Garth Saloner

Who is Garth Saloner?

Garth Saloner is the ninth dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. A faculty member since 1990 and a two-time winner of the Distinguished Teaching Award from MBA students, he has taught management, strategy, entrepreneurship, and e-commerce.

Saloner has been a leader in the evolution of management education. He was a key architect of the Business School’s innovative new MBA curriculum introduced in 2007. A supporter of a more multidisciplinary approach to education, Saloner also launched the Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship, a program to teach general management and entrepreneurial skills to graduate students in life sciences, chemistry and other non-business fields. He has taught courses to undergraduates, MBA students, Sloan Master’s students, and doctoral students. He also has taught in Executive Education programs around the world.

Saloner has figured in many of the School’s new programs. He served as associate dean for academic affairs, and as director for research and curriculum development from 1993 to 1996. He was one of the founders of the Stanford Computer Industry Project, a major study of the worldwide computer industry, and a founder of the Center for Electronic Business and Commerce in 1999, which, for five years, was instrumental in disseminating research and teaching in the new field.

He took a two-year leave in 2001 to spend time as an advisor, board member, or investor with a number of startups. Upon returning, he taught entrepreneurship and became director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Business School in 2004.

In 2006, he led the faculty-alumni review committee that undertook a major overhaul of the MBA curriculum. The result injected more critical thinking, leadership development, and a global experience requirement into the program. The new curriculum also created a tailored menu of options for required courses to account for the increasingly diverse pre-MBA experiences of entering students.

Saloner has been a champion of global studies and social innovation, especially the role of entrepreneurship as an engine for growth in the developing world. He encouraged the inclusion of global cases into the curriculum, such as one on microfinance in Ghana. He joined student study trips to India, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Jordan, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, and East Africa. He also championed the Women’s Perspectives on Entrepreneurship course, which, in addition to a Critical Analytical Thinking seminar, he continues to teach as dean.

As an economist, Saloner has been known for his pioneering work on network effects, which underlie much of the economics of electronic commerce and business. His research has focused on entrepreneurship, strategic management, organizational economics, competitive strategy, and antitrust economics. His most recent work has been devoted to understanding how firms set and change strategy.

A native of South Africa, Saloner received a BCom (bachelor of commerce) and MBA (with distinction) from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He received an MS in statistics, an AM in economics, and a PhD in economics, business, and public policy from Stanford between 1978 and 1982. He joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in 1982 and became a tenured full professor in both the economics department and the Sloan School of Management. He also has taught at Harvard. He became dean of Stanford Business School in September 2009. Saloner and his wife, Marlene, have three daughters, all of whom have Stanford degrees.