Robert Samuel Kaplan (born 1940) is an American accounting academic, and Emeritus Professor of Leadership Development at the Harvard Business School.

Kaplan started his academic career at Tepper School of Business at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1968.

Later, Kaplan joined the role of Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School[3] in 1984 after serving as a Dean at Carnegie-Mellon University from 1977 to 1983.

[6] Kaplan and David P. Norton created the Balanced Scorecard, a means of linking a company's current actions to its long-term goals.

He is a co-founder, with David P. Norton, of ESM Software Group, and has been integrally involved in the thought leadership work of Palladium International and its past iterations (i.e., Palladium Group, Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Renaissance Worldwide).