Lessard honored for “lifetime achievement”
August 8, 2022
Faculty
Donald Roy Lessard
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Donald R. Lessard is the Epoch Foundation Professor of International Management and Professor of Systems Engineering, Emeritus, at MIT and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Asia School of Business (in collaboration with MIT).
His work focuses on green infrastructure and sustainable business strategy, drawing on extensive experience in global strategic management, major engineering projects, and international finance.
At the Asia School of Business, Lessard developed Integrative Management, a week-long program focused on sustainability from multiple perspectives that opens the MBA and EMBA programs. He currently leads the new MBA and EMBA capstone, Managing Across Borders.
At MIT, he led the MIT-Bain Executive Education Program on Sustainability in Action and developed an online course for MIT Professional Education on Sustainable Competitive Strategy. Earlier, he led development of the five-school energy minor and founded the MIT Sloan Executive MBA. He also played a key role in the Sloan School’s global initiatives.
Beyond academia, Lessard is an Independent Director of Independent Project Analysis, Inc. (IPA), a company that studies capital projects, maintains one of the world's leading project databases, benchmarks 500 or more major projects each year, and evaluates project systems and organizations for many of the world's largest industrial corporations. He also advises HEET, a community-based organization spearheading the transition from natural-gas heating to networked geothermal systems.
Lessard has taught, advised, and published extensively in academic and professional journals on topics including risk management and diversification, megaproject shaping and management, and capabilities and global strategy.
He joined the MIT faculty in 1973 after three years at Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School. At MIT, he taught international financial management and global strategy and led numerous academic and executive programs. He served as Deputy Dean of the Sloan School, with responsibilities for research, international programs, and executive education. He was CoChair of the MIT Energy Education Task Force that launched the Institute-wide undergraduate energy minor, for which he was recognized as Class of 1960 Professor. He was also the founding Faculty Director of the MIT Executive MBA and pioneered its signature GO-Lab.
A leader in international management education, Lessard has served as President of the Academy of International Business and Dean of the Fellows of the Academy. In 2014, he received the Pathfinder Award from the Engineering Projects Organization Society for his lifetime contributions to the field and in 2022 he was named Hyundai Eminent Scholar by the Academy of Management International Management Division
Lessard has led major consulting assignments for firms, banks, and government agencies throughout the world.
Lessard earned his BA in Latin American Studies and his MBA and PhD in business administration from Stanford University.
Honors
Publications
"Global Strategy and MNC Capabilities."
Lessard, Donald R. and D. Eleanor Westney. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management, Oxford, UK: Oxford Research. Forthcoming. SSRN Preprint.
"Institutional Enablers of Energy System Transition: Lessons from Solar PV in Eight African Countries."
Lessard, Donald R., Valerie J. Karplus, Ninad Rajpurkar, and Arun Singh. In Achieving Collective Ends with Limited Resources: Africa’s Struggle to Bridge the Infrastructure Gap, edited by Anne Stafford, Innocent Musonda, and Nuno A. P. Gil, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming.
"Understanding the Impacts of Indirect Stakeholder Relationships - Stakeholder Value Network Analysis and Its Application to Large Engineering Projects."
Lessard, Donald R., Wen Feng, Edward Crawley, Olivier de Weck, and Bruce Cameron. In Public-Private Partnerships for Infrastructure Development, edited by M.J. Garvin, Raymond Levitt, and Richard Scott, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Forthcoming.
"Essay: Reflecting the Impact and Legacy of Peter Morris."
Donald R. Lessard. In Engineering Project Organization Journal, 2024.
"Global Strategic Analysis and Multi-Level Institutional Change."
Lessard, Donald R. In The Multiple Dimensions of Institutional Complexity, edited by Alain Verbeke, Elizabeth L. Rose, Rob van Tulder, and Yingqi Wei, 45-62. Leeds, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021.
"Risk Management for Companies Operating in Emerging Markets."
Lessard, Donald R. In Oxford Handbook on Managing in Emerging Economies, edited by Klaus Mayer and Robert Grosse, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Media Highlights
Press
Harvard Business Review
How one manufacturer is aiming to achieve net zero at net zero cost
Professor Emeritus Donald R. Lessard and co-author wrote: "Over the last three years Giti Tire has reduced emissions across its operations and supply chain while simultaneously improving margins. It's achieving net zero at net zero cost — not through offsets or accounting tricks, but by treating sustainability as integral to how it competes."