Thomas Eisenmann

Thomas R. Eisenmann is the Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, Peter O. Crisp Chair, Harvard Innovation Labs, and Faculty Co-Chair of the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the Harvard MS/MBA Program, and the Harvard College Technology Innovation Fellows Program. Eisenmann teaches the MBA elective Entrepreneurial Failure and the MS/MBA core courses Technology Venture Immersion and Launch Lab. In recent years, he has served as Chair of Harvard's MBA Elective Curriculum—the 2nd year of the MBA Program—and as course head of The Entrepreneurial Manager, taught to all 900 1st-year MBAs. With colleagues, he launched the MBA electives Making Markets, which focuses on marketplace design, 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 January Term Startup Bootcamp for first-year MBAs and the MBA electives Launching Technology Ventures and Managing Networked Business, which surveyed 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 study entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley.

Professor 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. He currently serves as a director on the board of Harvard Business Publishing.

BOOKS

• Eisenmann, Thomas R. Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success. New York: Currency, forthcoming. (Due March 30, 2021.)
• Eisenmann, Tom, ed. Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2013.
• Eisenmann, Thomas R., ed. Internet Business Models: Text and Cases. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2001.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• Eisenmann, Thomas R. "Why Start-ups Fail." Harvard Business Review 99, no. 3 (May–June 2021): 76–85.
• Eisenmann, Thomas R., Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall Van Alstyne. "Platform Envelopment." Strategic Management Journal 32, no. 12 (December 2011): 1270–1285.
• Eisenmann, Thomas R. Review of "Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television." Business History Review 83, no. 2 (Summer 2009).
• Eisenmann, Thomas R. "Managing Proprietary and Shared Platforms." California Management Review 50, no. 4 (Summer 2008).
• Eisenmann, T. R. "Internet Companies' Growth Strategies: Determinants of Investment Intensity and Long-Term Performance." Strategic Management Journal 27, no. 12 (December 2006): 1183–1204.
• Eisenmann, T. R., G. Parker, and M. van Alstyne. "Strategies for Two-Sided Markets." Harvard Business Review 84, no. 10 (October 2006).
• Eisenmann, Thomas R. "The Effects of CEO Equity Ownership and Diversification on Risk Taking." Strategic Management Journal 23, no. 6 (June 2002): 513–534.
• Eisenmann, T. R., and J. L. Bower. "The Entrepreneurial M-Form: Strategic Integration in Global Media Firms." Organization Science 11, no. 3 (May–June 2000): 348–355.
• Eisenmann, T. R. "The U.S. Cable Television Industry, 1948-1995: Managerial Capitalism in Eclipse." Business History Review 74, no. 1 (Spring 2000).
• Eisenmann, T. R. "Governance and Risk Taking in the U.S. Cable Television Industry." Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (1998). View Details
• Hagel, J., III, and T. R. Eisenmann. "Navigating the Multimedia Landscape." McKinsey Quarterly 3 (1994): 39–55.

BOOK CHAPTERS

• Eisenmann, Thomas R., Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall Van Alstyne. "Opening Platforms: When, How and Why?" Chap. 6 in Platforms, Markets and Innovation, edited by Annabelle Gawer. Cheltenham, U.K. and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009.
• Eisenmann, T. R. "Corporate Intervention in Resource Allocation." Chap. 12 in From Resource Allocation to Strategy, edited by Joseph L. Bower and Clark Gilbert. U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Eisenmann, Thomas R., and Joseph L. Bower. "The Entrepreneurial M-Form: A Case Study of Strategic Integration in a Global Media Company." Chap. 13 in From Resource Allocation to Strategy, edited by Joseph L. Bower and Clark Gilbert. U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Eisenmann, Thomas R. "Valuation Bubbles and Broadband Deployment." Chap. 4 in The Broadband Explosion, edited by Robert D. Austin and Stephen P. Bradley. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005.

WORKING PAPERS

• Eisenmann, Thomas R. "Determinants of Early-Stage Startup Performance: Survey Results." (pdf) Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-057, October 2020.