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Ron Adner

Biography

Ron Adner is Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Prior to joining Tuck, he was the Akzo-Nobel Fellow of Strategic Management and Associate Professor of Strategy and Management at INSEAD, where he served on the faculty for ten years. Professor Adner’s research and teaching focus on innovation, strategy, and entrepreneurship. His work introduces a new perspective on the relationship between firms, customers, and the broader 'innovation ecosystems' in which they interact to create value.

His academic research has been published in Management Science, the Strategic Management Journal, the Rand Journal of Economics, the Academy of Management Review, Advances in Strategic Management, and in edited book chapters. His managerial articles have been published in the Harvard Business Review, the Sloan Management Review, the California Management Review, Forbes, and the Financial Times. Professor Adner is a speaker, consultant, and executive education instructor to companies around the world. He is an accomplished teacher who has been recognised with INSEAD's Outstanding Teacher award five times (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) and, in 2011, with the Tuck School's inaugural Award for Teaching Excellence for his courses on innovation strategy. His pioneering HBR article "Match Your Innovation Strategy to Your Innovation Ecosystem," is assigned reading in over 40 global MBA programmes.

Professor Adner is a past member of the executive committees of the Business Policy and Strategy division and the Technology and Innovation Management division of the Academy of Management. He is associate editor of Management Science, and has served on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, the Strategic Management Journal, and Strategic Organization. Professor Adner holds a Ph.D. in Management and an M.A. in Applied Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as master's and bachelor's degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Read case studies by Ron here.

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Entrepreneurship

A Sad Lesson in Collaborative Innovation

Ron Adner

The innovator’s quest has been to find the win-win proposition: a great new product that can create differentiated value for consumers while supporting differentiated profits for the producer.

Strategy

The Fuel for Kindle’s Fire: Ecosystem Strategy

Ron Adner

The most viable rival to Apple’s iPad isn’t produced by a traditional hardware firm. Where Samsung, Motorola, Toshiba, HP, RIM and HTC have hardly made a dent in Apple’s dominance, it is online retailer Amazon with its Kindle Fire tablet, that has emerged as the lead contender.

Strategy

Innovation Success: How the Apple iPod Broke all Sony’s Walkman Rules

Ron Adner

In 1978, engineers at Sony successfully married a compact playback device with lightweight headphones to create the prototype for a product that would become a worldwide hit. In 1979, the ‘Walkman’ was introduced in the Japanese market, selling out its entire stock of 30,000 units within the first three months.