Howard Stevenson
Howard H. Stevenson — Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School. Pioneer of entrepreneurship education at HBS; helped define entrepreneurship as a field of academic study in the 1970s when nobody cared about it. Co-founder and early manager of what became Baupost Group (left after becoming a single parent). Long-serving board member of NPR. 16 books.
Research partner: Laura Nash (joint research on success and life satisfaction, ~150 high-achiever interviews). Results: Just Enough: Tools for Creating Success in Your Work and Life (2004) and Howard's Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life's Work (2013).
He suffered sudden cardiac arrest in 2009 — roughly 1% survival odds — which sharpened his thinking about what a life well-lived actually looks like. The near-death experience prompted the Howard's Gift interviews with a young colleague who said "I didn't listen to enough of your advice — can I interview you?"
Intellectual Contributions
- four-dimensions-of-success — Achievement, Significance, Happiness, Legacy; the finding that these are uncorrelated
- sense-of-enough — defining enough on each dimension as the key to juggling all four
- success-as-juggling — the juggling metaphor replacing "balance"
- spiral-of-life — how successful people cultivate all dimensions from early on
- personal-board-of-directors — domain-specific advisors as the replacement for the mythical single mentor
- inflection-points — life inflection points as gifts when recognized