Videos
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Debora Spar on Work, Mate, Marry, Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny -
New technology creates AI romantic partners for users
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Digital Days 2020 | Changes in Families, Relationships, Self-improvement and more | Debora L. Spar
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Professor Debora Spar: Symphonic
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P&P Live! Debora L. Spar | WORK MATE MARRY LOVE with Kara Swisher -
Rethinking failure | Debora Spar | TEDxBarnardCollege
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Barnard College President Debora Spar discusses new book with Anne-Marie Slaughter
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Debora Spar
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Debora Spar: Why Women Can't Have It All | Forbes
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Women Changing Africa: Barnard President Debora Spar
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Debora Spar on Women's (Impossible) Quest for Perfection
Learn More About Debora Spar
As society increasingly prioritizes pressing issues such as sustainability and inequality, how can firms participate in change while ensuring a healthy bottom line?
To help leaders understand today’s capitalism and operate differently in the global marketplace, Debora Spar, Ph.D. is one of the world’s most highly sought after leadership authorities.
The Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration and senior associate dean for faculty research and development at Harvard Business School, Spar is a renowned researcher on the unique areas where business, society and technology overlap – and occasionally collide.
Creator of the required MBA course “The Purpose of the Firm,” and founding faculty chair of the Institute for Business in Global Society (BiGS), she is empowering leaders to work toward a better future while keeping their companies profitable.
“Firms operate very differently than nonprofits and governments, who aren’t focused on making money,” explains Spar, who served as president of Barnard College from 2008-2017. “However, they can still be a big part of helping to solve important societal issues.”
Spar provides leaders with frameworks for navigating complex social dynamics and guidance for working with governments, regulators and suppliers. Her work helps managers explore how – and under what circumstances – private firms can direct their efforts beyond just boosting the bottom line.
Capitalism and the State
Designer and teacher of one of HBS’ most in-demand courses, “Capitalism and the State,” Spar offers a practical lens and historical critique of the economic system that governs our lives. She explains how it emerged and is sustained, where it falters and how today’s leaders can get competition right.
“There are some core problems with the current model of capitalism, but organizations can become part of the solution,” she explains. “To do so, it’s vital for leaders to understand how to get competition right while moving in a more equitable direction for all.”
A New York Times bestselling author, her multidisciplinary expertise extends to the intersection of technological change and broader social structures, with a keen eye on the novel effects of AI in human spaces, as seen in her 2020 book “Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny.”
By thinking beyond the confines of the 9-to-5 business world, Spar shows leaders how to acquire more agency and strike a delicate balance between leveraging technology and prioritizing the humanity of our relationships.
Her next book will provide insight into how we assign value to “sacred goods,” intangible qualities we can’t put a monetary price on – like life, love and apologies – and how firms and individuals can reclaim these critical goods in a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and smart machines.
Providing pathways for participating in real, consequential change, Debora Spar helps executives, high-potential managers and future leaders understand the broader context of how the world is operating today, how we got here and how to work toward a better future.
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Debora Spar, Ph.D., is the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development. With research on issues of gender and technology, and the interplay between technological change and broader social structures, Spar tackles some of these issues in her book “Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).
Spar served as the president of Barnard College from 2008 to 2017, and as president and CEO of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts from 2017 to 2018. During her tenure at Barnard, Spar led initiatives to highlight women’s leadership and advancement, including the creation of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies and the development of Barnard’s Global Symposium series.
Before joining Barnard, Spar spent 17 years on the HBS faculty as the Spangler Family Professor. A prolific writer, Spar’s books include “Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet” (2001), “The Baby Business” (2006), and “Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection” (2013).
Spar is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as a director of Value Retail LLC and Thermo Fisher Scientific, as well as a trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has also served on the boards of Goldman Sachs and the Wallace and Markle Foundations. Spar earned her Ph.D. in government from Harvard University and her B.S. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Debora Spar is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group®.
Finding The Purpose of the Firm: Where to Start When Addressing Societal Problems
In a world where business and society increasingly overlap and occasionally collide, how can private firms help address some of today’s greatest challenges, such as climate change, poverty or economic development? Debora Spar, senior associate dean for faculty research and development at Harvard Business School, says leaders need frameworks for evaluating their role in tackling societal issues and guidance for working with governments, regulators and suppliers in new ways. In this talk, Spar, a top leadership advisor who helps firms remain profitable while working toward a better future, highlights executives who are harnessing the resources of the firm to tackle massive societal problems. Based on the required course for executive MBAs that she designed, Spar helps managers explore how, and under what circumstances, private firms can point their efforts in directions beyond boosting the bottom line. Using global examples – from OpenAI in the US to Equity Bank in East Africa – she guides audiences on a journey to answer important questions for their own businesses about becoming part of the solution while still making money and reveals the pathways to get there.
