Robert S. Kaplan

Robert S. Kaplan is Senior Fellow and Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, where he has taught for 35 years.

Robert S. Kaplan is Senior Fellow and Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, where he has taught for 35 years. Previously, he served on the faculty and as Dean of the Tepper Business School at Carnegie-Mellon University. Kaplan received a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from M.I.T., a Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University, and several honorary doctorates from international universities.

Kaplan is co-creator of both activity-based costing and the balanced scorecard (BSC). He currently works on the Harvard Business School Value Based Health Care initiative, introducing time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) and value-based bundled payments to health care. He is also applying his BSC strategy execution framework to help corporations develop profit-making strategies that mitigate societal problems of environmental degradation, poverty, and inequality.

Kaplan has done extensive writing, teaching, and consulting on linking cost and performance management systems to strategy implementation. His 14 authored or co-authored books have won numerous prizes and been translated into 28 languages. He has published nearly 200 papers including 27 in Harvard Business Review. Kaplan was inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame in 2006 and received the Lifetime Contribution Award from the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association in January 2006. In 2008, his co-authored book, Relevance Lost: The Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, received the AAA Seminal Contribution to Accounting Literature Award. His articles and books have also been recognized with several Wildman Medal and AAA Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Awards.