Biography

Kaplan's academic career began with a BS and then an MS in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a PhD in operations research from Cornell. From 1977-1983 he was Dean of the Business School at Carnegie Mellon and he is now the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School.

Although he has collaborated with other academics, he is best known for his work with David P. Norton on The Balanced Scorecard (1996). Here, their starting point was that management activities and production needed to be measured, but how? They continued that strategies often failed because they were not converted into actions that the employees could understand.

They acknowledge their debt to Drucker's Management by Objectives theory (MbO) and to Return on Investment (ROI) which started at DuPont and was practised in Sloan's GM in the 1920s.

North's academic journey began with a BS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, leading to an MS from Florida Institute of Technology, an MBA from Florida State University, and a PhD from Harvard. He is a management consultant and advisor to public bodies.

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