Christopher Trimble

Chris Trimble is Adjunct Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Tuck School. He is an expert in managing innovation initiatives within established organizations. He has taught in executive education programs at Tuck and for clients such as eBay, Fidelity, General Electric, IBM, Sears, The New York Times Company, and Thomson Reuters. In addition, Professor Trimble advises innovation leaders inside established organizations.

His current research interests include transforming industries by creating and growing new business models and innovation in health care delivery. His newest book, coauthored with Vijay Govindarajan, is Reverse Innovation: Create Far from Home, Win Everywhere (Harvard Business Press, 2012). It addresses the critical challenge of innovating for emerging markets. The book builds on the pair’s prior book, The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge (2010) and its companion parable How Stella Saved the Farm: A Wild and Woolly Yarn about Making Innovation Happen. Their first book on innovation was 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators–from Idea to Execution (2005).

Professor Trimble is also coauthor with Jeffrey Immelt and Vijay Govindarajan of “How GE is Disrupting Itself” (Harvard Business Review, October 2009). He appears frequently in the mainstream press, including The Economist, BusinessWeek, Financial Times, Fast Company, and on the radio program Marketplace.

He received a McKinsey Award in 2010 for the best article of the year in the Harvard Business Review. In 2006, he received an Accenture Award for the best article of the year in the California Management Review. He was awarded the 2014 Teaching Excellence Award for his outstanding contribution to the quality of the Tuck MBA educational experience.

He received his MBA from the Tuck School with distinction and was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. He earned his BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia with highest distinction.

Prior to joining Tuck, Professor Trimble worked as a management consultant, developing clients’ capacity to use modeling and simulation during strategic planning and process re-engineering efforts. He also served as a nuclear submarine officer in the United States Navy.