Center for Social Innovation

Jennifer Aaker

General Atlantic Professor of Marketing
A social psychologist and marketer, Aaker focuses her research on time, money and happiness. She researches questions such as: What actually makes people happy, as opposed to what they think makes them happy? How do small acts create significant change, and how can those effects be fueled by social media? She recently co-authored The Dragonfly Effect, Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. Aaker teaches Brand, Design, and Social Technology, a class offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students. She also teaches in the Center's executive education programs and is co-director of the bi-annual prosocial behavior briefing: Small Steps Big Leaps, the Science of Getting People to do the Right Thing.

Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Lecturer in Business Strategy
As founder, former chairman (1998-2008) and now chairman emeritus of Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), as well as founder and chairman of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society since 2008, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen has focused on educating individual donors about effective philanthropic giving, strengthening the capacity of foundations, and building the knowledge base of the philanthropic field. Her academic research focuses primarily on individual donors, foundation strategy, practice, and accountability, and it provides the basis for her current book projects — an educational and empowerment book for individual donors and a case-based overview of the 21st century foundation sector. Arrillaga-Andreessen teaches the Strategic Philanthropy class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and created numerous cases on the philanthropic field.

Bill Barnett

Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership, Strategy, and Organizations
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
Barnett studies competition among organizations and how organizations and industries evolve over time. He researches how strategic differences and strategic change among organizations affect their growth. Barnett is the director of the center's Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability executive education program and sits on the faculty committee for the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

David Brady

Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values
Professor of Political Science, School of Humanities and Sciences
Deputy Director and Davies Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Morris M. Doyle Centennial Chair in Public Policy, Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Brady's research focuses on the American Congress, the party system, and public policy. He has studied the critical congressional realignments of 1860, 1896, and 1932, and has concluded that the rising number of safe seats and the waning importance of presidential coattails have made it much more difficult for a realigning election to take place in the United States. He also has written on internet voting, the women's movement, regulation of the nuclear industry, apportionment, the Supreme Court handling of abortion, and Korean and Japanese politics. He presently heads a joint project between the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution on Polarization in American Politics. Brady co-teaches Social Innovation Through Corporate Social Responsibility, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students, a program he steers as part of the faculty committee.

Robert Burgelman

Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management Executive Director of the Stanford Executive Program
Burgelman carries out longitudinal field-based research on the role of strategy in firm evolution. He has examined how companies enter into new businesses (through corporate entrepreneurship and internal corporate venturing as well as through acquisition) and leave others (through strategic business exit), and how success may lead to co-evolutionary lock-in with the environment. Current working papers include: Toward Electric Cars and Clean Coal: A Comparative Analysis of Strategies and Strategy-Making in the U.S. and China, The Drive Toward the Electric Mile — A Proposal for a Minimum Winning Game, and U.S. Dependence on Oil in 2008: Facts, Figures and Context. Burgelman co-teaches Leading Strategic Change in the Health Care Industry and Strategic Thinking in Action — in Business and Beyond, both courses offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

Steve Callander

Associate Professor of Political Economy
Graduate School of Business Trust Faculty Scholar
Callander’s research interests are in theoretical political economy. He has worked mainly on the behavior of voters and candidates in elections as well as the design of electoral systems. His recent focus has been on the complexity of policy making, understanding how uncertainty and learning affects political outcomes in a variety of institutional settings. Callander teaches the Leadership and Crisis Management and Strategy Beyond Markets courses, both offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

Frank Flynn

Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior
Director of the Center for Leadership Development and Research
Professor Flynn’s research focuses on interpersonal relations in organizations. In particular, he studies three topics of interest: (1) How employees can develop healthy patterns of cooperation; (2) How the negative impact of racial and gender stereotyping in the workplace can be mitigated; and (3) How people can emerge as leaders and assume positions of power in organizations. His work bridges the fields of management and social psychology, leading to scholarly as well as practical insights on organizational life. Flynn is co-director of the bi-annual prosocial behavior briefing conference: Small Steps Big Leaps, the Science of Getting People to do the Right Thing and publishes the Center’s quarterly column about current prosocial behavior academic research. He also serves as a Service Learning Trip faculty advisor.

Alan Garber

Professor of Economics (by courtesy)
Henry J. Kaiser Jr. Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Research and Policy (by courtesy), School of Medicine
Professor of Economics (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences
Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Professor Alan M. Garber's research is directed toward methods for improving health care delivery and financing, particularly for the elderly, in settings of limited resources. He has developed methods for determining the cost-effectiveness of health interventions, and he studies ways to structure financial and organizational incentives to ensure that cost-effective care is delivered. Also, his research explores how clinical practice patterns and health care market characteristics influence technology adoption, health expenditures, and health outcomes in the United States and in other countries. Garber co-teaches the Analysis of Costs, Risks, and Benefits of Health Care course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

Chip Heath

Thrive Foundation for Youth Professor of Organizational Behavior
Chip Heath’s research focuses on two general areas: What makes ideas succeed in the social marketplace of ideas, and how can people design messages to make them stick? How do individuals, groups, and organizations make important decisions and what mistakes do they make? Heath teaches How to Change Things When Change is Hard, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students. He also teaches in the Center's executive education programs.

