Professor Morten Hansen has retired after fourteen years at the School of Information.
At the I School, Hansen taught Info 225: Managing in Information-Intensive Companies, which covers universal management principles, paying particular attention to management issues that are highly relevant in information-intensive settings, such as information technology industries. He also advised and mentored many students during his time at UC Berkeley, especially those with an interest in management and entrepreneurship.
“When I first joined the I School in 2009,” Hansen said, “it was a small school seeking to establish and build itself. It is remarkable to see how the school has thrived since then.”
Before joining the I School, Hansen was on the faculty at Harvard Business School and INSEAD (France) and was a manager at the Boston Consulting Group. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford Business School, where he was a Fulbright scholar. Hansen is also faculty at Apple University at Apple, where he will be spending more time in the future.
Hansen’s academic research has been published in leading academic journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Academy of Management Journal, and he is ranked as one of the world’s most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50.
His books include Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More (2018), where he posits that the top performers work “smarter,” rather than harder, and the highly acclaimed Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity and Reap Big Results. He’s also the co-author (with Jim Collins) of the New York Times bestseller Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck — Why Some Thrive Despite Them All.
“We hired Morten for his cutting-edge research on management and collaboration,” former I School Dean Anno Saxenian said. “After joining us he went on to publish highly regarded books that established him as a top thinker on leadership — and equally importantly, to teach many generations of I School students about managing information-intensive companies.”
Philip Braddock (MIMS ’16), who was Hansen’s GSI for Managing in Information-Intensive Companies, said that even though he came to the I School with over six years of professional experience, being a student of Hansen’s “really helped prepare me for the working world after the I School.” Braddock went on to say, “While the theories and academic best practices I learned continue to be powerful tools that shape the way I think and approach problems every day, Morten’s emphasis on achieving real-world business outcomes instilled in me an entrepreneurial — or, in his words, intra-preneurial — spirit that has served me well professionally.”
“I will sorely miss our students,” Hansen reflected. “It has been a joy and privilege to teach I School students. I have found them so eager to learn and absorb knowledge when they are at Berkeley… I look back fondly on some great discussions and moments in my class, and I have in turn learned a lot from them.”
“I thank Professor Hansen for his contributions,” said Head of School Marti Hearst, “and wish him the best in this next chapter in his life and career.
