Global Management Guru Award for Harvard Professor Emeritus Robert Kaplan
Founder of innovative management practices pledges to work on Risk Management and Health Care Value Management
New Delhi November 10, 2012
One of the most influential management thinkers Robert S Kaplan received the second Global Management Guru Award (GMGA) instituted by India’s Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) here last evening.
Professor Kaplan, credited innovative management practices—ranging from Balanced Score Card to time-driven Activity Based Costing-- received the award from India’s Planning Commission member Mr Arun Maira and Public Enterprises Selection Board Chairman Mr Atul Chaturvedi
The Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development Emeritus at the Harvard Business School while receiving the award, Kaplan, said, “The integration from diverse disciplines-- engineering, science, and economics--has been motivated by my desire to create solutions to the problems I saw managers struggling with in practice.” 
“This global management guru award spurs me to take my recent work on Risk Management to a level where we seek to create a risk mitigation framework that could avoid repeat of 2008 failure of multiple financial firms in the US”, author of 14 books Prof Kaplan said while speaking to hundreds of Indian bureaucrats, CEOs, academics and practitioners of modern management.
Prof Kaplan’s work on Risk Management is triggered by a major global issue of so many companies becoming vulnerable to a modest decline in the price of a single asset class – US residential homes?
The 72-year old Professor Kaplan outlined his project on measuring costs of treating patients over a complete cycle of care, a measurement that when combined with good outcome measures from the clinical treatment should enable transformation of the delivery of health care.
The new Health Care Value framework, in collaboration with Harvard strategy professor Michael Porter, could spell a massive reduction in healthcare costs in high cost economies like America to delivery of efficient healthcare facilities millions of citizens in India.
Prof Kaplan hoped that this project would provide the basis for information that will enable health care systems around the world to improve the outcomes they deliver to patients while lowering their cost-to-serve.
Responding to Prof Kaplan’s talk Planning Commission member Mr Arun Maira advocated a Theory of Change in Governance where diverse stakeholders buy into a shared value idea that best fits India’s needs. This method has the potential to deliver high levels of inclusive economic growth, better governance and full accountability.
Mr Atul Chaturvedi, Chairman, Public Enterprises Selection Board advocated the idea of nurturing leaders who can innovate, lead their teams and their enterprises to meet self charted goals to serve stakeholder needs.
Professor Kaplan, a strong proponent of effective strategy execution and creator of ‘You can’t manage what you don’t measure’ mantra said his work with activity-based costing and Balanced Scorecard has benefited from insights in engineering, science, and economics. His work was inspired by problems any one could readily identify in practice but supported by an underlying belief than many management and societal problems, at the root, are caused by poor or inadequate measurements. Good measurement provides a common platform that brings diverse stakeholders and perspectives to agree on the facts so they can work collaboratively on developing and implementing good solutions.
The Global Management Guru Award instituted in 2011 went through a process of short listing 25 global thought leaders followed by a world-wide survey and jury process. The 2012 jury was led by eminent management educationist Dr Pritam Singh. This initiative has been spearheaded by one of India’s top business schools, the Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), New Delhi NCR, run by the Birla group.
“BIMTECH board instituted Global Management Guru Award for honoring global thought leaders in management domain, conferred on a management guru who has influenced management practice worldwide in a fundamental way as a teacher, researcher, writer and a mentor. Prof Kaplan was the unanimous choice,” said Dr H Chaturvedi, Director BIMTECH that also celebrates 25th year of foundation.
Professor Kaplan, who accepted the GMGA in the 25th anniversary year of the Activity Based Costing methodology propounded by him said that valid and accurate measurement is at the core of communicating, implementing and monitoring an organization’s strategy whether in the private, public, or NGO sector.
Prof Kaplan’s work has been used by civic bodies, governments and nations in creating Balance Score Cards along with goals, objectives and performance score cards. Cities and province that excel in strategy management are able to deliver more value to their citizens.
Citing examples of Balanced Score Card usage by governments in Brazil, Australia, Philippines and Barcelona, Prof Kaplan said that of 30 Mayors in Philippines who implemented Balanced Scorecards for their constituencies and delivered exceptional value to citizens, 29 were re-elected in the next polls.
Prof Kaplan added that firms today need to move from corporate social responsibility to creating shared value by offering quality products built using better safety norms, delivering higher value, using energy efficient systems that don’t pollute.
Kaplan’s contribution to performance management systems
Prof. Robert Kaplan has contributed to the performance management systems of organizations with application of strategy maps and The Balanced Scorecard for effective strategy execution.
These models are also used for inter-organizational alignment particularly for creating shared value with customers, suppliers, strategic alliance partners, and communities in corporate, NGO and Governments. Prof. Kaplan modified the concept of fixed costing and replaced with activity based costing. Over years it has evolved into ‘time-driven activity-based costing’ for products as well as services.
Eminent Global Jury
The jury headed by Dr Pritam Singh, Director General, IMI included Dr AK Balyan, MD & CEO of Petronet--LNG Limited; Prof. Alberto Grando, Dean, SDA Bocconi School of Management, Italy; Dr Arvind Agrawal, President, Corporate Development & HR; Dr Bakul H Dholakia, Advisor, Adani Group; Dr D K Bandyopadhyay, VC, GGIP University; Prof. David Wield, University of Edinburgh; Dr. Konstantin Theile, President, Educatis University, Switzerland. Dr MR Rao, Emeritus Dean, ISB; Mr P Dwarakanath, Director-Group Human Capital, Max India Limited; Prof Raj Srivastava, Provost, SMU; Dr Rajendra Sisodia, Professor, Bentley University; Mr Rajeev Dubey, President HR, Mahindra & Mahindra; Mr RV Shahi, Chairman, Energy Infratech; Dr Said Irandoust, President, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand; Dr. Sugata Ghosh, SAGE Publications; and Dr YV Verma, COO, LG Electronics.
More about Prof. Robert S Kaplan:
Robert S. Kaplan is the world’s leading authority on strategic performance measurement. Prof. Kaplan joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1984 after spending 16 years on the faculty of the business school at Carnegie Mellon University, serving as its Dean from 1977 to 1983. Prof. Kaplan is co-developer of both Activity Based Costing/Activity Based Management, and the Balanced Scorecard. The year 2012 is the 25th anniversary of the Activity Based Costing methodology and the 20th anniversary of the Balanced Scorecard framework. Prof Kaplan has authored or co-authored 14 books, 20 Harvard Business Review articles, and over 150 other papers.
His recent books include The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage, the fifth Balanced Scorecard book co-authored with David Norton, and Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing with Steve Anderson.
Elected to the Accounting Hall of Fame in 2006, Robert Kaplan received the Lifetime Contribution Award for Distinguished Contributions to Advancing the Management Accounting Profession from the Institute of Management Accountants in 2008 and the Lifetime Contribution Award from the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association AAA) in 2006. Prof. Kaplan received the Outstanding Accounting Educator Award in 1988 from the AAA, the 1994 CIMA Award from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants UK) for "Outstanding Contributions to the Accountancy Profession," and the 2001 Distinguished Service Award from the Institute of Management Accountants IMA) for contributions to the practice and academic community.
The Financial Times included him in its 2005 list of Top 25 Business Thinkers. The Accenture Institute for Strategic Change named him, in 2002 and 2003, among the Top 50 Thinkers and Writers on Management Topics. Dr. Kaplan received a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University. He has received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Stuttgart 1994), Lodz 2006), and Waterloo 2008).
Prof. Kaplan is being conferred with Global Management Guru Award for 2012 in recognition of academic contribution in theory and practice.