Keith Hennessey

Lecturer in Economics
Mr. Hennessey is an economic policy practitioner with 15 years experience advising elected officials. A forceful advocate for free enterprise, free markets, free trade, and limited government, he has operated at the intersection of economic theory and the messy realities of practical policymaking. He teaches how a bill really becomes a law, and how theory translates into policies that affect the shape and structure of the American economy. Hennessey teaches Economics in Government and Contemporary Economic Policy, both courses offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

Hau Lee

Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology
Spence Faculty Fellow
Director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum
Director of the Strategies and Leadership in Supply Chains Executive Program
Lee’s research focuses on supply chain management, work that addresses how to get products or services to their destination by managing the flow of materials, information, and money. Lee launched the Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chain Program exploring ways firms can lower their environmental footprint and improve their contribution to the well being of society. He also hosts the annual Socially and Environmentally Responsible Supply Chain Conference and serves as a Service Learning Trip faculty advisor.

Scotty McLennan

Lecturer in Political Economy
Dean for Religious Life at Stanford
McLennan's research has been at the interface of religion, ethics, and the professions. He coauthored, with Laura Nash, Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life (Jossey-Bass, 2001). MCLennan teaches The Business World: Moral and Spiritual Inquiry through Literature, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

William F. Meehan III

Lecturer in Strategic Management
Raccoon Partners Lecturer
Meehan is a director emeritus of McKinsey & Company. His teaching and research focus on two areas: general management and leadership; and nonprofits, social entrepreneurship and philanthropy. Meehan teaches Strategic Management of Nonprofits, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

Dale Miller

Claude N. Rosenberg Jr. Director of the Center for Social Innovation
Miller’s research interests include the impact of social norms on behavior and the role that justice considerations play in individual and organizational decisions. His recent work focuses on the motivations underlying volunteerism and the conditions under which individuals and organizations abandon one course of action to pursue another. Miller sits on the faculty committee of the Center's Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

Jim Patell

Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management Codirector of the Product Realization Network at Stanford
Patell’s research and teaching interests center on business process and product design, operations management, manufacturing, and cost accounting. During his tenure as associate dean for academic affairs in the GSB, he redesigned and revitalized the Public Management Program, the precursor to the Center's current Public Management Program (PMP) for MBA and MSx students, with a focus on government, nonprofit organizations, and public service. Patell remains close to the PMP as he now sits on its faculty committee and codirects the Product Realization Network at Stanford, and he is a founding faculty member of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d-School), where he teaches courses on Design for Extreme Affordability, a course offered as part of the PMP as well as the Center's Executive Education Program for Social Entrepreneurs.

Jeffrey Pfeffer

Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior
Pfeffer has published extensively in the fields of organization theory and human resource management. His current research focuses on the relationship between time and money, power and leadership in organizations, economics language and assumptions and their effects on management practice, how social science theories become self-fulfilling, barriers to turning knowledge into action and how to overcome them, and evidence-based management and what it is, barriers to its use, and how to implement it. Current working papers include: When Is Happiness About How Much You Earn? The Effect of Hourly Payment on the Money-Happiness Connection, Working Alone: What Ever Happened To The Idea Of Organizations As Communities, and Building Sustainable Organizations: The Human Factor. Pfeffer teaches The Paths to Power, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

James A. Phills Jr.

Professor of Organizational Behavior (Teaching)
Professor Phills specializes in the emerging area of social innovation, in particular, exploring the growing exchange of ideas, talent, capital, and values across sector boundaries and the shifting roles of business, government, and nonprofits in solving social problems. Phills is the director of two of the center's flagship executive education programs: The Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders and the Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship. He has been a faculty director of the Center from 2000 to 2009.

Erica Plambeck

Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Operations, Information and Technology
Senior Fellow (by courtesy), Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
Plambeck received the Presidential Early Career Award for research in supply chain management, and was recognized as a Faculty Pioneer in social and environmental stewardship by WRI and the Aspen Institute. She developed decision-models for EU climate change policy as a Marshall Scholar at Cambridge University. Plambeck teaches Environmental Entrepreneurship, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students, a program she steers as part of its faculty committee that draws together MBAs and graduate students from across the Stanford campus. She also teaches in the Center’s executive education program Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability.

Walter W. Powell

Professor of Organizational Behavior (by courtesy)
Professor of Education, School of Education
Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences
Powell is an organizational sociologist whose current research focuses on how knowledge is transferred across organizations, the role of networks in facilitating or hindering innovation, and the manner in which institutions codify ideas and practices. Powell is the author of The Nonprofit Sector, A Research Handbook, a novel, comprehensive, cross-disciplinary perspective on nonprofit organizations and their role and function in society. Powell is the research faculty director of the Stanford Project on the Evolution of Nonprofits, a past major research initiative of the Center for Social Innovation.

