Dr. Gawer is an Assistant Professor and consultant. She is internationally recognized as an expert and thought leader in high-tech strategy. Her professional passion and focus for the past decade have zoomed on the intersection of business strategy and innovation.
An award-winning Assistant Professor at Imperial College Business School, London, Dr. Gawer teaches business strategy and management of technological innovation to Executive MBAs and full-time MBAs. She also conducts Executive Education workshops and selectively consults.
Dr. Gawer's pioneering research on platform leadership and ecosystem dynamics, conducted and refined over more than 10 years, has led to a new understanding of the rules of high-tech industries, ranging from computers and telecoms to electronics. Her activities in research, teaching, and consulting, continuously feed each other to facilitate the development of ideas, test their applicability and their limits, and push the frontier of knowledge in this area. Through continuing research and a growing portfolio of consulting and executive education engagements in a variety of industries, Dr. Gawer has developed unique and practical insights on the formulation and implementation of platform leadership strategies.
Dr. Gawer’s first book, derived from her MIT PhD thesis, Platform Leadership: How Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco Drive Industry Innovation (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), co-authored with MIT Prof. M Cusumano, has become a reference in business and academia, and has had an impact on top-management thinking worldwide. It explained how Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Palm and others have orchestrated ecosystem innovation to support their products - and in the process, established dominant market positions. A Japanese translation was published in 2005.
Dr. Gawer continues to develop research and publish in the area of platforms which is experiencing a surge of interest from business leaders, managers, and policy makers, -- as well as from researchers worldwide from a variety of disciplines. She is currently engaged in coordinating an ambitious international research program aimed at facilitating and developing platform research as well as the diffusion of insights to business leaders, with a new book (Platforms, Markets and Innovation, Ed. A. Gawer, 2009, Edward Elgar Publisher) comprising contributions from 13 international teams of researchers).
Dr. Gawer’s background prepared her to understand and contribute to this area. After a first career in telecoms/defence, she re-trained in management, economics, organizational dynamics and innovation studies to obtain a PhD in Management of Technological Innovation from MIT Sloan. Her original training was in engineering /maths/ physics (“Ingenieur des Mines”, France, and a “Maitrise” in Applied Maths (U of Paris 6, France), complemented by an MSc in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University. She also plays piano and is a devoted wife and mother. Whether the latter help her understand and explain platform strategies remains to be seen, but probably contributes to her drive, and avowed hope to have a chance to keep focusing on important issues.
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