The Merger: Tech & Innovation

Professor Gautam Ahuja distinguishes between two different types of innovations for a firm, generative appropriability and primary appropriability. He then discusses how a firm can better organize itself to encourage innovation, through investments in fundamental or basic research and, counterintuitively, tighter controls on R&D budgets. Professor Ahuja also discusses what motivated him to leave an attractive job as a regional sales manager, to become a professor and shares some of the challenges that he faced along the way. Gautam Ahuja is the Eleanora and George Landew professor of management and organizations at SC Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University and is an award-winning researcher in the fields of competitive analysis and innovation. Professor Ahuja currently serves as the editor in chief of Organization Science, one of the premier journals in his field. At Johnson, he teaches the popular course Cases in Strategic Management. In 2011, he was ranked the second Most Popular Professor in the United States of America by Bloomberg Business Week and, across his teaching career, he has been selected as the “best professor” by student vote 17 times across MBA, MBA and PhD programs. Links from the Episode at presentvaluepodcast.com Faculty Profile: Gautam Ahuja - Johnson Research Papers: Gautam Ahuja - Google Scholar Meet the Faculty: Gautam Ahuja