David Teece was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame today, joining management greats Peter Drucker, Clay Christenson, Michael Porter, and his long-time collaborator Ikujiro Nonaka, PhD 82.
London-based Thinkers50 recognizes distinguished thinkers who have made outstanding contributions to the knowledge of management. Teece will be recognized during a virtual induction event on September 18, 2020.
Teece, the Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business and Faculty Director of the Tusher Center for The Management of Intellectual Capital, focuses on how firms innovate in the global marketplace and how they need to be managed in order to survive in rapidly changing business contexts.
Teece is considered an authority on the theory of firm and strategic management. He coined the term “dynamic capabilities” to describe a business enterprise’s ability to mold assets to respond to changing technologies and markets. His research also spans the economics of technological change, knowledge management, technology transfer, antitrust economics, and innovation.
During the event, Teece described the golden thread throughout his work as a form of entrepreneurial thinking, a mindset of the need to embrace opportunity while being able to manage in a world of deep uncertainty in which you can’t plan the future. “You have to adapt to it and shape it,” he said.
“There is a big school about adaptation and a big school about entrepreneurship, but no one had brought really these two sets of ideas together, and that’s what led to my concept of dynamic capabilities,” he added. Going forward he seeks to bring this thinking to public policy and international development.
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.
View BRG’s news release.