Lynda M. Applegate is the Martin Marshall Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and is chair of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit and Faculty Chair of HBS' Owner Management Executive Programs. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, she held various faculty and administrative positions.  Dr. Applegate's research and recent publications focus on the impact of information technology on industries, markets, and organizations.  In 1999, she was awarded Harvard Business School's prestigious Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching and, in 1992, the School's Berol Award for research excellence.

Dr. Applegate is an active international consultant, is on the board of directors and advisory boards for both publicly-traded and venture-backed companies. She has served on the advisory board for NASDAQ, the World Bank's Global Development Gateway, and is on the board of trustees of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council.  During the late 1990s, she participated on a Blue-Ribbon Panel to define a National Research Agenda on the Information Age economy and participated in a roundtable of advisors to President Clinton's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection.

Robert D. Austin is a professor of managing creativity and innovation at Copenhagen Business School and an associate professor of technology and operations management at Harvard Business School (HBS). He chairs the HBS executive program for chief information officers and has written more than one hundred published papers, articles, and cases, some of which have received international awards. He is also author, co-author, or co-editor of several books, most recently The Adventures of an IT Leader, a novel about IT management. Before becoming a professor, he was an IT manager at a major international corporation. He is active on editorial and advisory boards for numerous academic organizations and companies.

Deborah L. Soule is an Independent Consultant and a Research Associate at Harvard Business School . Prior to working at Harvard University as Research Manager of an executive-level learning consortium, she worked internationally as a management consultant, specializing in information systems (IS) issues, and as an IS professional in the chemical industry.

Dr. Soule's research and consulting focuses on the design, practice, and management of collaborative and innovative work in organizations, with particular attention to the roles of information technology, leadership, diverse knowledge, and dispersed settings. She has designed and taught graduate level management courses in the fields of information technology management and product development, and has facilitated collaborative learning experiences for management practitioners on innovation, change, and knowledge management.