Bharat N. Anand, a noted Indian American expert in corporate, media and digital strategy is leaving Harvard Business School (HBS) to join New York University’s Stern School of Business as Dean in August.
Currently a vice provost at Harvard University and a chaired professor at HBS, Anand’s work has focused on the central challenges for digital businesses of “getting noticed” and “getting paid,” according to an NYU release.
An influential voice in the area of digital transformation, he created HBS’s first executive program on digital strategies for media companies. As the founding faculty chair and first senior associate dean of HBS Online, he helped launch and grow its innovative new model for business education.
As Harvard’s vice provost for advances in learning, he helped steer Harvard’s teaching through the pandemic; convened the university-wide task force on the future of learning; and led the creation of a new learning experience platform—helping shape the University’s strategy for residential and online education.
Anand was also one of the founders of the Axim Collaborative — a Harvard-MIT venture to bring better education access to low-income and first-generation students.
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“NYU is absolutely thrilled with the appointment of Bharat Anand to lead Stern. He is an outstanding choice—deeply strategic, possessed of a global outlook, innovative, highly respected, and exceptionally effective,” said NYU President Linda G. Mills.
“He is known for his intellectual curiosity and for being a careful listener. He has a reputation for deftly building common ground and for cultivating partnerships widely,” Mills said. “And at a moment when discourse on important matters has become so rancorous and divisive, his experience leading a university working group on enabling difficult conversations will be very welcome, indeed. We are so excited to welcome Bharat Anand to NYU.”
“I am honored to be named dean of the Leonard N. Stern School of Business,” said Anand. “Stern not only has a superb reputation, it possesses a remarkable spirit—entrepreneurial, determined, energetic, resourceful, and global. I was so delighted and impressed with everyone I met during the search process, and I’m excited to join this vibrant community and contribute to all that Stern is and aspires to be in the years ahead.”
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Anand comes to NYU from Harvard University, where he has been a member of the HBS faculty since 1998, when he joined as an assistant professor of business administration, after previously serving on the faculty at Yale University’s School of Management.
He was named the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration in 2006, the faculty chair in 2013 and later senior associate dean of Harvard Business School Online, and Harvard University’s vice provost for advances in learning in 2018. He is the chair of Harvard’s Generative AI Working Group for Teaching and Learning.
He is a widely published and influential scholar and author. His 2016 book, The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change, was named a “Top 10 Book” by Fast Company and Bloomberg and was awarded the Axiom Business Book Silver Award for Best Book in “Business Theory.”
His research has been published in leading journals in strategy, economics, and marketing, and his articles and cases have received multiple scholarly awards.
His many other honors and awards include selection to the Princeton Junior Society of Fellows during his graduate studies, twice receiving the Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard Business School, and twice receiving the Robert Greenhill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Harvard Business School, among others.
Anand received his bachelor’s degree in economics, magna cum laude, from Harvard and his PhD in economics from Princeton University.