Robert D. Austin

Robert Daniel Austin ^[1] (born 1962) is an innovation and technology management researcher and professor at Ivey Business School. ^[2] He is best known for pedagogical innovations in the teaching of technology management, for his "artful making" research, ^[3] which examines business innovation through the lens of art practice, and for his research documenting the neurodiversity employment movement. ^[4]

Biography

Austin received bachelor's degrees in English Literature and Engineering from Swarthmore College in 1984, a master’s in Industrial Engineering and Management Science from Northwestern University in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Management and Decision Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1995 under the supervision of Patrick Larkey. ^[5] His doctoral thesis was the recipient of the Herbert A. Simon Doctoral Dissertation Award for Behavioral Research in the Administrative Sciences.

From 1997 to 2009, Austin was a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, working primarily in the area of Technology and Operations Management. ^[6] He joined the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) faculty in 2007. He has also spent time as a manager at the Ford Motor Company (1986-1995), a member of the executive team of a startup subsidiary of Novell (1999-2000), the CEO of an executive education foundation (2010-2011), and dean of the faculty of business administration at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton (2011-2013). He moved to Ivey in 2016.

He is the (co)author of more than 100 published articles, cases, and notes, and ten books.

Selected publications

• Austin, Robert D. Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations, New York: Dorset House, 1996.
• Austin, Robert D. and Lee Devin. Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2003.
• Austin, Robert D., Nolan, Richard L. and Shannon O'Donnell, Adventures of an IT Leader, Harvard Business Review Press, 2009. ^[7]
• Austin, Robert D., Devin, Lee, and Erin E. Sullivan, "Accidental Innovation: Supporting Valuable Unpredictability in Creative Process,” Organization Science, September/October 2012 vol. 23 no. 5, 1505-1522. ^[8]
• Austin, Robert D. and Thorkil Sonne, "The Dandelion Principle: Redesigning Work for the Innovation Economy," MIT Sloan Management Review, Summer 2014. ^[9]
• Austin, Robert D. and Gary Pisano, "Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage," Harvard Business Review, May-June 2017.

References

1. Austin, Robert Daniel (1994). "Theories of measurement and dysfunction in organizations".
2. "Rob Austin". Ivey Business School. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
3. Austin, Robert Daniel; Devin, Lee (2003). Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know about how Artists Work. FT Press. ISBN   0130086959.
4. Austin, Robert D.; Pisano, Gary P. (2017-05-01). "Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage". Harvard Business Review. No. May–June 2017. ISSN   0017-8012 . Retrieved 2020-09-14.
5. "Patrick Larkey - The Mathematics Genealogy Project". genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu. Retrieved 2025-11-17.
6. "Coursera - Free Online Courses From Top Universities". Coursera. Retrieved 2016-01-12.
7. Austin, Robert Daniel; Nolan, Richard L.; O'Donnell, Shannon (2009). The adventures of an IT leader - Research@CBS. Harvard Business Press. ISBN   9781422146606 . Retrieved 2016-01-08.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
8. "Accidental Innovation - Research@CBS" . research.cbs.dk. doi:10.1287/orsc.1110.0681 . Retrieved 2016-01-08.
9. "The Dandelion Principle - Research@CBS". research.cbs.dk. Retrieved 2016-01-08.