Coffee Chats with Professors | CBS Edition featuring Kathryn Harrigan

Coffee Chats with Professors is a newsletter series focused on pulling back the curtain on the ivory tower and getting to know the people that make it up: professors. What did they think they would be when they grew up? How did they make it to such exclusive places? Is it lonely? Are there perks? What do they hope their work will accomplish?

About the author: I’m currently an MBA Candidate at Columbia Business School, and as a first-generation American, a first-generation college student (all the firsts!), I couldn’t help but wonder about the seemingly mysterious, yet omniscient lives professors live. Join me on my coffee chats as I speak with renowned, world-class professors and unravel their (extra)ordinary lives.

Featuring Kathryn Harrigan

Kathryn Harrigan is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Business Leadership at Columbia Business School.

You are from the Midwest and you grew up in an era of manufacturing. What did you imagine you’d become when you were younger? What was your world like?

I’m from Minnesota. Relative to the others in my family who are all at least six foot tall and athletic, I was frail and had various maladies. So I was always more cerebral and stayed indoors instead of rolling in the snow—finding an excuse to read.

My family members emigrated to the United States in the 1880s. I am literally from a farm family on both sides; they moved to the big city for World War II. My mother worked in Honeywell's factory making armaments; my father, of course, went into the military. The government trained him on a variety of technical things; after the war, he became an appliance technician. I like to think of him as a “MacGyver.” He can fix anything mechanical. To raise a family, he had to work three jobs.

He is still living?

Oh yes. He is 98 years old. He's the source of all wisdom, and when he reaches 100 years, I have to throw him a party. Family is everything. You do everything for your family.

So what did you think you were going to be growing up in your environment?

Initially, I thought I'd end up in show business as an artistic director, that’s the artsy equivalent of a CEO, since I didn't know much about filmmaking at the time. Now that I do, I'd probably want to be a producer.

In undergrad, your majors were in Theatre Management and English. You also mentioned you are a first-generation college student. Today you are the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Business Leadership. Where in your journey did you decide to spend your life in the business world?

When I went to Macalester College, the faculty was sad when it was time for me to graduate. I learned later that there was debate about whether or not to make me an offer to run their technical theater.

Would you have pursued that?

I don't know. It depends on how people treat me. If I don't think I'm being treated well, I just keep moving. I figure that I'm eminently employable, and I'll just be a gypsy if I must do so. In this case, there was a faculty group that wanted to have me stay there, and there was another group that wanted me to get a Master of Fine Arts (MFA). This is how I ended up in Texas.

One of my professors wrote a recommendation to get me a graduate assistantship at the University of Texas in Austin. The school had a program where I could also enter the directing track. That seemed like a reasonable solution to me to get my artistic director credentials. I'll go down to Texas; I'll run their physical plant, supervise their people, and mount shows. I will also learn the craft of directing to learn more about the business end of entertainment. Ha!

That wasn’t the case?

They didn’t realize I was a woman. Oh!?When I arrived, it was so funny.

When I arrived to claim my job, the theater department threw all these tests at me. They would lay out hundreds and hundreds of pieces of hardware with codes on them. (It was apparently an undergraduate test that they gave to students.)?I had to identify what each item was as well as what it was used for. And when I passed their tests, I had the keys to the kingdom, as it were. I did my job, except that as time went by, some of their faculty decided they didn't much care for me.

First, the acting professors in the theater department decided that their directing class was oversubscribed and therefore, since I didn't come there specifically to become a great director, they couldn't accommodate me. Well, that made me angry.

And so you went down the street to the business school. Was it as literal as that?

Yes! I waived out of certain courses and I got my MBA. I had a blast in Texas, despite the fact that they allegedly didn't like women! There were professors down there who thought that I was just the funniest thing. They used to let me teach the introductory marketing course to students in their great 600-person auditorium.

I met an interesting operations professor who had been part of Harvard's post-WWII effort to retrain officers to apply their war-management skills in business settings. This professor was near the end of his career and fabulously wealthy, but he was still teaching. He asked me to grade his papers, and in return, wrote me a recommendation to enter the Harvard Business School’s doctoral program.

