Nelson P. Repenning

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Nelson P. Repenning

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Nelson P. Repenning is the Faculty Director of the MIT Leadership Center, and the School of Management Distinguished Professor of System Dynamics and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

His early work focused on understanding the inability of organizations to leverage well-established tools and practices. He has worked extensively with organizations trying to develop new capabilities in both manufacturing and new product development. Nelson has also studied the failure to use the safety practices that often lead to industrial accidents and has helped investigate several major incidents. This line of research has been recognized with several awards, including best paper recognition from both the California Management Review and the Journal of Product Innovation Management.

Building on his earlier work, Nelson now focuses on developing the theory and practice of Dynamic Work Design—a new approach to designing work that is both effective and engaging—and Dynamic Management Systems, a method for ensuring that day-to-day work is tightly linked to the strategic objectives of the firm. His book (co-authored with Don Kieffer) There Has Got to Be a Better Way describing Dynamic Work Design will be published by Public Affairs in 2025. He is also a partner at ShiftGear Work Design and serves as its chief social scientist.

In 2003, Nelson received the International System Dynamics Society’s Jay Wright Forrester Award, which recognizes the best work in the field in the previous five years. In 2011 he received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He was recently recognized by Poets and Quants as one of the country's top instructors in executive education.

Nelson is also an avid bike racer and regularly competes in Masters cycling events.

He holds a BA in economics from Colorado College and a PhD in operations management and system dynamics from MIT.

Publications

"Efficacy of a Standardized Process in Optimizing Appropriate Use of Progressive Care Unit Beds in a Tertiary Care Facility."

Stempek, Susan B., Michael S. Rosenblatt, Nelson P. Repenning, John D. Sterman, Janice R. Morrissette, Susan E. Flanagan, Lindsey Sallese, Yuxiu Lei, and Timothy N. Liesching. Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing Vol. 43, No. 5 (2024): 259-265.

"In-Hospital Delays Result in Worse Patient Outcomes and Higher Cost after Cardiac Surgery."

Somlo, Diane R.M., Nelson P. Repenning, and Abeel A. Mangi. The Annals of Thoracic Surgery Vol. 106, No. 4 (2018): 1143-1149.

"Breaking Logjams in Knowledge Work."

Dodge, Sheila, Don Kieffer, and Nelson P. Repenning. MIT Sloan Management Review, September 2018.

"Pull for Knowledge Work."

Dodge, Sheila, Timothy De Smet, James Meldrim, Niall Lennon, Danielle Perrin, Steve Ferriera, Zachary Leber, Dennis Friedrich, Stacey Gabriel, Eric S. Lander, Don Kieffer, and Nelson Repenning, MIT Sloan Working Paper 5380-18. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, April 2018.

"Making the Numbers? 'Short Termism' and the Puzzle of Only Occasional Disasters."

Rahmandad, Hazhir, Nelson Repenning, and Rebecca Henderson. Management Science Vol. 64, No. 3 (2018): 1328-1347. Online Appendix. Download Paper.

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Recent Insights

MIT Executive MBA

A conversation with MIT EMBA Founders 15 years later

Johanna Hising DiFabio is Assistant Dean, Executive Degree Programs and Nelson Repenning is Faculty Director of the MIT Leadership Center, and the School of Management Distinguished Professor of System Dynamics and Organization Studies. Both were part of the team that founded the MIT Executive MBA.

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Press

Clearing organizational roadblocks that keep you from doing your job

MIT Sloan researchers’ new Dynamic Work Design framework identifies and alleviates organizations’ inefficiencies, miscommunications, and backlogs 

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Media Highlights

Press Time Magazine

'Firefighting arsonists' are making work miserable and inefficient

In this excerpt from their book, "There's Got to Be a Better Way," professor Nelson Repenning and senior lecturer Donald Kieffer wrote: "In our research and in the field with clients over the last 25 years, we have seen several companies attempt to fix everything at once. They make significant investments in their underlying processes, only to abandon them when performance begins to degrade."

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Executive Education

Executive Education Course

Business Process Design for Strategic Management

Learn to optimize business processes through Dynamic Work Design, a set of principles and methods for achieving sustainable improvement efforts of any scale, in any industry, and in any function.

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Executive Education Course

Business Sustainability Strategy

For many companies, the topic of sustainability is at the forefront of business agendas. Consumers and stakeholders are demanding greater accountability from organizations, and the regulatory environment is becoming increasingly stringent. However, pursuing the environmental, social, and governance impacts of business is often met with tension. Leaders now need to manage the misconception within business that meeting sustainability goals means compromising profits.

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