Morten Hansen: Profiles in Knowledge

Originally published March 27, 2023

This is the 89th article in the Profiles in Knowledge series featuring thought leaders in knowledge management. Morten Hansen is a management professor at University of California, Berkeley. He is the coauthor (with Jim Collins) of Great by Choice and the author of Collaboration and Great at Work.

Hansen’s research focuses on social networks, collaboration, knowledge management, and corporate innovation and has been published in leading academic journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Academy of Management Journal. In recognition of his work, he received the 2005 Administrative Science Quarterly award for having made exceptional contributions to the field of organization studies.

Hansen has published numerous articles in Harvard Business Review and in Sloan Management Review. Together with co-author and Harvard Business School dean Nitin Norhia, he is the winner of the 2005 Sloan Management Review/Pricewaterhouse Coopers Award for the management article that contributed most significantly to the enhancement of management practice.

Formerly a professor at Harvard Business School and INSEAD (France), Morten holds a PhD from Stanford Business School, where he was a Fulbright scholar. His academic research has won several prestigious awards, and he is ranked one of the world’s most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50. Morten was also a manager at the Boston Consulting Group, where he advised corporate clients worldwide.

Background

Education

• Stanford University Graduate School of Business — Ph.D., Business, 1992–1996
• The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) — MSc, Accounting and Finance, 1987–1988
• Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey — Master, Public Administration, 1986–1987
• University of Oslo (UiO) — BA, Political Science, 1982–1985

Experience

• Apple — Faculty, Apple University, 2013 — Present
• University of California, Berkeley — Professor, 2008 — Present
• INSEAD — Professor, 2003–2013
• Harvard Business School — Professor, 1996–2003
• Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

1. Manager, 2000–2002
2. Consultant, 1988–1991

Profiles

• Site
• LinkedIn
• Wikipedia
• Facebook
• Twitter
• UC Berkeley School of Information
• Lucidea’s Lens

Content

• Site

1. Inspiring Great Debates
2. Are You a Collaborative Leader?
3. When Internal Collaboration Is Bad for Your Company

• ResearchGate
• Google Scholar

1. The search-transfer problem: The role of weak ties in sharing knowledge across organization subunits
2. Knowledge networks: Explaining effective knowledge sharing in multiunit companies
3. The innovation value chain
4. Knowledge sharing in organizations: Multiple networks, multiple phases
5. Networked incubators
6. Different knowledge, different benefits: Toward a productivity perspective on knowledge sharing in organizations
7. The red queen in organizational evolution
8. When using knowledge can hurt performance: The value of organizational capabilities in a management consulting company
9. When Using Knowledge Can Hurt Performance: The Value of Organizational Capabilities in a Management Consulting Company
10. Competing for attention in knowledge markets: Electronic document dissemination in a management consulting company
11. How to build collaborative advantage
12. How do multinational companies leverage technological competencies? Moving from single to interdependent explanations
13. Introducing T-shaped managers. Knowledge management’s next generation.
14. So many ties, so little time: a task contingency perspective on the value of social capital in organizations
15. The world is not small for everyone: Inequity in searching for knowledge in organizations
16. Combining network centrality and related knowledge: Explaining effective knowledge sharing in multiunit firms
17. Knowledge management at Andersen consulting
18. Knowledge Integration In Organizations

Harvard Business Review

What’s Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge? with Nitin Nohria and Thomas J. Tierney

Getting Collaboration Right with Herminia Ibarra

Under-collaboration. Companies that operate as a collection of silos commit the cardinal sin of underperforming relative to the resources they have invested. Money is left on the table because managers are unwilling or unable to cross-sell their products and services, cross-pollinate resources to create new products, or share best practices to improve efficiency.

Over-collaboration. The alternative problem is that collaboration sometimes goes too far. It sets in when people collaborate on the wrong things or when collaboration efforts get bogged down in endless discussions and consensus decision-making in which no one is clearly accountable. The result is slow and poor execution.

Ten Ways to Get People to Change

1. Embrace the power of one.
2. Make it sticky.
3. Paint a vivid picture.
4. Activate peer pressure.
5. Mobilize the crowd.
6. Tweak the situation.
7. Subtract, not just add.
8. Dare to link to carrots and sticks (and follow through).
9. Teach and coach well.
10. Hire and fire based on behaviors.

Podcasts

• “Follow Your Passion” is dangerous advice
• You’ve Been Sold a Lie About Hard Work. Here’s the Reality.
• What Leaders Need to Know About Collaboration
• Leader Dialogue
• Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz
• Bregman Partners
• Six Tactics for Extraordinary Performance — Coaching for Leaders
• Do Less, Then Obsess. How to Work Smarter — Future Forecast with Isabelle Ringnes
• Do Less Work; Achieve More — Art of Manliness

Videos

YouTube - Channel

• What can I let go of to see extraordinary results?
• How An Early 20th Century Explorer Can Inspire Your Work Performance

YouTube Search

• What can leaders do to become more efficient?

• What can leaders do to improve the way collaboration in their organizations?

• Why do organizations need to nail down their strategies?

• Collaborating for results

• Can you survive today’s business world?

• The future of work

Books

Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results

Takes aim at what many leaders inherently know: in today’s competitive environment, companywide collaboration is an imperative for successful strategy execution, yet the sought-after synergies are rarely, if ever, realized. In fact, most cross-unit collaborative efforts end up wasting time, money, and resources. How can managers avoid the costly traps of collaboration and instead start getting the results they need?

This book shows managers how to get collaboration right through “disciplined collaboration”– a practical framework and set of tools managers can use to:

1. Assess when–and when not–to pursue collaboration across units to achieve goals
2. Identify and overcome the four barriers to collaboration
3. Get people to buy into the larger picture, even when they own only a small piece of it
4. Be a “T-Shaped Manager,” collaborating across divisions while still working deeply in your own unit
5. Create networks across the organization that are not large, but nimble and effective

Based on the author’s long-running research, in-depth case studies, and company interviews, Collaboration delivers practical advice and tools to help your organization collaborate–for real results.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Perils of Collaboration — In Good Times and Bad
2. Chapter One: Getting Collaboration Wrong — or Getting It Right

• Part One: Opportunities and Barriers

1. Chapter Two: Know When to Collaborate, and When Not To
2. Chapter Three: Spot the Four Barriers to Collaboration

• Part Two: Solutions

1. Chapter Four: Lever 1: Unify People
2. Chapter Five: Lever 2: Cultivate T-Shaped Management
3. Chapter Six: Lever 3: Build Nimble Networks

• Part Three: A Personal Challenge

1. Chapter Seven: Grow to Be a Collaborative Leader
2. Journey’s End (for Now)

• Appendix: The Research Behind the Book

Related Content

• The Collaboration Toolkit: Tools adapted from the book
• Summary
• Book Review by Sergio Caredda
• One-Page Summary by Kevin Leighton

Great At Work: How Top Performers Work Less and Achieve More

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck-Why Some Thrive Despite Them All with Jim Collins