Robert Sutton

Sutton's research focuses on the links (and gaps) between managerial knowledge and organizational action, organizational creativity and innovation, organizational performance, and evidence-based management. He as published over 100 articles and chapters in scholarly and applied publications. He has also published eight books and edited volumes. In particular, Sutton (and Jeffrey Pfeffer) wrote The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge Into Action (Harvard Business School Press, 2000), which was selected as Best Management Book of 2000 by Management General. His most recent book is Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (The Free Press, 2002), which was selected by the Harvard Business Review as one of the best ten business books of the year and as a breakthrough business idea.

About Professor Sutton

Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School.  He is co-founder of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization, which he co-directed from 1996 to 2006.  Sutton is also co-founder of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and the new Hasso Planter Institute of Design (which everyone calls “the d school”), a multi-disciplinary program at Stanford that teaches and spreads “design thinking.”  He is an IDEO Fellow, member of the Institute for the Future’s Board Trustees, and a Professor of Organizational Behavior, by courtesy, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Sutton received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from The University of Michigan and has served on the Stanford faculty since 1983.  He has also served a professor at the Haas Business School, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences during the 1986-87, 1994-95, and 2002-03 academic years, and faculty at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2010.  Sutton has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly publications, and as an editor for the Administrative Science Quarterly and Research in Organizational Behavior.  Sutton’s honors include the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal in 1989, induction into the Academy of Management Journals Hall of Fame, the Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Teaching, the McGraw-Hill Innovation in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award, the McCullough Faculty Scholar Chair from Stanford, selection by Business 2.0 as a leading “management guru” in 2002, the award for the best article published in the Academy of Management Review in 2005, and his book, The No Asshole Rule, won the Quill Award for the best business book of 2007. Sutton was also named as one of 10 “B-School All-Stars” by BusinessWeek in 2007, which they described as “professors who are influencing contemporary business thinking far beyond academia.”

Sutton studies the links between managerial knowledge and organizational action, innovation, and organizational performance. He has published over 125 articles and chapters in scholarly and applied publications. He has also published nine books and edited volumes.  In particular, Sutton (and Jeffrey Pfeffer) wrote The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge Into Action (Harvard Business School Press, 2000), which was selected as Best Management Book of 2000 by Management General and selected for inclusion in Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten’s  100 Best Business Books of All Time .  His next book, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation  (The Free Press, 2002), was selected by the Harvard Business Review as one of the best ten business books of the year and as a breakthrough business idea.  Sutton (and Jeffrey Pfeffer) then published Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management, (Harvard Business School Press, 2006), which was selected by Toronto’s Globe and Mail as the top management book of 2006.   Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t (Business Plus, 2007), was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “meticulously researched” and “direct and punchy” and is a The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com (as the #1 non-fiction book),  and BusinessWeek bestseller His latest book, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to be Best… and Learn from the Worst (Business Plus, 2010) is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.  His current book project (with Hayagreeva Rao) is tentatively titled: From the Few to the Many: Scaling-Up Excellence. His books have been translated in over 20 different languages.

Sutton is Academic Director of two executive programs at Stanford, Leading for Strategic Execution and Customer-Focused Innovation, and teaches hundreds of executives, engineers, and other professionals each year who come to Stanford for professional education.  He has given keynote speeches to more than 100 groups in at least 18 countries – ranging from 300 city administrators in San Jose, California, to 400 leaders and managers at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, to 3000 beer wholesalers in New Orleans, to an audience 4000 people in Dubai that included leaders, government officials, and Sheikh Mohammed and his entourage. Sutton’s research and opinions are often described in the press, including The New York Times, The Times (of London), Fast Company, BusinessWeek, U.S. News and World Report, Financial Times, Esquire, Fortune, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, National Post, The Observer, The Boston Globe, ComputerWorld, Business 2.0, Red Herring, Entrepreneur, Industry Standard, Investor’s Business Daily, Wired, Chief Executive, Strategy & Leadership, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury, and Time Magazine  He has also been columnist for CIO Insight and a guest on numerous radio and television shows, including ABC Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, Fox, NBC Today Show, Connections, KGO, PBS, NPR, Marketwatch, Tech Nation, CN8, CNN. Sutton’s blog is Work Matters and can be found at www.bobsutton.net and he tweets at work_matters. 

For a complete list of Sutton's publications and vita, see his publications page.