Meet the Authors & Other Product Contributors

Visit Author Page - James Heskett

James L. Heskett is UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, Emeritus at the Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University. He completed his Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and has been a member of the faculty of The Ohio State University as well as President of Logistics Systems, Inc. Since 2000, he has authored a blog on the school's Working Knowledge web site.

He has served as a consultant to companies in North America, Latin America, and Europe.

Professor Heskett was the 1974 recipient of the John Drury Sheahan Award of the Council of Logistics Management, the 1992 Marketing Educator of the Year Award of Sales and Marketing Executives International, and the 2010 Distinguished Career Contribution Award in Services Management of American Marketing Association.

Among his publications are books, including authorship of The Culture Cycle (FT Press, 2011), co-authorship of The Ownership Quotient (Harvard Business Press, 2008), The Value Profit Chain (The Free Press, 2003); The Service Profit Chain (The Free Press, 1997); Corporate Culture and Performance (The Free Press, 1992); Service Breakthroughs: Changing the Rules of the Game (The Free Press, 1990); and The Service Management Course (The Free Press, 1991); authorship of Managing in the Service Economy (Harvard Business School Press, 1986); co-authorship of Logistics Strategy: Cases and Concepts (West Publishing Co., 1985); authorship of Marketing (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1976); co-authorship of Business Logistics, Revised Edition (The Ronald Press Company, 1974); and numerous articles in such publications as the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, and others.

A member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School since 1965, he has at different times taught courses in marketing, business logistics, the management of service operations, business policy, and service management, general management, and the entrepreneurial manager as well as served as Senior Associate Dean in charge of academic programs.

Earl Sasser is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and has been a member of the faculty there since 1969. He received a B.A. in Mathematics from Duke University in 1965, an MBA from the University of North Carolina in 1967, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University in 1969.

Sasser developed the School's first course on the management of service operations in 1972. Professor Sasser has taught a variety of courses in the MBA program including Production and Operations Management, Decision Making and Ethical Values, The Operating Manager, and Service Management. In 1982, Sasser's excellence in the classroom was recognized in an article in Fortune profiling eight professors from business schools throughout the country. Professor Sasser was Chairman of the MBA Program from 1988 to 1991. He was also faculty chair of the Advanced Management Program executive education program from 1992-1995. From 1995-2000 Professor Sasser served as Senior Associate Dean of Executive Education. He served as Chairman of the Board of Harvard Business School Interactive, a not-for-profit corporation, from 2000 to 2003. Sasser is the past faculty chair of executive education's Program for Leadership Development [PLD] -- a program for which he served as the principal architect in 2004. He presently teaches in the Owner/President Management Program and serves as faculty chair of several week-long leadership programs.

In 1990 he co-authored (with HBS Professor James L. Heskett and former HBS assistant professor Christopher W.L. Hart) Service Breakthroughs: Changing the Rules of the Game. Based upon five years of extensive research in fourteen service industries, it explains how one or two firms in each industry are constantly able to set new standards for quality and value that force competitors to adapt or fail. Sasser has co-authored several other books in the field of service management including Management of Service Operations and The Service Management Course, The Service Profit Chain and The Value Profit Chain (with Professor James L. Heskett and Leonard A. Schlesinger) The Free Press: 2003. Professor Sasser's new book, Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage (with Professor James L. Hesket and Joe Wheeler), was published by the Harvard Business School Press, 2008.

Sasser has written or co-written ten articles for Harvard Business Review, including "Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work," "The Profitable Art of Service Recovery," "Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services," "Match Supply and Demand in Service Industries," and "Why Satisfied Customer Defect."

Professor Sasser serves as a consultant to a number of companies in North America, Asia and Europe.

Leonard A. Schlesinger is Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He has served as a member of the Business School faculty from 1978 to 1985, 1988-1998 and 2013 to the present. During his career at the School he has taught courses in Organizational Behavior, Organization Design, Human Resources Management, General Management, Leadership and Service Management in the MBA and Executive Education programs. He has also served as head of the Service Management Interest Group, Senior Associate Dean for External Relations, and Chair of “Leadership and Learning,” the School’s 1993-94 curriculum review and redesign process.

Throughout his career Professor Schlesinger has regularly transitioned between academic and managerial roles in educational and business settings. He served as President of Babson College from 2008-2013, held a number of key executive and operating positions (ending as Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer) at Limited Brands (now L Brands) from 1999-2007, was a Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Senior Vice President and Counselor to the President at Brown University from 1998-1999, and was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Au Bon Pain from 1985-1988.

Schlesinger has lectured and consulted on strategy, service quality, customer satisfaction, entrepreneurship, human resources and organizational change for over 200 major corporations, non-profit organizations, governments, and international leadership organizations around the world. He was an active leader in the design and development of the “Work-Out!” initiative at General Electric and the “Reinventing Government” process for the U.S. Department of Labor.

His writings on entrepreneurship, service management and organizational management have been widely published. Along with his long term HBS colleagues, Profs. Jim Heskett and Earl Sasser, he has recently completed What Great Service Leaders Know and Do: Creating Breakthroughs in Service Firms (Berrett-Koehler, 2015). Additionally, he is the author or co-author of 12 books, including Own Your Future (AMACOM, 2014), Just Start: Take action, Embrace uncertainty, Create the future (Harvard Business School Press, 2012), Action Trumps Everything (Black Ink Press, 2010), The Value Profit Chain (Free Press, 2003), The Service Profit Chain (Free Press, 1997) and The Real Heroes of Business ... and Not a CEO among Them (Doubleday Currency, 1994), and has written numerous articles for academic audiences as well as for The New York Times, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review. He has served on the editorial boards of five major academic journals and has published numerous management case studies that have sold well over one million copies. He also has completed three video series on service management.

Schlesinger currently serves as Lead Director of Demandware, Inc., Director of Viewpost LLC and Restoration Hardware, Inc., a Trustee of Wheaton College (MA), member of the Corporation of the Winsor School, and member of the President’s Council of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. He serves on the Advisory Boards of Startup Institute, The Hope Collaborative, Datapoint Capital, Clip-File, and the Emory-Georgia Healthcare Innovation Program. He also serves as an advisory council member of Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses Initiative, and as a member of both the Council on Competitiveness and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Schlesinger holds a Doctor of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, an MBA from Columbia University, a Bachelor of Arts in American Civilization from Brown University and an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Babson College.