Hayagreeva Rao

Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources
Morgan Stanley Director of the Center for Leadership Development and Research

Professor Rao's recent work investigates the role of social movements as motors of organizational change in professional and organizational fields. Rao is the author of Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovation and a speaker at the Center's events.

Stefan Reichelstein

William R. Timken Professor of Accounting
Stefan Reichelstein is known internationally for his research on the interface of management accounting and economics. Reichelstein co-teaches Environmental Innovation, Sustainability and Entrepreneurship, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students. Current working papers include: CO2 Regulations and Electricity Prices: Cost Estimates from Coal-Fired Power Plants

Ken Shotts

Professor of Political Economy
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences
Ken Shotts uses game theory to analyze how electoral rules structure voters’ influence on policy choices made by elected officials. He has published papers on a wide variety of topics, including presidential leadership, racial redistricting, term limits, signaling in repeated elections, statistical methodology, and the 2000 election controversy in Florida. Shotts teaches Ethics in Management (MSx), Strategy Beyond Markets, and Shaping the Business Environment. He also regularly teaches in the Center's executive education programs.

JD Schramm

Lecturer in Management
JD Schramm combines over 20 years of professional experience with his personal expertise in Management Communication to design and deliver a variety of courses for GSB students. A seasoned communicator and experienced entrepreneur, his courses blend the theoretical and practical aspects of effective communication. Schramm teaches Political Communication, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students. He also serves as a Service Learning Trip faculty advisor.

Jesper Sørensen

Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Professor
Professor of Organizational Behavior
Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences
Susan Ford Dorsey Faculty Fellow
Sørensen specializes in the dynamics of organizational and strategic change, and their implications for individuals and their careers. His research on firm outcomes has focused on the impact of organizational structure and culture on organizational learning, performance and innovation. His work on the dynamics of teams has led to new insights concerning how people respond to changes in the racial composition of their workgroups. Currently, Sørensen is engaged in a large-scale project on the determinants of entrepreneurial behavior that examines several previously unanswered questions, such as how work environments shape rates of entrepreneurship. Sørensen teaches the Poverty, Entrepreneurship, and Development course, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students. He also serves as a regular Service Learning Trip faculty advisor and teaches in the Center's executive education programs.

Sarah Soule

Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior
Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences
Graduate School of Business Trust Faculty Fellow
Soule's research examines state and organizational-level policy change and diffusion, and the role social movements have on these processes. Current projects include an NSF-funded analysis of advocacy group effects on environmental legislation in the U.S., an analysis of how protest impacts multi-national firm-level decisions regarding divestment in Burma, a study of how protest affects the outcomes of shareholder resolutions, and an analysis of how protest affects stock prices of targeted firms. She has just finished a book with Cambridge University Press, entitled Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility. And, she recently completed a book with David Snow entitled, A Primer on Social Movements. She teaches Sustainability as Market Strategy and Social Networks, Careers and Markets, both courses offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students. She also serves as a Service Learning Trip faculty advisor.

Myra Strober

Professor of Education, Emerita, School of Education
Strober’s research focuses on the economics of work and family. She has written on gender issues at work, occupational segregation, women in the professions and management, the economics of childcare, and feminist economics. She has also been an expert witness in cases involving the valuation of work in the home, sex discrimination, and sexual harassment, and a consultant for several companies on improved utilization of women in management. Her most recent work is on interdisciplinarity in academia. Strober teaches Work and Family, a course offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students. She also serves as an occasional Service Learning Trip faculty advisor.

Paul Yock

Professor of Operations, Information and Technology (by courtesy)
Martha Meier Weiland Professor of Medicine
and Professor of Bioengineering, School of Medicine
Paul Yock’s current research interests include development and testing of catheter-based delivery systems for cardiac cell transplantation and new catheter and molecular imaging techniques for cardiology. He is also involved in the design and early testing of catheter systems to treat coronary and structural heart disease and in new applications of intravascular imaging. He authored the fundamental patents for intravascular ultrasound imaging and conducted the initial clinical trials. Yock co-teaches four biodesign innovation courses offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.

Stefanos Zenios

Charles A. Holloway Professor of Operations, Information and Technology
Professor of Health Care Management
Professor of Bioengineering (by courtesy), Department of Bioengineering, Schools of Medicine & Engineering
Professor Zenios studies how health care delivery systems use technology to prolong life and improve its quality for patients with complex and expensive medical needs. He is especially interested in the impact the decisions of providers and payers have on the innovators. Zenios co-teaches four biodesign innovation courses offered as part of the Center's Public Management Program for MBA and MSx students.