Biography
Michael B. Horn is the co-founder and executive director of education at Innosight Institute—a not-for-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector. He is the coauthor of “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns” (McGraw-Hill: June 2008) with Harvard Business School Professor and bestselling author Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, president of the Citistates Group. BusinessWeek named the book one of the 10 Best Innovation & Design Books of 2008, Strategy + Business awarded it the best human capital book of 2008, Newsweek named it as the 14th book on its list of “Fifty Books for Our Times,” and the National Chamber Foundation named it first among its 10 “Books that Drive the Debate 2009.”
Disrupting Class uses the theories of disruptive innovation to identify the root causes of schools’ struggles and suggests a path forward to customize an education for every child in the way she learns. Horn has been a featured keynote speaker at many conferences including the Virtual School Symposium and Microsoft’s School of the Future World Summit. Tech&Learning magazine also named him to its list of the 100 most important people in the creation and advancement of the use of technology in education.
Prior to this, Horn worked at America Online during its aol.com re-launch, and before that he served as David Gergen’s research assistant, where he tracked and wrote about politics and public policy. Horn has written articles for numerous publications, including Education Week, Forbes, the Boston Globe, and U.S. News & World Report. He is co-editor of the upcoming book Private Enterprise in American Education, which examines the role of for-profits in education. In addition, Horn has contributed research for Charles Ellis’ book, “Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox” (Wiley, 2006) and Barbara Kellerman’s “Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters” (Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
