Forest L. Reinhardt

Harvard Business School

John D. Black Professor of Business Administration

Forest L. Reinhardt is the John D. Black Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS). Professor Reinhardt is the head of HBS’s Business, Government, and the International Economy unit. He also serves as the Faculty Chair of Harvard Business School’s Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Chair of the HBS Executive Education in the Asia-Pacific Region. Professor Reinhardt currently teaches an MBA course “Twenty-First Century Energy.” He is also writing cases and other materials on the strategic problems and opportunities faced by firms in the energy industry. Significant economies of scale and scope, combined with rapid technological change, present firms in the industry with a complicated set of opportunities and problems. Price volatility, national security considerations, and environmental externalities lead to widespread government intervention in energy markets, creating further problems and opportunities for firms. In-depth analysis of the economics and politics of energy is essential to the design of sensible strategies for firms and governments. Professor Reinhardt is interested in the relationships between market and nonmarket strategy, the relations between government regulation and corporate strategy, the behavior of private and public organizations that manage natural resources, and the economics of externalities and public goods. He is the author of Down to Earth: Applying Business Principles to Environmental Management (Harvard Business School Press, 2000). He has written numerous classroom cases on these and related topics, used at Harvard and elsewhere in MBA curricula and in executive programs. Professor Reinhardt serves on the Board of Tutors for the Harvard College concentration in Environmental Science and Public Policy, on the Steering Committee of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and on the Steering Committee of the HBS-Harvard Kennedy School Joint Degree Programs. He is Co-Chair of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative. Reinhardt received his PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar, and an AB from Harvard College.