Eleven years on the faculty at Vanderbilt University. One multi-year research projects. Three hundred and fifty interviews with positive disruptors worldwide. The frameworks Patrick teaches in boardrooms and on stages around the world didn’t start in a consulting firm they started here.
Vanderbilt University is one of America’s leading research universities, consistently ranked among the top 15 institutions in the country. Located in Nashville, Tennessee, Vanderbilt is home to world-class schools of business, medicine, law, and engineering, and is recognized globally for the quality of its faculty, the rigor of its research, and the impact of its graduates.
It is also where Patrick spent eleven years building the academic foundation that underlies everything he does.
National university ranking
Years on the Vanderbilt faculty
Disruption Project interviews conducted
Tennessee campus location
Patrick joined the Vanderbilt faculty as an Associate Professor of the Practice of Business Studies and Director of Business Studies in the Hoogland Undergraduate Business Program — a role he held for eleven years. In that time, he didn’t just teach business. He built a curriculum designed to prepare future executives for the specific challenges they’d actually face: crisis, strategy, negotiation, and change.
His core teaching portfolio covered four areas:
Developing the protocols and decision-making frameworks leaders need to manage high-stakes situations before, during, and after they unfold.
Helping students align resources, define competitive positioning, and build organizations capable of executing in complex, fast-moving markets.
Structuring agreements that create mutual gain and building the skills to manage conflict without destroying relationships.
Applying analytical frameworks to consumer behavior, brand positioning, and market strategy.
He also served as a faculty lecturer in Vanderbilt’s Managerial Studies Program, bridging academic theory and real-world execution for students preparing to enter competitive global organizations.
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Patrick designed and launched a new course: Leading Business Through Times of Crisis, co-taught with Vanderbilt Trustee Emeritus Michael Ainslie. The course was built in real time, for a crisis unfolding in real time.
One of the guest lecturers was James Patterson, a Vanderbilt alumnus, the world’s most popular storyteller, and, as it turned out, a compelling case study in positive disruption. Patterson’s appearance in that Zoom classroom set something in motion. Patrick realized that Patterson’s career from advertising executive to record-breaking novelist was exactly the kind of story he wanted to study systematically.
The leadership concepts Patrick teaches aren’t borrowed from someone else’s playbook or assembled from popular business books. They emerged from a structured, multi-year academic research initiative conducted at one of the country’s top-ranked research universities. That distinction matters when organizations are evaluating who to trust with their people.
The Disruption Project drew from business, psychology, military strategy, and organizational behavior reflecting Vanderbilt’s culture of interdisciplinary inquiry. The result is a framework that holds up across industries, leadership levels, and types of organizations because it was built that way from the start.
Without Vanderbilt, there is no Disruption Project. Without the Disruption Project, there is no book with James Patterson. Without the book, there is no FranklinCovey enterprise curriculum. The Vanderbilt affiliation isn’t one credential among many; it’s the source.
Founded and directed by Patrick during his tenure at Vanderbilt, The Disruption Project set out to answer one question: what separates individuals and organizations that collapse during disruption from those that adapt and grow?
Over multiple years, the research team conducted more than 350 interviews with positive disruptors worldwide business leaders, public officials, first responders, entrepreneurs, and grassroots innovators across industries and continents.
The findings became the empirical backbone of everything Patrick has built since his book with James Patterson, his enterprise curriculum with FranklinCovey, his keynote framework, and his leadership assessment tool.
Developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, this course brought together business students, guest executives, and real-time case studies to build the crisis leadership skills most organizations discover they need only after a crisis has already begun. It was in this course that James Patterson guest lectured sparking the research initiative and partnership that followed.
When it came time to launch Disrupt Everything and Win, the choice of venue was easy. The book had been born at Vanderbilt it was only right that it launch there too. Patrick and James Patterson took the stage together for the book’s first public event. The first 200 attendees received complimentary copies six months before the book was available anywhere else.
“The Disruption Project research served as the direct foundation for the book co-authored with Patterson and for the corporate solutions developed for FranklinCovey — demonstrating how academic research directly informs corporate training programs.”
— Partner Research Summary
Vanderbilt University Affiliation
“The Five-Week Leadership Challenge is ideal for all of us in need of guidance on our leadership journey. Leddin teaches how pointed reflection, a deep understanding of one’s own leadership values, and the ability to recognize when leadership is actually called for are practices available to anyone who wants to be a better leader.”
— David A. Owens, PhD, PE
Evans Family Executive Director of the Wond’ry and Faculty, Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management
Vanderbilt University News
The official campus announcement for the March 26, 2025 Langford Auditorium launch event, tracing the origin of the book back to Patrick’s Vanderbilt crisis leadership course.
Vanderbilt University
An excerpt from ‘Disrupt Everything—and Win: Take Control of Your Future’
Get key players involved at every level.
Vanderbilt Business
Bestselling author James Patterson, MA’70, has made a landmark $10 million commitment to launch the Patterson Institute for Early Adolescent Literacy at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development.
Business Studies
Patrick Leddin, Ph.D. is a Best-selling Wall Street Journal author, speaker, podcast host, entrepreneur, and professor. With a combination of academic, practical, military, and corporate experience, he is uniquely qualified to teach and inspire individuals to be the leaders they are meant to be.
Whether you’re exploring Patrick’s academic work, considering a research collaboration, or looking to bring his frameworks into your organization through a keynote or work session the conversation starts here.
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