Robert I. Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization and an active researcher in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. He is Professor of Organizational Behavior (by courtesy) at the Stanford Business School, and a Fellow at IDEO Product Development and at Reactivity (a software firm).
Sutton received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from The University of Michigan and has served on the Stanford faculty since 1983. He has taught at The University of California's (Berkeley) Haas Business School and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences during the 1986-87 and 1994-95 academic years. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly publications, and currently serves as Co-Editor of Research in Organizational Behavior. He has published over 75 articles and chapters in scholarly and applied publications. Sutton has received honors including the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal, induction into the Academy of Management Journals Hall of Fame, Best Management Book of 2000 from Management General, the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching, the McGraw-Hill Innovation in Entrepeneurship Pedagogy Award, and the McCullough Faculty Scholar Chair from the Stanford Engineering School.
His current research focuses on organizational creativity and innovation, the links (and gaps) between managerial knowledge and organizational action, the role of wisdom in organizational life, and group and organizational performance. Much of his research uses psychological theory, or blends of psychological and sociological theory, to understand how organizations influence and are influenced by individuals and groups. His research style emphasizes the development of theory and recommendations for practice on the basis of direct observation of organizational life and interviews with managers, engineers, and other organization members.
Sutton (and Jeffrey Pfeffer) wrote The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge Into Action, a book published by the Harvard Business School Press in 2000. Several major themes from The Knowing-Doing Gap are summarized in the Harvard Business Review article The Smart Talk Trap" (published in May-June, 1999). Sutton just completed Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, which will be published by The Free Press in November, 2001. Several major themes in this book are developed in two Harvard Business Review articles, "The Weird New Rules of Creativity," which will be published in September 2001 and "Building an Innovation Factory" (with Andrew Hargadon), which was published in May-June 2000.
Sutton's research and opinions are often described in the business press, including stories in Business Week, The New York Times, Fast Company, The Boston Globe, Upside, Red Herring, Industry Standard, Investor's Business Daily, Computer World, Wired, San Jose Mercury, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Sutton has been a guest on numerous radio and television shows, including PBS and CNN International.
Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management
The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action