Howard H. Stevenson is the Sarofim-Rock Baker Foundation Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. Forbes magazine described him as Harvard Business School's "lion of entrepreneurship" in a 2011 article. Howard is credited with defining entrepreneurship as “the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control.” described Howard's definition of entrepreneurship as "the best answer ever." Stevenson is the author of eight books and 41 articles. His past roles at Harvard include chairman of Harvard Business Publishing, vice provost for resources and planning, and senior associate dean at HBS. He is often credited as being the most successful fundraiser in the history of Harvard University, raising over $600 million in philanthropic support for initiatives in business, science, healthcare, and student life. Stevenson is the co-founder and founding president of , a leading money management firm currently led by Seth Klarman. When he , the University named an . He graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Business School.
''Howard's Gift''
Stevenson is the subject of a book written by his friend and former student, Eric Sinoway, an , entrepreneur, and executive, titled , which was released by St. Martin's Press on October 2, 2012. The English edition of Howard's Gift was released in hardcopy, paperback, and audio. The book has been translated into , , , and Japanese.
Inspiration for Howard's Gift
Howard's Gift was written by Eric Sinoway after Howard Stevenson, his mentor, professor, and close friend at Harvard University, survived what by all measures should have been a fatal heart attack. Stevenson and Sinoway developed what has been described as a "father-son" relationship while Sinoway, a mid-career student at Harvard at the time, undertook an independent study with Stevenson, who was then Harvard's Vice Provost for University Planning. Following completion of their student-faculty collaboration, Sinoway joined the Harvard development office and the relationship between the two deepened further. In 2014, after three doctors declared him healthy, Stevenson experienced unattended cardiac arrest on January 5th in the middle of the Harvard campus. With a survival rate of approximately 1%, unattended cardiac arrest is almost always fatal. In Stevenson's case, it almost certainly would have been were it not for a remarkable set of events.
Stevenson collapsed outside of one of the only buildings on the Harvard campus at the time that had a mobile defibrillator.
When a colleague saw him collapse, she ran inside to grab the defibrillator.
While she did, a second colleague, ran across campus to Howard's side and began performing CPR.
The colleague who retrieved the mobile defibrillator brought it to his side and administered it.
The individual performing CPR went to his office. On his desk in his office was his mail, which he opened. That day in his mail was his certification of his CPR training from the week before.
An ambulance came to the Harvard Business School campus to retrieve Howard. It was one of two ambulances in the entire city of Boston that had a special clot busting drug onboard called TPA; TPA is not typically administered in ambulances but bedside in hospitals. The ambulance that arrived at Howard's side happened to have it onboard.
The technician on the ambulance that arrived at Harvard Business School had advanced training to give a needle injection directly into the heart, as he did to Howard who lay unconsciously on the HBS campus.
The technicians worked on Howard for approximately 40 minutes to stabilize him, put him in an ambulance, and rushed him to Mt. Auburn Hospital, where the head of the cardiac unit was on duty.
The Mt. Auburn Hospital medical staff induced a 31/2 day coma. Doctors estimate that he went without oxygen for almost 4 minutes after his heart initially stopped.
When Howard was brought out of the coma, given the lack of oxygen to the brain and the trauma of the event, the President of the hospital remarked that it seemed like a virtual impossibility that there had been no cognitive damage -- which there was not.
Following Stevenson's release from the hospital and prolonged recovery at home, Sinoway spent hours a week with him discussing a wide range of topics focused on achieving success and satisfaction in life. It was these discussions that set the foundation for Howard's Gift.
