Royal Little Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School

VITA 

Eric Van den Steen is a Professor of Business Administration at HBS. He holds the Royal Little chair, established in honor of the founder of Textron. 

Professor Van den Steen is currently course head of the first-year Strategy course at HBS and also developed the second-year elective Creating and Sustaining Competitive Advantage. He has taught in several HBS executive education programs, including the Program for Leadership Development, Leading Change and Organizational Renewal, and Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage.

Professor Van den Steen's research studies the fundamentals of strategy and competitive advantage, the role of leaders in strategy, and the interaction between strategy and organization more broadly. He has also researched extensively the role of fundamental disagreement in organizations, with particular attention to its role in culture and managerial vision, and its effect on mergers and acquisitions.

Prior to joining the Business School, Professor Van den Steen worked in consulting, at Arthur D. Little -- founded by a cousin of Royal Little -- and McKinsey & Company, and was on the faculty of MIT. He holds a MS in Mechanical Engineering from the KULeuven (Belgium), an MBA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He lives with his wife and two sons in Belmont, MA.