Ronald Stuart Burt

Burt’s work describes social networks creating advantage. Applications focus on personal networks and the network structure of markets. In addition to computer software and articles in research journals, the last three books are the one with which Burt launched the concept of structural holes, "Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition" (1992, Harvard University Press), a broad review of links between network structure and performance, "Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital" (2005, Oxford University Press), and argument and evidence on the substantial extent to which network advantage depends on the person at the center of the network, "Neighbor Networks: Competitive Advantage Local and Personal" (2010, Oxford University Press, winner of the 2011 George R. Terry Book Award from the Academy of Management). Burt’s college work at Johns Hopkins University included pre-medical training, physiological psychology, and behavioral science. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in sociology, then was on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University before returning to join the University of Chicago faculty in 1993. In 1999, he began a leave of absence to learn more about European business as the Shell Professor of Human Resources at INSEAD. In 2000, he began a leave of absence to learn more about practical implementation as the Vice President of Strategic Learning in Raytheon Company.