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Yves L. Doz

Emeritus Professor of Strategic Management

Biography

In recognition of his contribution to the field of management, Professor Doz is one of a small handful of scholars to have been elected by their peers as a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and the Academy of International Business.

Throughout his career, Professor Doz has endeavoured to act as a valuable bridge between management practice and academic research. He began his working life in a corporate context, working on international helicopter development programs, before moving into academia, first at HEC, then Harvard Business School, and finally joining the faculty of INSEAD in 1980. As a public acknowledgement of his bridging role, Professor Doz was the first recipient of the CK Prahalad Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award, by the Strategic Management Society in 2011.

The “red-thread” in his research, teaching and consulting work over the decades, is a concern with helping companies reach good strategic decisions when facing contradictory demands: For example, local vs. global pressures in multinational firms, collaboration vs competition between alliance partners, dispersed knowledge search vs co-location in fostering innovation, and strategic commitment vs. agility in fast-changing industries.

Professor Doz has been at the forefront of conceptualizing and proposing a number of widely adopted management practices over the years, from his early work on reconciling global integration and local responsiveness in multinational companies with CK Prahalad to his conceptualisation of the enablers of Strategic Agility (his research findings on this are summarized in the book Fast Strategy, published in 2008 by Wharton Business Press and co-authored with Mikko Kosonen).

Professor Doz has authored several other books, most recently: Ringtone: Exploring the Rise and Fall of Nokia in Mobile Phones, which won the much coveted George S. Terry Award from the Academy of Management “for best book on management” in 2018 (published by Oxford University Press and co-authored with Keeley Wilson). He is also the author of numerous articles, both academic and managerial.

He has acted as an advisor to the top management of many companies, been a keynote speaker at countless conferences and corporate events and, has taught programmes at business schools around the world including Stanford GSB, Seoul National University and both Aoyama and Keio in Japan at. At INSEAD he created and for many years directed a senior executive seminar on strategic alliances and has taught numerous company-specific programs.

Professor Doz is currently working on research into making corporate governance more strategic; further work on agility; and on building and governing multi-party alliances and ecosystems.

Professor Doz has two grown-up children and two grandsons.

Latest posts

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Strategy

Boeing’s Tragedy: The Fall of an American Icon

Y. Doz, K. Wilson

The recent Alaska Airlines incident is just the latest in a string of sometimes tragic mishaps by the aircraft manufacturer – where did it all go wrong?

Strategy

Regrowing Local Roots

Yves Doz

Why and how to reinvent multinational management skills

Strategy

How LLMs Can Change the Way We Strategise

E. Ilseven, Y. Doz

LLMs have notable limitations when it comes to strategy formulation, but deliberately imperfect prompts can challenge conventional thinking.

Strategy

The Importance of Strategic Minds

Y. Doz, K. Wilson

Directors and CEOs need to develop specific traits to effectively navigate strategic issues and help shape the future of companies.
1 comment

Strategy

The Fundamentals of Transforming from Matrix to Agile

Y. Doz, M. Guadalupe

Nothing less than an evolution of strategy, structure, processes, people and technology will do.
3 comments

Strategy

Not Everyone Can Be Agile

Y. Doz, M. Guadalupe

An essential checklist for Agile aspirants.
2 comments

Strategy

Will Apple Be the Next Nokia?

Amid a stunning slowdown in smartphone sales, what does the future hold for Apple and its global tech rivals?
1 comment

Strategy

Why Successful Companies Usually Fail

Y. Doz, K. Wilson

The dynamics of corporate collapse are caused by three phenomena.
5 comments

Strategy

Spanning the Boundaries That Limit Organisational Innovativeness

Yves L. Doz

Managers must bridge across their firms’ geographic, cultural and institutional diversity to gain a unique competitive advantage.

Strategy

The Strategic Decisions That Caused Nokia’s Failure

Yves L. Doz

The moves that led to Nokia’s decline paint a cautionary tale for successful firms.
16 comments

Entrepreneurship

China: Forging a New Path to Global Innovation

Y. Doz, K. Wilson

The size and nature of the Chinese domestic market and the rapid pace of the country’s internationalisation are pushing Chinese firms on a very different trajectory to globalised innovation.
1 comment

Economics & Finance

Building Ecosystem Alliances

Yves L. Doz

The CEO of the GAVI Alliance speaks to INSEAD professor Yves Doz on increasing access to vaccinations in the developing world.