Community Profile

Vijay Govindarajan, Coxe Distinguished Professor, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, USA
Vijay Govindarajan
Coxe Distinguished Professor
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, USA

Vijay (VG) is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation. He is a Coxe Distinguished Professor at the world-renowned Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

He was the first Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric. He worked with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt to write 'How GE is Disrupting Itself', the Harvard Business Review article that pioneered the concept of reverse innovation – any innovation that is adopted first in the developing world.
Harvard Business Review rated reverse innovation as one of the ten big ideas of the decade.

He has been identified as a leading management thinker by influential publications including: Outstanding Faculty, named by BusinessWeek in its Guide to Best B-Schools; Top Ten Business School Professor in Corporate Executive Education, named by BusinessWeek; Top Five Most Respected Executive Coach on Strategy, rated by Forbes; Top 50 Management Thinker, named by The Times; Rising Super Star, cited by The Economist; Outstanding Teacher of the Year, voted by MBA students.

Prior to joining the faculty at Tuck, VG was on the faculties of Harvard Business School, INSEAD (Fontainebleau) and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad, India).

The recipient of numerous awards for excellence in research, Govindarajan was inducted into the Academy of Management Journals’ Hall of Fame, and ranked by Management International Review as one of the Top 20 North American Superstars for research in strategy and organisation. One of his papers was recognized as one of the ten most-often cited articles in the entire 40-year history of Academy of Management Journal.

VG is a rare faculty who has published more than ten articles in the top academic journals (Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal) and more than ten articles in prestigious practitioner journals including several best-selling Harvard Business Review articles. He has published nine books, including international best sellers Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators and The Other Side of Innovation.

VG works with CEOs and top management teams in Global Fortune 500 firms to discuss, challenge, and escalate their thinking about strategy. He has worked with more than 25% of the Fortune 500 corporations including: Boeing, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Deere, FedEx, GE, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, J.P. Morgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, New York Times, Procter & Gamble, Sony, and Wal-Mart. He is a regular keynote speaker in CEO Forums and major conferences including the World Innovation Forum, BusinessWeek CEO Forum, World Business Forum, and World Economic Forum at Davos.

VG received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School and was awarded the Robert Bowne Prize for the best thesis proposal. He also received his MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School where he was included in the Dean’s Honor List. Prior to this, VG received his Chartered Accountancy degree in India where he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal for obtaining the first rank nationwide.

VG was ranked 5th in the 2013 Thinkers50, the definitive listing of the world's top 50 business thinkers. He also won the Thinkers50 2011 Breakthrough Idea Award.

Areas of Interest

- Globalisation
- Innovation
- Strategy
- Strategy Execution