Joseph L. Bower

Joseph L. Bower is the Donald Kirk David Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School. His work on strategy examines how organizations turn proposals into commitments of money, people and attention. In an interview about resource allocation, Bower explained that the initiatives managers advance and fund can shape a company’s actual strategy, whether or not those choices match its written plan.

With Clayton M. Christensen, Bower coauthored the 1995 Harvard Business Review article “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave.” Their work helps explain why an established company may continue serving current customers while an emerging opportunity struggles to secure resources. For the accompanying OutcomesLab article, Bower’s contribution is the connection between strategic change and the decisions through which organizations allocate resources—not a claim that every new technology will disrupt an incumbent.