Meet Ranjay

Ranjay Gulati is a professor at Harvard Business School and an expert on leadership, strategy and organizational growth. Until recently, he chaired the Advanced Management Program, the school’s flagship senior leader executive program. He has authored seven books, including “Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies,” which will appear in February 2022.

Gulati has been ranked as one of the top ten most-cited academics in the fields of economics and business by ISI-Incite and has received similar recognition from The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit. His research has appeared in leading academic journals of business, as well as major publications like the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, strategy+business, and the Financial Times.

Gulati’s recent work explores organizations and management in three key ways. First, he examines the many challenges organizations face when seeking to grow rapidly in turbulent markets. Second, he has examined how important it is for leaders to build resilient organizations that can scale quickly while also retaining the culture and energy necessary for innovation. Finally, Gulati has studied the skills and behaviors leaders need to steer fast-moving organizations. While scholars have traditionally emphasized the motivational and inspirational qualities of great leaders, Gulati has argued that leaders today must cultivate courage in others, activating a winning mindset centered around priorities, principles and purpose.

Gulati has received a number of awards for his teaching, including the Best Professor Award at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, where he taught prior to coming to Harvard. A native of India, he holds a PhD from Harvard University and additional degrees from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Washington State University, and St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi.