Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School

Karim R. Lakhani is the Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is the (co)founder of several Harvard-wide research and educational initiatives centered around the intersection of technological innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) and company strategy. He is the co-founder and chair of the Digital, Data & Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard, founder and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, and the principal investigator of the NASA Tournament Laboratory. He is also the co-founder & co-chair of the Harvard Business Analytics Program, a university-wide online program transforming executives into data-savvy leaders.

Karim has published over 150 scholarly articles and case studies and is known for his original scholarship on open innovation and has pioneered the use of field experiments to help solve innovation-related challenges while simultaneously generating rigorous research in partnership with organizations like NASA, Harvard Catalyst, and The Broad Institute. His digital transformation research investigates the role of analytics and AI in reshaping business and operating models. He co-authored Competing in the Age of AI (2020), an award-winning book published by the Harvard Business Review Press. He has developed six online-courses that have educated thousands of executives on AI strategy, technology-driven transformation, and entrepreneurship.

Karim is an advisor to senior executives at leading companies. He serves as an Academic Partner at Flagship Pioneering, member of the Board of Directors of Mozilla Corporation and VIDEA Health, and an advisor to several AI-based startups. He is the co-founder of Aspire Institute, a non-profit that aims to transform the lives of first-in-family college students worldwide.

Karim was awarded his Ph.D. in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds an SM degree in Technology and Policy from MIT, and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Management from McMaster University in Canada. He is a recipient of the Aga Khan Foundation International Scholarship and a doctoral fellowship from Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Prior to coming to HBS he served as a Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Karim has also worked in sales, marketing and new product development roles at GE Healthcare and was a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.