Krishna G. Palepu

Krishna G. Palepu is the Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration and the senior associate dean for international development at Harvard Business School. Palepu’s current research and teaching activities focus on strategy and governance.

In the area of strategy, Palepu’s recent focus has been on the globalization of emerging markets, particularly India and China, and the resulting opportunities and challenges for western investors and multinationals, as well as for local companies with global aspirations. He developed and taught a second-year MBA course that focuses on those issues, and he chairs the HBS executive education program “Global CEO Program for China.”

In the area of corporate governance, Palepu’s work focuses on board engagement with strategy, and he teaches in several HBS executive education programs aimed at members of corporate boards.

Palepu is a coauthor, with Tarun Khanna, of Winning in Emerging Markets: A Road Map for Strategy and Execution (Harvard Business Review Press, 2010). He also coauthored, with Paul M. Healy and Victor L. Bernard, the book Business Analysis and Valuation: Text and Cases (South-Western Educational Publishing, 1996) which received two accolades from the American Accounting Association: the Wildman Medal Award, for the book’s impact on management practice, and the Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Award, for its impact on academic research.

Palepu has served on a number of boards for public companies and nonprofit organizations. He has also served on the editorial boards of academic journals and consulted to a variety of businesses.

Palepu has a doctorate in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an honorary doctorate from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration.