and Jeffrey Pfeffer) just published Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management, (Harvard Business School Press, 2006). Sutton's next book will be The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, which will be published by Warner Business Books in early 2007. Major themes from these books are summarized in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Industrial Management, California Management Review, Strategy & Leadership, Strategy and Business, The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, HR.com, and tompeters.com.
Sutton has consulted to companies including Clorox, Ernst & Young, Deloitte Consulting, Gap, HP, Brass Ring, IDEO, IBM, McDonald's, McKinsey, People Magazine, Pepsi, Proctor & Gamble, SAP, Steelcase, and Xerox. He has given keynote speeches in recent years to executives at the International Utility and Energy Conference in Boca Raton, "The Ruling Association" in Milan, The Conference Board in New York City, the Human Resource Development conference in London, the International Printed Circuit Board Association conference in Long Beach, McCann-Erickson in Berlin, the Innovative Thinking conference in Scottsdale, Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, the Master's Forum in Minneapolis, the Economist Magazine Innovation Awards in San Francisco, the Design Management Innovation Summit in Palo Alto, the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, The Center for Adaptive Management in Cincinnati, The European Conference on Customer Management in London, the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi, the World Knowledge Forum in Korea, Brandworks in Madison, WI,, Innotown in Alusend, Norway, the Bertelsmann CEO conference in Berlin, and the WJF Institute in Austin, Texas. He has also spoken to groups from over 100 organizations in diverse industries, including events for Accenture, Alcoa, Applied Materials, Cadence, China Telecom,General Motors, the Concours Group, Dechert LLP, Del Monte Foods, EDS, Gardere Wynne Sewell, LLP, Hearst, HP, Huhtamaki, Intel, McDonald's, Motorola, National Public Radio, Novartis, New Dominion, Nokia, Oracle, Panera Bread, PeopleSoft, Phillips Electronics, Premier Healthcare, Phillips Petroleum, SAP, Siemens, Sun, Synopsis, The Institute for the Future, and The City of San Jose. Sutton also teaches numerous groups of executives and other professionals each year who come to Stanford for professional education.
His research and opinions are often described in the press, including The New York Times, The Times (of London), Fast Company, BusinessWeek, Financial Times, Fortune, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, National Post, The Boston Globe, ComputerWorld, Business 2.0, Red Herring, Entrepreneur, Industry Standard, Investor's Business Daily, Wired, Chief Executive, Strategy & Leadership, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Jose Mercury. He is also been columnist for CIO Insight and a guest on numerous radio and television shows, including Bloomberg, BBC, Connections, PBS, NPR, Tech Nation, and CNN. Sutton's blog is Work Matters and can be found at Bobsutton.net He and Jeffrey Pfeffer maintain a website that provides information and a place for people to exchange ideas about evidence-based management at Evidence-basedmanagement.com