Faculty and Research

Frank Cespedes is Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. He received his B.A. from the City College of New York, M.S. from M.I.T. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Cespedes was a professor at Harvard Business School for 15 years, specializing in strategy implementation, marketing, and organizational design. At Harvard, he has developed and taught a variety of MBA and executive courses, led the Strategic Marketing Management program for senior executives, and was co-lead of the Sustainable Market Leadership program for CEOs and their leadership teams. He currently teaches the TEM course in the MBA program as well as modules on aligning strategy and sales in the Owner President Management (OPM) executive program.

Before joining the faculty, he was a Research Associate at Harvard and worked at Bain & Company, an international strategy consulting firm. From 1995 to 2007, he was Managing Partner at the Center for Executive Development (CED), a firm that delivered training and advisory services in areas related to strategy, leadership, and organization. CED won awards in the United States and Europe for its work with companies worldwide.  He has consulted to companies in many industries, is affiliated with private-equity investors, and has been a Board member of Evenflo, HALO Industries, start-up firms, and the Education for Employment Foundation (EEF), which provides career training in skills linked directly to job placement with companies in the Middle East and North Africa. 

He is the author or co-author of six books, including Concurrent Marketing: Integrating Product, Sales and Service (Harvard Business School Press) and Going to Market: Distribution Systems for Industrial Products (Harvard Business School Press); as well as articles in Harvard Business Review, Strategy and Business, Business Horizons, California Management Review, International Encyclopedia of Business and Management, Journal of Managerial Issues, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Marketing Encyclopedia, Organization Science, and Sloan Management Review. He has also written more than 40 case studies about companies and numerous technical notes on various business topics.

Curriculum Vitae