Re: Who are you?

Description: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, on the suburbs and the big city.

Transcript: Rosabeth Moss Kanter. And I am Professor . . . I have a chaired professorship at Harvard Business School.

Question: Where are you from and how has that shaped you?

Transcript: Cleveland, Ohio. I don’t think where I’m from has shaped me much at all; although I used to call it “Middle America Heights” because I grew up at a time when the suburbs were flourishing. But I was very urban-oriented. I remember spending a great deal of time in the city. I was always interested in larger problems of the world. And even though I adored my family, I couldn’t wait to get out and be part of the wider world.

Question: Who was your greatest influence as a young?

Transcript: As a young person, I can’t say that very many people influenced me at all. I seemed to chart my own course. I started writing plays when I was very little. I remember writing a play when I was in kindergarten. And I joked recently – where we had . . . for a performance in which we had to write very funny bios – that I wrote my first play at age six and have been trying to put words in other people’s mouths since.

Question: What did you think you’d be doing professionally when you were growing up?

Transcript: Well I . . . What I thought I’d be doing professionally changed dramatically through the years, although it’s also remained remarkably similar. That is I thought I would be a professional. I thought I would advise important leaders in the world. I thought I would write. But the ways in which I thought I would do it have changed. I was very interested in science when I was young. But somehow I got encouraged out of science and toward the humanities. And by the time I was in college I was interested in humanities, but American civilization. And I then discovered that there was a way to combine science and humanities through the social sciences. And those were fields I didn’t know much about. And so I got a PhD. I realized that you had to do that to be taken seriously. And I began that combination of activities. So in some ways, I’ve done the same thing my entire life. I have researched and written about important problems and important issues. I have advised the heads of major organizations. I have been an entrepreneur, served on civic and profit and national – and even international – boards. And so what I’ve done hasn’t changed, but the particular topics have changed.

Recorded on: 6/13/07