Stuart Hart

Stuart Hart is one of the world's top authorities on the implications of sustainable development and environmentalism for business strategy. He is the S.C. Johnson Chair of Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and the founder of Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell and the Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab.

Before joining Cornell in 2003, he was the Hans Zulliger Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Enterprise and Professor of Strategic Management at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where he founded the Center for Sustainable Enterprise and the Base of the Pyramid Learning Laboratory. Previously, he taught corporate strategy at the University of Michigan Business School and was the founding director of the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP), a joint initiative between Michigan’s Business School and School of Natural Resources and Environment.

Professor Hart’s research interests center on strategy innovation and change. He is particularly interested in the implications of environmentalism and sustainable development for corporate and competitive strategy. He has published over 50 papers and authored or edited five books. His work has appeared in leading scholarly journals, including Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, and Management Science, as well as leading practitioner journals, such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Executive, Strategy+Business, and Foreign Affairs.

He wrote the seminal article “Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World,” which won the McKinsey Award for Best Article in Harvard Business Review in 1997, and helped launch the movement for corporate sustainability. With C.K. Prahalad, Hart also wrote the path breaking 2002 article “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” which provided the first articulation of how business could profitably serve the needs of the four billion poor in the developing world. His new book, Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World’s Most Difficult Problems, was published by Wharton School Publishing in March 2005. In Capitalism at the Crossroads, Hart shows companies can become the catalyst for a truly sustainable form of global development—and profit in the process.

Stuart Hart has received numerous honors and awards for his work in the area of sustainable enterprise. In addition to the 1997 McKinsey Award, his 2001 paper “Do Corporate Global Environmental Standards Create or Destroy Market Value? (with G. Dowell and B. Yeung) won the Moskowitz Prize for outstanding research in the field of socially responsible investing. In addition, he was recognized as a “Faculty Pioneer” by the World Resources Institute in 1999 for his work in integrating environmental and social issues into the management education curriculum. And in 2002, he received the Gerald Barrett Faculty Award at the Kenan-Flagler Business School as the faculty member who made the greatest contribution to the MBA program through teaching and service.

Stuart Hart earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester (General Science), Master’s degree from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (Environmental Management), and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan (Planning and Strategy).