Thomas R. Eisenmann

Dr. Thomas Eisenmann is the Howard H.
Stevenson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, Faculty Co-Chair of the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, Faculty Co-Chair of the Harvard MS/MBA Program, and Faculty Chair of the HBS California Research Center.
Eisenmann teaches the MBA elective course Making Markets, which focuses on marketplace design, and leads a January Term Startup Bootcamp for first-year MBAs.
In recent years, Eisenmann has served as Chair of Harvard’s MBA Elective Curriculum—the second year of the MBA Program—and as course head of The Entrepreneurial Manager, taught to all 900 first-year MBA students.
He was co-creator of the MBA electives Scaling Technology Ventures, Entrepreneurial Sales & Marketing, and Product Management 101, in which students specify and supervise development of a software application.
Eisenmann also created the MBA electives Launching Technology Ventures, which examines challenges confronting early stage startups in the information technology sector, and Managing Networked Business (now called The Online Economy), which surveys strategies for platform-based businesses that leverage network effects.
He twice co-led a Harvard Innovation Lab course, Cultural Entrepreneurship in New York City, in which students from across Harvard spent a winter break week in New York exploring new ventures in fashion, food, and fine arts, and co-led four similar winter break trips to Silicon Valley.
Eisenmann received his Doctorate in Business Administration (’98), MBA (’83), and BA (’79) from Harvard University.
Prior to entering the HBS Doctoral Program, Eisenmann spent eleven years as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he was co-head of the Media and Entertainment Practice.
Eisenmann is on the editorial board of Strategic Management Journal.
He currently serves as a director on the boards of Harvard Business Publishing and Harvard Student Agencies, the world’s largest student-run corporation.