Forest L. Reinhardt

Forest L. Reinhardt is the John D. Black Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and HBS’s Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotions and Tenure.

Professor Reinhardt is interested in the relationships between market and nonmarket business strategy, the connections between the activities of government entities and those of firms, the behavior of private and public organizations that manage natural resources, and the economics of externalities and public goods.  He is the author of Down to Earth:  Applying Business Principles to Environmental Management, published by Harvard Business School Press.  Like that book, many of his articles and papers analyze problems of environmental and natural resource management.  Focusing especially on the energy and agricultural sectors, he has written numerous classroom cases on these and related topics, which are used at Harvard and elsewhere in MBA curricula and in executive programs.

Professor Reinhardt chairs and teaches in Harvard Business School’s Agribusiness Seminar, an executive education program held each January on the HBS campus.   

Professor Reinhardt has taught HBS’s required MBA courses on Strategy and on Business, Government, and the International Economy.  He has developed and introduced elective courses on Food and Agribusiness, on Energy, and on Business and the Environment, analyzing these topics from economic and political perspectives, and considering the strategies both of incumbent firms and startups. 

Professor Reinhardt has developed two courses for Harvard Business School Online.  The first, Global Business, draws on microeconomics, macroeconomics, political science, and history to help business leaders understand the economic and political environment in which business is conducted, and the strategic opportunities and risks to which globalization and anti-globalization give rise.  The second, Business and Climate Change, developed jointly with HBS professor Mike Toffel, covers the basic science and economics of climate change and explores the relationships between climate change and business operations.  Trailers for the courses are at Harvard Business School Online Courses & Learning Platforms (hbs.edu).

Professor Reinhardt serves on the Executive Committee of Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, on the Board of Tutors for the Harvard College concentration in Environmental Science and Public Policy, and on the Steering Committee of the HBS-Harvard Kennedy School Joint Degree Programs.  He also serves on the advisory board of R.D. Offutt Company, an agribusiness firm headquartered in Fargo, North Dakota.

Professor Reinhardt received his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1990.  He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar, and an A.B., cum laude, from Harvard College.

Born and raised in Missoula, Montana, he lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.