Gautam Ahuja

Biography

Gautam Ahuja serves as the Eleanora and George Landew Professor of Management and professor of management and organizations at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He has also served at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan (2001-2017), University of Texas at Austin (1996-2001), and as visiting professor of business administration at Harvard Business School (2014-2015).

Ahuja's research interests include competitive analysis, technology and innovation, globalization, and the use of inter-organizational arrangements such as mergers, acquisitions, and alliances in these contexts. His research on these issues has received many global awards and honors, most recently Fellow of the Strategic Management Society (2023), Fellow of the Academy of Management (2021), and TIM Distinguished Scholar for lifetime achievement in research (2019), the highest award given by the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy of Management.

Ahuja's research has received more than 30,000 citations from other scholars and various federal and international bodies. He has served as editor-in-chief of Organization Science, one of the premier journals in the field, and has also served as associate editor for Management Science and as a senior editor for Organization Science and Strategy Science.

Ahuja teaches strategy and competitive analysis. At Cornell, he has received the Cornell-Tech Best Professor Award as well as the Johnson School's Apple Award given by the graduating class annually to the faculty member who has had the most impact on them in the classroom. In 2016, Ahuja received the BPS Wiley Outstanding Educator Award for his lifetime teaching contributions. This award is given to one faculty member across the world every year by the Strategy Division of the Academy of Management. In 2011, Bloomberg BusinessWeek ranked Ahuja number two in its listing of the Most Popular Professors in the United States in its Popularity Issue naming the market leaders in various business, product, and cultural categories. As a doctoral advisor, he has trained many students who are now faculty at some of the best institutions across the world.

Selected Publications

• Ahuja, Gautam; Capron, Laurence; Lenox, Michael; Yao, Dennis. "Strategy and the Institutional Envelope"Strategy Science. 3.2 (2018): ii-x
• Ahuja, Gautam; Novelli, Elena. "Redirecting Research Efforts on the Diversification Performance Linkage: The Search for Synergy"Academy of Management Annals. 11.1 (2017): 342-390
• Ahuja, Gautam; Novelli, E. "Activity Overinvestment: The Case of R&D"Journal of Management. 43.8 (2017): 2456-2468
• Ahuja, Gautam; Novelli, Elena. "Incumbent Responses to an Entrant with a New Business Model: Resource Co-Deployment and Resource Re-Deployment Strategies"Resource Redeployment and Corporate Strategy, Ed. Timothy Folta, Ed. Constance Helfat, Ed. Samina Karim. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 35 (2016): 125-153
• Ahuja, Gautam; Lampert, Curba; Tandon, Vivek. "Paradigm-Changing vs. Paradigm-Deepening Innovation: How Firm Scope Influences Firm Technological Response to Shocks"Organization Science. 25.3 (2014): 653-669
• Ahuja, Gautam; Lampert, Curba; Novelli, Elena. "The Second Face of Appropriability: Generative Appropriability and Its Determinants"Academy of Management Review. 38.2 (2013): 249-269
• Ahuja, Gautam; Soda, Giuseppe; Zaheer, Akbar. "The Genesis and Dynamics of Organizational Networks"Organization Science. 23.2 (2012): 434-448
• Ahuja, Gautam; Yayavaram, Sai. "Explaining Influence Rents: The Case for an Institutions-Based View of Strategy"Organization Science. 22.6 (2011): 1631-1652
• Polidoro Jr, Francisco; Ahuja, Gautam; Mitchell, Will. "When the Social Structure Overshadows Competitive Incentives: The Effects of Network Embeddedness on Joint Venture Dissolution"Academy of Management Journal. 54.1 (2011): 203-223
• Ahuja, Gautam; Polidoro Jr, Francisco; Mitchell, Will. "Structural Homophily or Social Asymmetry? The Formation of Alliances by Poorly Embedded Firms"Strategic Management Journal. 30.9 (2009): 941-958

Awards and Honors

• TIM Distinguished Scholar (Technology and Innovation Management) (2019) Academy of Management
• BPS Wiley Outstanding Educator Award (2016) Academy of Management, BPS Division
• Cornell Tech Faculty Teaching Award (2019) Cornell-Tech
• SMS Foundation Scholar (2016) Strategic Management Society, Knowledge & Innovation IG
• JGSM Apple Teaching Award, Class of 2019 (2019) Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management

Recent Courses

• NBAW 5900 - Advanced Strategic Analysis
• NBAY 5795 - Advanced Strategic Analysis
• NBAE 5900 - Advanced Strategic Analysis
• NRE 5420 - PhD Seminar in Strategy
• NBA 6050 - Strategy Formulation and Competitive Analysis

Academic Degrees

• PhD University of Michigan, 1996
• MBA University of Michigan, 1994
• MA University of Michigan, 1994
• MBA Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, 1986
• BA St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi, 1984