Prof. Sawhney is a globally recognized scholar, teacher, consultant and speaker in business innovation, modern marketing, and Artificial Intelligence applications in business.

Prof. Sawhney has written seven management books as well as dozens of influential articles in leading academic journals and managerial publications.  His most recent book, The Sentient Enterprise: The Evolution of Business Decision Making, was published in October 2017 and was on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.  He has also written a book of poetry called Love, Longing and Loneliness in 2014. His research has been published in leading journals like California Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Management Science, Marketing Science, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He is a contributor to Forbes and his articles have been published in Fortune, Financial Times, CIO Magazine and TheHill.com.

Prof. Sawhney is a pioneer in online executive education. He has created 8 successful SPOCs (Small Online Private Courses), including Digital Marketing Strategies, Product Strategy, AI Applications for Growth, Influencer Marketing Strategy, and the Kellogg Chief Product Officer Program. These online courses have enrolled over 15,000 students from December 2018 to February 2023. He has also co-authored simulation games like DigiStrat (2021), CloudStrat (2020) and PhotoWars. He has authored over 30 case studies. In 2021, he was ranked by the Case Center as 23^rd in the list of top academic case writers in the world. He has won several awards for his teaching and research, including the 2006 Sidney Levy Award for Teaching Excellence at the Kellogg School, the 2005 runner-up for Best Paper in Journal of Interactive Marketing, the 2001 Accenture Award for the best paper published in California Management Review in 2000 and the Outstanding Professor of the Year at Kellogg in 1998. He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta in 2011and the Global Alumni Recognition Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 2021. 

Prof. Sawhney advises and speaks to Global 2000 firms and governments worldwide. His speaking and consulting clients include Accenture, Adobe Systems, AT&T, Boeing, Cisco Systems, Dell, Entergy, Ericsson, Fidelity Investments, General Mills, Google, Honeywell, Intuit, Jenner & Block, Jones Lang LaSalle, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg Company, KPMG, McDonald's, Meta, Merck, Microsoft, Raytheon Missile Systems, Red Hat, Rockwell Automation, Roche, SAP, Salesforce, Smartsheet, Sony, Teradata and Textron Inc. He serves on the Board of Directors at Reliance Jio Infocomm. He also serves on the advisory boards of several technology startups, including Course5 Intelligence, LawGeex, MommyDaddyMe, Octi, PomVom, QualSights, Sprinklr, StartupWind, Vistalytics and vMock. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Study for Business Markets (ISBM) at Penn State University and a member of the Advisory Board at Chicago Innovation.

Prof. Sawhney holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta; and a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.     

Business Innovation, Digital Marketing, Enterprise Analytics

• MA, PhD, 1993, Marketing, University of Pennsylvania
• PGDM, 1987, Marketing, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
• BT, 1985, Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi

• Associate Dean, Digital Innovation, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2020-present
• Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation Clinical Professor of Technology, Center for Research in Technology & Innovation, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern Unviersity, 1999-present
• Assistant Professor, Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1993-1999

• Global Alumni Recognition Award, Indian Institute of Technology, Dehli, India
• 23rd in list of bestselling case authors in the world, The Case Centre, 2020-2021
• 23rd in list of bestselling case authors in the world, The Case Center, 2021
• Academic Thought Leadership Award, NASSCOM India, 2016
• ISBM Fellow, ISBM, Smeal College of Business, Penn State University
• Thought Leadership Award, NASSCOM (India), NASSCOM India
• Fellow, Institute for Study of Business Markets, Penn State University, Penn State University
• Thinkers50 India - 50 Most Influential Thinkers of Indian Origin, Institute of Competitiveness
• Fellow, World Economic Forum, 2002
• Distinguished Alumnus Award, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
• Named One of the Worlds Best Known Indian-Origin Gurus, Times of India
• Accenture Award, California Management Review, 2001
• L.G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award, Kellogg School of Management, 1998

Product Management, Business Innovation, Technology Marketing, Marketing in a Digital World

Delivering Business Growth

Emphasizing action, this program teaches a market-tested framework that has delivered sustained double-digit growth in revenues and margins for major global brands. You’ll leave with a business growth strategy and actionable agenda for driving growth within your organization.

Driving Organic Growth through Innovation

This outcomes-oriented program teaches a proven process for achieving market-driven business growth through a well-designed innovation strategy. Take home practical solutions you can deploy immediately to ignite sustainable, profitable growth in your company.

