Lynda M. Applegate

Lynda M. Applegate is a Baker Foundation Professor at HBS and is Chair of the Advisory Committee for Harvard University’s Masters Degree of Liberal Arts in Finance and Management at the Harvard University Extension School.  She has also played a leading role in developing and delivering HBS Executive Education Programs for entrepreneurs and business owners, most recently as Faculty Chair of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit and Faculty Chair of the HBS Executive Programs for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs. Since joining the HBS faculty in 1986, she also served as Co-Chair of the HBS MBA Program, Chair of Field Based Learning, and Co-Chair of the Harvard Policy Group on Networked Government Services.  Prior to joining the HBS faculty, Lynda was on the faculty at the University of Michigan, University of Washington, and University of Arizona. Lynda has also been an active consultant and mentor to high growth businesses and has served as a Director on venture-backed, publicly traded, and nonprofit boards.  Prior to beginning her academic career, Lynda served in a variety of leadership roles in the healthcare industry.

Lynda’s research and publications focus on the challenges of building new ventures and leading radical business innovation in the face of significant industry, technological, capital market, and regulatory turbulence. A second stream of research examines emerging leadership and governance models to support entrepreneurial ecosystem evolution and inter-firm collaboration and innovation. During the Global Economic Crisis, she began conducting research on how entrepreneurial leaders innovate through crisis and build resilient organizations. During the past few years, this research expanded to address issues of assuring economic equality for women and for minority entrepreneurs and business owners. In partnership with the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, where she serves on the Board of Trustees, Lynda recently helped launch a Board Ready Bootcamp to prepare women and minority business leaders to serve as Board Members on for-profit and non-profit boards and she is also a member of a working group that has successfully launched a Compact for Social Justice that has been signed by over 80 of the largest technology companies located in Massachusetts. In addition to serving as Series Editor for Harvard Business Publishing’s Core Readings in Entrepreneurship, Lynda is the author of over 40 articles, books, and book chapters, and over 400 published case studies, online learning DVDs, and course materials.

Lynda is the recipient of numerous HBS awards for her research, teaching, and service to the school. She recently received the Robert F. Greenhill Award for her outstanding contributions to HBS over the course of her career. She has also received Harvard Business School’s Berol Award for Research Excellence and its Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching.  Lynda has won numerous “Best Paper” awards for her academic research on 21^st century business models and executive team decision-making and collaboration, and has served as a Senior Editor and on the editorial boards for leading research journals in the field of technology innovation. More recently, she also received the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her decades of work with the Women Presidents Organization.

Lynda is an active international consultant and has served on the board of directors of public, private, non-profit and venture-backed companies. She is an advisor and advisory board member for entrepreneurs launching new ventures and for senior executives leading innovation in established companies. In the past, Lynda has also served as a member of the Industry Advisory Board for NASDAQ and as a member of the Executive Council for Information Technology and Management for the U.S. Government Accountability Office.  She also served as a policy advisor on a Blue-Ribbon Panel to define a National Research Agenda on the development of the Network Economy and, in the late 1990s, served as a member of President Clinton’s Roundtable on Critical Infrastructure Protection.

September 2020