COMMUNITY PROFILE

Bala Chakravarthy

Professor of Strategy and International Management

IMD, Switzerland

Bala Chakravarthy is Professor of Strategy and International Management. He held the Shell Chair in Sustainable Business Growth at IMD from 2003 to 2012.

Bala’s research, teaching and consulting interests cover three related areas: managing the global enterprise (with a focus on companies from BRIC countries), strategy processes for sustainable business growth, and mastering leadership dilemmas.

He has published four books, several case studies and numerous articles on these topics in top journals. His latest book, Profit or Growth?: Why you don’t have to choose, was published in 2007 by Wharton School Publishing. Bala is a mechanical engineer by training and worked as an executive at Tata Motors in his native India before taking his doctorate at the Harvard Business School. He has taught at the Wharton School and INSEAD, where he was the director of its corporate renewal initiative from 1993-94.

Most recently, Bala held the Edson Spencer Chair in Technological Leadership at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. He is an active top management consultant and executive education specialist. He has worked with a number of leading multinationals around the world and has won numerous awards for excellence in teaching throughout his career.

Bala has served or currently serves on the editorial boards of the Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Long Range Planning Journal and Strategy and Leadership. He is an inaugural Fellow of the International Strategic Management Society (SMS). He also served as a member of the Board of Directors of that society from 1999-2004.

Areas of Interest

- Strategy and International Management
- Managing the global enterprise (with a focus on companies from BRIC countries)
- Strategy processes for sustainable business growth
- Mastering leadership dilemmas