Haroon Abbu
Professor of Practice in Marketing and Analytics
Department of Marketing
Department of Information Technology, Analytics & Operations
habbu@ncsu.edu WebsiteBio
Dr. Haroon Abbu is the Senior Vice President of Digital Technology & Data Analytics at Bell & Howell. With more than 25 years of industry experience, he is a proven leader in data analytics, artificial intelligence, and technology-enabled business transformation. Haroon has consistently leveraged digital innovation to drive organizational breakthroughs and measurable business value.
He is a sought-after thought leader and keynote speaker, and he serves on advisory boards for ServiceCouncil, CDO Magazine, International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP), and FieldService USA. His work has earned numerous industry accolades, including the 2025 Stand Out 50 Leaders award by Future of Field Service, the 2023 DataIQ 100 Most Influential People in Data, and the 2022 Global Top 100 Innovators in Data and Analytics.
Haroon partners closely with North Carolina State University to advance thought leadership in digital leadership and innovation. He is the founding advisory board member of NC State’s Business Analytics & AI Initiative (BAI). As a Professor of Practice, he empowers future business leaders by teaching courses in artificial intelligence and digital transformation, helping bridge the gap between academia and industry.
In his 2021 book, Trust: The Winning Formula for Digital Leaders, Haroon and his co-authors explore the practices of digitally mature organizations and how digital leaders build trust to accelerate transformation. His research has been published in leading scholarly journals, including the Journal of Business Research and Research-Technology Management.
For more info, click haroonabbu.com
Education
DPS Business Pace University
MS Engineering Management University of South Florida
MBA International Business Schiller International University
BS Industrial Engineering Malnad College of Engineering
Area(s) of Expertise
Digital Transformation, digital leadership, Artificial intelligence, Digital technology & Data Analytics, Service Innovation
Publications
- Building Digital-Ready Leaders: Development and Validation of the Human-Centric Digital Leadership Scale , Digital (2025)
- Exploring Digital Leadership Traits: An Approach to Understanding Their Internalization , 2024 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENGINEERING, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION, ICE/ITMC 2024 (2024)
- Assessing Digital Leadership: Towards Developing a Scale to Measure the Human Dimensions of Digital Leaders , Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Engineering, Technology, and Innovation: Shaping the Future, ICE 2023 (2023)
- The Effects of Message Quotes on Tax Compliance , Journal of Forensic Accounting Research (2023)
- Digital Transformation Powered by Big Data Analytics: The Case of Retail Grocery Business , Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2022)
- Ethical Considerations of Artificial Intelligence: Ensuring Fairness, Transparency, and Explainability , 2022 IEEE 28th International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC) & 31st International Association For Management of Technology (IAMOT) Joint Conference (2022)
- Managing Innovation in the Digital Age , Research-Technology Management (2022)
- Measuring the Human Dimensions of Digital Leadership for Successful Digital Transformation , Research-Technology Management (2022)
- Successful Digital Leadership Requires Building Trust , Research-Technology Management (2022)
- The Case of Digital Transformation in Grocery Business: A Conceptual Model of Digital Grocery Ecosystem , 2021 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation, ICE/ITMC 2021 - Proceedings (2021)