Sydney Finkelstein

Sydney Finkelstein Profile

For decades renowned thought leader, Sydney Finkelstein has been at the forefront of pinpointing why great companies and leaders fail and how business executives and managers can avoid the same missteps at their own organizations. He is the Steven Roth Professor of Management, and Faculty Director of the Tuck Executive Program (TEP) at the Tuck Center for Leadership.

Professor Finkelstein has published 75 articles and 19 books, with several bestsellers, including the #1 bestseller in the U.S. and Japan, Why Smart Executives Fail. His newest work Superbosses draws from a decade of research and hundreds of interviews to explore what heavyweight leaders like Lorne Michaels, Ralph Lauren, and George Lucas did differently. Professor Finkelstein is also a regular columnist for the BBC.

Professor Finkelstein is a recognized thought leader on leadership, strategy, and corporate governance and listed in the “World’s Top 25 Leadership Gurus” and on the “Thinkers 50.” He has served as a consultant and speaker for major companies around the world, including, Aetna, American Express, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, Boeing, Cerberus, Chevron, Comcast, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, and many others.

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  Sydney Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management, and Associate Dean for Executive Education, at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he teaches courses on Leadership and Strategy. He is the Faculty Director of the flagship Tuck Executive Program, and also has experience working with executives at Northwestern, Wharton, Duke, Bocconi, London Business School, Australian Graduate School of Management, Melbourne Business School, Hanoi School of Business, the Chalmers School (Sweden) and the Helsinki School of Economics. He holds degrees from Concordia University and the London School of Economics, as well as a Ph.D. from Columbia University in strategic management.

  Professor Finkelstein has published 19 books and 75 articles, with several bestsellers, including the #1 bestseller in the U.S. and Japan,Why Smart Executives Fail. Based on a six-year study of 51 companies and 200 interviews of business leaders, the book identifies the fundamental reasons why major mistakes happen, points out the early warning signals that are critical for investors and managers alike, and offers ideas on how organizations can develop a capability of learning from corporate mistakes.

  On Fortune Magazine’s list of Best Business Books, the Wall Street Journal called it “a marvel – a jargon-free business book based on serious research that offers genuine insights with clarity and sometimes even wit … It should be required reading not just for executives but for investors as well.” It has also been featured in such media as the Financial Times, Business Week, the London Times, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Fast Company, Across the Board, and Entrepreneurship, among others, and has been translated into 11 different languages.

  In Professor Finkelstein’s follow-up book, Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You (Harvard Business Press) published in 2009, he turned his attention to such major strategic decisions as the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and numerous business cases to explain why decision-makers sometimes think they’re right when they are really wrong. The book takes up recent research in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and management to not only document why things go wrong, but also to offer a series of solutions that reduce our vulnerability to falling into the traps that lead to bad decisions.

  Professor Finkelstein is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, and has had three books nominated for the Academy of Management’s Terry Book Award, the most prestigious such honor in the field. His other awards include Finalist for the Academy of Management Executive Best Paper Award (2004), the McKinsey & Company Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Prize Honorable Mention (2002), the Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management Executive for his article “Leveraging Intellect” (1997), two Citations of Excellence from ANBAR, the world’s leading guide to management journal literature (1997 & 1998), the Cenafoni Prize for research in Entrepreneurial Strategy (1991), and finalist for the A.T. Kearney award for the best research in strategic management (1988).

  Professor Finkelstein is a recognized thought leader on leadership, strategy, and corporate governance, and is listed in the “World’s Top 25 Leadership Gurus.” He is well known for his keynote speeches and television appearances, and is a columnist for the BBC. He has worked as a consultant and speaker for major companies around the world, including Aetna, American Express, Bank of Montreal, Barclays, Boeing, Cerberus, Chevron, Comcast, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Eaton, Freddie Mac, GE, General Dynamics, Glaxo, Heinz, Hitachi, ING, ITT, J&J, JP Morgan Chase, Mayo Clinic, Korn-Ferry, McGraw-Hill, McKinsey, Merrill Lynch, Monsanto, Morgan Stanley, Novartis, PwC, Raytheon, Roche, Rollins, Russell Reynolds, UBS, and United Technologies.