Book on ‘business success’ profiles MIT Sloan Professor and INFORMS Fellow Georgia Perakis

The book “Seven Essentials for Business Success: Lessons from Legendary Professors” by George Siedel (Routledge 2022) profiles award-winning business school professors who teach the seven areas that everyone should understand for business success. A chapter on legendary MIT Sloan Professor Georgia Perakis describes how she teaches her course on “Data, Models and Decisions” in the Executive MBA program. Among her many accomplishments, Perakis is the only person in the history of MIT who has won the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Samuel M. Seegal Faculty Prize and the Teacher of the Year Award. She was elected an INFORMS Fellow in 2016 for exceptional research spanning theory to practice.

In the book, Perakis and other business school professors candidly discuss their successes and failures in the classroom, the mentors who inspired them, how they developed their teaching methods, and their rigorous preparation for class. Through descriptions of the professors in action, the book provides an insider’s perspective on teaching skills, and how to teach the seven essentials for success in a variety of settings, including MBA, executive MBA and executive education courses. The chapters also describe the daily lives (professional and personal) of the professors, and the impact they have beyond the classroom in improving organizations and society.