Bhaskar Chakravorti

Business leaders are naturally students of the big picture; Bhaskar Chakravorti challenges them to think even bigger – and more globally and lead with high “contextual intelligence.” With more than 20 years experience spanning academia, consulting, industry and high-tech research and development, he is an authority on globalization and opportunities created by emerging markets and crises. Renowned for his work on innovation, which he “sees as an opportunity for collaboration and mutual benefit among nations rather than a zero sum race against rising economic giants,” Chakravorti is Senior Associate Dean of International Business and Finance of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. He is also founding executive director of Tufts’ Institute for Business in the Global Context and its Center for Emerging Markets Enterprises (CEME), a global hub for emerging thinking on emerging markets, and serves the Fletcher faculty as a Professor of Practice in International Business and Chair of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Working Group for Tufts T10. A former partner of McKinsey & Company, where he led its Innovation and Global Forces practices, Chakravorti has advised more than 30 companies in the Fortune 500, policy makers, investors and entrepreneurs, spanning multiple geographies and industries. He is also organizer of multiple conferences on emerging markets, inclusive growth and seeking opportunities in crises.

A Distinguished Scholar at MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, Chakravorti served on the faculty at Harvard Business School (HBS), teaching innovation, entrepreneurship management and new venture formation. He also co-chaired an immersion program to India, and published research on innovations triggered by adversity and crises. His book, “The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World” (HBRP, 2003), was selected as one of the Best Business Books of the year by multiple publications and was an Amazon.com best-seller in Innovation, and continues to influence business strategy and policy recommendations. He is working on his next book mapping the innovator’s itinerary from Iceland to Novosibirsk.

An engaging and insightful presenter, Chakravorti has been invited to speak to audiences in business, academia, public policy-making bodies (e.g., FCC, Capitol Hill), multi-lateral entities (e.g., World Bank, ITU), futurist think-tanks (e.g., Aspen Institute, GBN), the investor community and an advisory committee to the U.S. president. He has authored more than 40 articles, published in top-tier, peer-reviewed academic journals (e.g., Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Games & Economic Behavior, International Economic Review and many others), and widely read media outlets, including Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, CNN, CNBC, Foreign Affairs and Economic Times. He is a columnist for The Indian Express and has published more than a dozen HBS case studies and authored two websites on innovation and on public safety.

Chakravorti’s prior appointments also include partner of global strategy firm Monitor Group; game theorist and member of the technical staff at Bellcore (formerly Bell Labs); assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and officer of TAS, the executive cadre for the Tata Group, India's pre-eminent conglomerate. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Rochester where he was a University Fellow, and is a graduate of the Delhi School of Economics and Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College.