Willis M. Emmons

WILLIAM (WILLIS) EMMONS is Senior Lecturer and Director of the C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard Business School, a position he has held since 2004. As Director of the Christensen Center, Emmons oversees programs to promote and support teaching excellence and innovation within Harvard Business School and to provide leadership and expertise about case method teaching and participant-centered learning for instructors at other institutions in the United States and abroad.

From 1999-2004, Emmons was Associate Professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business in the area of Strategy, Economics, Ethics and Policy, where he received the Graduate Teaching Award (2003). At Georgetown he taught courses on strategic management and international business. Emmons was a member of the Harvard Business School faculty from 1989-1999 where, as part of the Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE) unit, he taught courses in the M.B.A. and executive education programs. He also has taught extensively in corporate executive development programs and has consulted to corporations and governments on domestic and international issues relating to business strategy and government policy.

Emmons received the A.B. cum laude in Government (Phi Beta Kappa), the M.B.A. with high distinction (Baker Scholar), and the Ph.D. in Business Economics, all from Harvard University. His book, The Evolving Bargain: Strategic Implications of Deregulation and Privatization. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2000), winner of the 2001 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award, is based on extensive international research and offers a practical framework for understanding the challenges and potential rewards for established and new ventures in the face of domestic and international market liberalization. Emmons has published articles in a number of scholarly journals, including The RAND Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and The Journal of Economic History. He is also the author of over thirty Harvard Business School case studies and conceptual notes in the field of business, government, and competition.