When did you know you wanted to get your doctorate?

It’s a mix of things. I was studying management when my first husband. Rick Harrigan, proposed to me. He saw me as a real hustler, even joking that I’d become president of Exxon—which meant that he'd have to follow me worldwide. He didn’t like that, so he said I should get a law degree or a doctorate in business so I could have my own base of operations. I agreed, but said we were going to Harvard. He promised to follow if I got in, and we both did so.

At Harvard, I met Michael Porter who became my lead professor. He was a young professor at the time, also starting his career. He was going to write a book-length treatment on competitive strategy. Chapter 12 in it is basically my dissertation. His book sold over 600,000 copies, making the author an instant millionaire. Prior to that time, though, Porter wasn’t tenured, and few knew of him.

You have been at Columbia for over 40 years. That’s impressive. Was it always easy navigating the life of a professor or did you encounter any specific challenges?

Here's the sad part of the story. After getting my degree from Harvard, completing the case-writing, and jumping through all the school’s hoops, I finally went on the job market. I was offered an assistant professor role at Babson College while still a doctoral student, teaching classes to support myself and I had a secretary who would help by typing my dissertation. But I had to move on.

The job market experience was a real adventure in 1970s. While Harvard took great care of its doctoral students, there wasn’t much guidance for me—no practice talks or preparation. I was on my own, flying by the seat of my pants, presenting research all over the country. Interviewing in 1978 was exactly what you’d expect. One professor at a non-top-20 business school even suggested that we form a partnership: he’d handle the customer side while I applied the models behind the scenes. I smiled and asked, "Why do I need you? I can handle both." Obviously I did not get any offer from that school.

My first real professor job ended up being at the University of Texas in Dallas (UTD), a research campus that was largely funded by local tech companies like Texas Instruments, Rockwell International, and Collins Radio. The campus had started as an advanced research school, offering master’s and doctorate programs in the electronics fields that the local industry needed. They even managed to hire Nobel Prize-winning physicist Polykarp Kusch away from Columbia University. Now, of course, UTD has grown massively. But when I joined UTD, it was still small—I was the 17th business school faculty member.

It was a strong start. By then, Michael Porter was tenured and genuinely wanted to help me find a great position. He made some calls, which led to job offers from Stanford, Northwestern, and Columbia. I liked the Columbia crowd the best, and that’s how I ended up in New York City.

You have had direct access to firms like General Electric and Dupont, as well as individuals like Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet. Can you share any insights or memorable moments from your work with them?

I had that access in Texas. A school doesn’t necessarily give them to you. It’s all about relationship building. You go out and meet people.

Building a relationship with Charlie Munger was just accidental, because—when we were in Uris Hall—the finance department was on the eighth floor, and I'm on the seventh floor in an office next to the elevators. If one is standing there waiting for the elevator, and my office door is open, you’d see this animated person talking loudly. Of course you're going to drop by and Munger did. After that he would just sort of make me a part of the tour when he was in the building.

You are an expert in strategic management, diversification, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions. What has been your biggest breakthrough? What is one thing you would like to share with the common person?

I wish that everyone would understand that just because a product is mature and/or is facing declining demand, it's not the end of the cash flow story. There are companies that can make really good returns, even though their market may be shrinking, and their product may be last-generation technology. That's why I sometimes include cases about older companies; I can show you how they can thrive.

Do you think about legacy building?

Maybe I should create a chair in the name of a female professor.

Rapid fire:

1. What keeps you up at night? My cats.
2. Who is your hero? Bob Lear. I can't think of anybody else who's alive that I admire as much as what he did for me.
3. What has been your favorite place to travel to? Portugal.
4. Company you admire? Warner Bros. Discovery
5. Favorite book? Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter. When he did the new editions, he still reached out to me, asking if I could review the editions that I had previously worked on and provide feedback on his revisions.

Professor Harrigan teaches Corporate Growth & Development and Turnaround Management.