Capitalism and the State: An Economic System Under the Microscope
Many of us live in a capitalist society, but do we know how capitalism really works? To understand the inner workings of capitalism, says Debora Spar, senior associate dean for faculty research and development at Harvard Business School, we must start by examining the most important foundational texts in capitalist thought. Based on her wildly popular HBS course, Spar’s presentation offers a practical lens and historical critiques on the economic system that governs our lives. She reveals how the system emerged and is supported, its core problems and how today’s leaders can get competition right. While acknowledging there are no easy answers to the criticisms of capitalism, Spar’s examination of the different economic models, from Sweden to the US, equips decision-makers to act in ways that move capitalism in a more equitable direction for all, and ultimately help organizations become part of the solution.
Sacred Goods: Reclaiming Love in the Time of AI
We live in a world where it feels like everything is being sold and exchanged in a market. Debora Spar, senior associate dean for faculty research and development at Harvard Business School and New York Times bestselling author, argues that the things we value most – like love, life or salvation – don’t trade in markets in part because we don’t want them to and in part because we can’t. There’s value in human social behavior and values, such as vengeance, hope, apologies and love – but you can’t buy them on Amazon. In this presentation based on her highly anticipated forthcoming book, Spar introduces the idea of “sacred goods,” the intangible things our society holds dear. Examining what traditional markets do well and the things that they fundamentally can’t accomplish, she asks how we can understand these non-markets and what can we learn from them. Audiences walk away with new ways to think about exchanges for things in the sacred economy and new ways for imagining how markets might work. If we come look at the ways in which we trade and value things that can’t be sold in a market, leaders and managers will gain new insight into the traditional markets that fuel our societies.
AI in the Human Space: Shaping Technology Toward Moral Ends
In a world increasingly run by AI and robots, each of us must strike a delicate balance between leveraging technology and prioritizing the humanity of our relationships. For decades, Debora Spar, senior associate dean for faculty research and development at Harvard Business School and New York Times bestselling author, has studied technological revolutions and how they reshape society in fundamental – and incredibly intimate – ways. There is no master plan for how technologies will change us, and we can’t put technology back in the bottle, she says. But we can create rules of engagement that bend technology toward moral ends. In a presentation tailored for your audience, Spar can address topics including the history and future of technology, how to make technology more equitable and accessible to all, how technology continues to shape our human destiny, or how AI is reshaping our professional and personal lives.
The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception
(Harvard Business Review Press, February 2006)
Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth, from the Compass to the Internet
(Harcourt, September 2001)
Today’s decision makers are increasingly challenged to think about more than boosting quarterly sales. How can they also address the real responsibility of leadership and executive development activities? Through one-on-one advisory arrangements with Debora Spar, senior associate dean at Harvard Business School, organizations gain access to a one-of-a-kind leader who’s a true total package. Spar is ushering in the changing face of Harvard Business School and designing both required and in-demand courses that the new generation of business leaders are learning, including Capitalism and the State and The Purpose of the Firm. A New York Times bestselling author and researcher on the unique areas where business, society and technology overlap – and occasionally collide – she helps leaders understand the broader context of how the world is operating, the historical background of how we got to this point in time, and how to apply that knowledge to think beyond the confines of the 9-to-5 business world to acquire more agency. A leader among leaders, Spar empowers decision makers to work toward a better future while keeping their companies profitable.
Praise for “Work Mate Marry Love”
“Thought-provoking . . . Spar’s explanations of how specific technologies developed are lucid and insightful. Readers will take comfort in this clear-eyed assessment of humanity’s ability to adapt to technological change.”
“Throughout history, technological change has reordered our lives, including its most intimate aspects. In this powerful account of 8,000 years of human development, Debora L. Spar traces how first settled agriculture, then the steam engine, and eventually the mid-twentieth century revolutions of cars, modern household appliances, and the pill transformed work and family patterns, production and reproduction. This dazzling and fast-paced guide to a new world in the making will make you recoil at times. Yet by unsentimentally historicizing the most intimate aspects of our lives, Spar’s big-picture book opens up new vistas for understanding the most consequential changes of our times.”
“Based on thousands of years of history, Debora Spar convincingly argues that the major changes we are seeing in the technologies of biology and artificial intelligence are about to change how we think of ourselves and our places in society in fundamental ways. More than thought-provoking, this is a book that will make you examine why you are the way you are.”
“A fascinating read. Equal parts history and imagination, ‘Work Mate Marry Love’ explains how technology always has and always will shape who we are though we are often blind to its true impact. Spar will push you to examine your own experience with tech, and you will wonder where its influence ends and the real you begins.”
“Debora Spar’s ‘Work Mate Marry Love’ is a beautifully poetic examination of how the technologies we feel we are shaping are actually shaping us. With algorithms mediating every aspect of our lives and robots slipping into our bedrooms, it’s essential reading for anyone exploring what it means to be human at this time of revolutionary change. I couldn’t put it down.”
“With a fresh and incisive take on how technology has long shaped our relationships with work and with each other, Debora Spar mines the past to show us where we are going next. ‘Work Mate Marry Love’ is a sweeping, fascinating journey that tells us what we need to know now to be prepared for the next inevitable wave of change.”
