Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School, where he has studied and worked with multinational and indigenous companies and investors in emerging markets worldwide. He joined the faculty in 1993, after obtaining an engineering degree from Princeton University (1988) and a Ph.D. from Harvard (1993), and an interim stint on Wall Street.  During this time, he has served as the head of several courses on strategy, corporate governance, and international business targeted to MBA students and senior executives at Harvard. He currently teaches in Harvard's executive education programs and is Faculty Chair for HBS activities in India.

His book, Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours, was published in February 2008 by Harvard Business Press (Penguin in South Asia), and has been translated into several languages. It focuses on the drivers of entrepreneurship in China and India and builds on over a decade of work with companies, investors and non-profits in developing countries worldwide.

A forthcoming co-authored book, Winning in Emerging Markets: A Roadmap for Strategy and Execution, will be published by Harvard Business Press in March 2010.

His scholarly work has been published in a range of economics and management journals, several of which he also serves in an editorial capacity.  Articles in the Harvard Business Review (e.g. China + India: The Power of Two, 2007; Emerging Giants: Building World Class Companies in Emerging Markets, 2006) and Foreign Policy (e.g. Can India Overtake China?, 2003) distil the implications of this research for practicing managers.  His work is frequently featured in global newsmagazines as well as on TV and radio.

Outside HBS, he serves on the boards of the global power company, AES Corporation, and India's largest microfinance firm, SKS Microfinance, along with several others in the financial services, energy, automotive, and life sciences sectors, and actively invests in and mentors startups in Asia. He also serves on the advisory boards of Parliamentary Research Services, an NGO dedicated to providing non-partisan research input to India's Members of Parliament to enhance the quality of democratic discourse and that of Primary Source, a Boston-based NGO dedicated to helping US schools, from K-12 grades, adopt curricular material reflecting global societies.

In 2007, he was nominated to be a Young Global Leader (under 40) by the World Economic Forum. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of International Business.

He lives in Newton, MA, with his wife, daughter and son.

About Professor Krishna Palepu

KRISHNA G. PALEPU is the Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for International Development, at the Harvard Business School. Prior to assuming his current administrative position, Professor Palepu held other positions at the School, including Senior Associate Dean, Director of Research, and Chair, Accounting and Control Unit.

Professor Palepu's current research and teaching activities focus on strategy and governance. Professor Palepu has published numerous academic and practitioner-oriented articles and case studies on these issues.

In the area of strategy, his 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, and for local companies with global aspirations. He is a coathor of the book on this topic, "Winning in Emerging Markets: A Road Map for Strategy and Execution. " He developed and taught a second year MBA course, "Globalization of Emerging Markets," which focuses on these issues. In addition, Professor Palepu Chairs the HBS executive education programs "Global CEOs Program for China."

In the area of corporate governance, Professor Palepu's work focuses board engagement with strategy. Professor Palepu teaches in several HBS executive education programs aimed at members of corporate boards: "Making Corporate Boards More Effective," "Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance," and "Compensation Committees: New Challenges, New Solutions." 

In his pior work, Professor Palepu worked on mergers and acquisitions and corporate disclosure. Based on this work, he coauthored the book, Business Analysis and Valuation: Text and Cases, which won the American Accounting Association's Wildman Award for its impact on management practice, as well as the Notable Contribution to the Accounting Literature Award for its impact on academic research. This book, translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, is widely used in leading MBA programs all over the world. It is accompanied by a business analysis and valuation software model published by the Harvard Business School Publishing Company.

Professor Palepu has served on a number of public company and non-profit Boards. He has also been on the Editorial Boards of leading academic journals, and has served as a consultant to a wide variety of businesses.

Professor 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.