Anselmo Rubiralta Chair of Strategic Innovation
Chair: Giovanni Valentini
The Anselmo Rubiralta Chair of Strategic Innovation promotes research and the exchange of ideas on strategy, innovation, and corporate growth. Its research examines how firms create and capture value by developing, combining, and deploying knowledge and capabilities, and how these processes are shaped by technological change and by the institutional environments in which firms operate.
The Chair seeks to generate rigorous research with practical relevance for managers confronting fundamental strategic questions: how to organize innovation, where to source knowledge and capabilities, when to build them internally or acquire them externally, how to translate technological advances into economic value, and how changes in technology and institutions alter the sources of competitive advantage.
Research areas.
Innovation, knowledge, and technological change
A central focus of the Chair is understanding how firms create and capture value from technological innovation. Its research examines how companies organize R&D, access and combine internal and external knowledge, and turn technological advances into commercially valuable innovations.
Research in this area addresses questions such as how firms organize open innovation and relationships with external sources of knowledge; how innovation interacts with internationalization; why technologically important inventions do not always generate commensurate economic value; and how changes in the information environment affect firms’ incentives and ability to innovate.
Corporate strategy, growth, and M&A
The Chair studies how firms grow, renew their capabilities, and transform their competitive position. A particular focus is the choice between developing resources and capabilities internally and accessing them through acquisitions and other external relationships.
Research in this area examines the consequences of mergers and acquisitions for innovation and performance, the conditions under which acquisitions enable firms to catch up with technological leaders, and the organizational processes through which firms integrate and learn from acquired businesses.
Institutions and strategic innovation
Firms do not formulate strategy in isolation. The institutions governing markets influence which opportunities firms can pursue, the resources they can access, and the incentives facing entrepreneurs, employees, and established companies. The Chair therefore studies how the legal, regulatory, and social environment shapes strategic behavior and economic outcomes.
Research in this area examines how judicial institutions, corruption, employment protections, and other institutional arrangements affect investment, entrepreneurship, market entry, and competition.
Chair.
Giovanni Valentini is Professor and Head of the Strategic Management Department at IESE Business School. His research focuses on how firms combine internal and external knowledge to achieve competitive advantage through technological innovation and growth and on the role of institutions in shaping this process. His work has appeared in leading academic journals, including the Global Strategy Journal, Industrial and Corporate Change, the Journal of International Business Studies, Management Science, Organization Science, Research Policy, Strategic Organization, Strategy Science, the Strategic Management Journal and the Journal of Management. He currently serves as Co-Editor of Industrial and Corporate Change and Associate Editor at Management Science.
Professor Valentini has served on the Research and Executive Committees of the Strategy Division of the Academy of Management, as well as on the Leadership Team of the Knowledge and Innovation Interest Group of the Strategic Management Society.