Enterprise Leadership Program

Leadership at the enterprise level means rising to the challenge. No longer is your growth linear — it’s exponential. The focus moves past the single team or unit to the enterprise as a whole, beyond functional skills to strategic decisions based on a broader perspective. Kellogg Executive Education’s Enterprise Leadership Program prepares you to lead at height and scale and helps you develop an anticipatory mindset.

Generative AI: Executive Strategies to Unlock Enterprise Value

The speed of adoption and the impact of generative AI presents massive opportunities as well as challenges, with early adopters – and early winners – coming from a variety of industries. Through a powerful mix of lectures, original frameworks, case studies and hands-on learning, leaders in different roles, industries and functions will gain a comprehensive understanding of the foundation of generative AI and its practical applications – with a focus on use cases across the enterprise value chain.

Leading and Sustaining a Culture of Innovation

Successful innovation management requires highly trained leaders who can ignite the creative spirit and create a culture of innovation. In this program, you will develop the skills and tools you need to instill an innovation mindset within your organization and inspire your people to higher levels of creativity.

Leading Into the Future

As the world of business changes at breakneck speed, executives must stay at the forefront of management thinking and practice. This program delivers a wealth of new knowledge and insights for managing change with confidence in the 21st century.

Leading Product Organizations (MKTGX-924-0)
Leading Product Organizations

TechVenture India (INTLX-918-0)
"Tech Venture India (2 credits) is an experiential learning course focusing on technology trends and entrepreneurship in emerging markets. The course begins with a three-day intensive classroom experience in Evanston consisting of lectures and guest sessions on key technology domains like Cloud Computing, Mobile Technologies, Analytics and Machine Learning. This is followed by a week-long field study trip and a research project to provide students with the concepts as well as real-world experience with technologies that are shaping emerging markets like India as well as entrepreneurial opportunities in technology markets. The field trip will include visits to multinational technology companies, Indian technology companies, technology startup companies and government officials. This course is of special significance for Executive MBA students who may be contemplating a mid-career move into entrepreneurial ventures as it will provide a first-hand look at some of the most exciting startup ventures and opportunities in India and beyond. Student teams will be asked to choose a research topic of their choice related to technology trends in emerging markets, and they will be required to produce a publishable-quality white paper on their project. Course Objectives: Provide students with a deep understanding of key technology trends and their impact on global business. Expose students to emerging markets as “laboratories and back-offices for the world” as sources of technology innovation and talent for developed markets. Expose students to first-hand experience with technology companies in emerging markets– from large multinationals to early-stage startups. Compel students to develop expertise in a specialized domain and provide them with the experience and skills of writing a publishing quality research paper. Enhance the presence of Kellogg in India through interactions with alumni, key technology business leaders and influencers. "

Field Study (STRT-498-0)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member.

Leading Product Organizations (MKTG-924-5)


Field Study (MKTG-498-5)
Field Study

Technology Marketing (MKTG-468-0)
This course provides students with conceptual frameworks and analytical tools for marketing decision making in high-growth and turbulent technology businesses. It is a strategic marketing course for students seeking product management or strategic marketing jobs with large technology companies, technology startup firms or B2B industrial companies. The course is cross-functional, decision-focused and strategic in its orientation. Topics include marketing in a digital world, gaining customer insights, demand forecasting and strategic planning in technology markets, automated behavioral marketing, managing agile product development, platform strategy, designing customer solutions and digital brand storytelling. Student assignments include developing quantitative spreadsheet-based forecasting models and playing an interactive strategy simulation called CloudStrat, specifically developed for the course. The simulation game teaches students about strategic decision making in dynamic technology markets as they navigate a software company's transition from legacy premise-based software to software as a service (SaaS). Industries covered in the course include software, online services, medical equipment and hardware. All case studies in the course have been developed at Kellogg specifically for the course.

Product Management for Technology Companies: An Entrepreneurial Perspective (MKTG-458-0)
Product Management for Technology Companies provides the conceptual frameworks, tools and hands-on experience to become successful product managers in technology companies. With a holistic and entrepreneurial perspective of product management, the course provides an end-to-end view of all major aspects of product management and product marketing. Topics include product opportunity analysis, product discovery, business model design, agile product development, go-to-market strategy, whole offer design, ecosystem management, product planning and managing products as an ongoing business. This comprehensive approach prepares students for various product-focused roles, including product management, product marketing, product planning and business development. The case studies and assignments in the course are all developed at Kellogg and designed specifically for the course. Assignments include a wireframing assignment, a SaaS economics quantitative assignment and a product roadmapping assignment. The case studies and course content reflect a balance between product management in large technology companies versus smaller technology startup companies.