David Teece has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University.
It’s the fifth honorary doctorate for Teece, known for his pioneering work on innovation, technological change, and strategic management.
“David Teece stands at the enviable juncture of outstanding academic achievement and compelling business success, and with much justification describes himself on his website as a ‘scholar entrepreneur,'” said Edinburgh Business School Prof. Heather McGregor, at the laureation ceremony on Nov. 15.
McGregor noted that Teece’s work has received more than 122,000 citations on Google Scholar, with over 100 of his publications having been cited more than 100 times each. “Numbers alone do not do justice to the lasting influence he has had on scholarship in the fields of technological change, strategic management, and intellectual property rights,” McGregor said.
She mentioned in particular his landmark 1986 work on innovation and his 1997 paper that introduced the concept of dynamic capabilities—the idea that the ability of enterprises to react adequately and promptly to external changes requires a combination of abilities.
“The insights and analyses in these papers are now so much part of the fabric of modern managerial thought that they can seem rather obvious today to students beginning their business studies,” she said. “However, a colleague once remarked that David Teece has the gift of stating principles that seem obvious—until you realize that no one has ever stated them before.”
Teece, the Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business at Berkeley Haas, is faculty director of the Tusher Center for The Management of Intellectual Capital. In addition to a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, he holds honorary doctorates from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand; St. Petersburg State University, Russia; Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; and Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland.
In addition to his scholarly work, Teece is the co-founder of the Berkeley Research Group, a global strategic advisory and expert consulting firm with 40 offices and over 1000 employees worldwide. The New Zealand native also holds significant investments in real estate and started a successful winery.