ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Both of us grew up in Germany but pursued (for Germans) uncommon education paths. After receiving a diplom in business information technology at the University of Mannheim, Christian studied at INSEAD in France to receive his PhD in management. Similarly, after completing German high school, Nicolaj went to Stanford University as an undergraduate, receiving a BA in economics, and then on to Harvard, studying under Michael Porter, to receive a PhD in business economics. We both joined the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 as faculty members, Christian in the Operations, Information and Decisions Department and Nicolaj in the Management Department. Over time, we worked ourselves up the ranks and both now hold endowed chairs. Christian is the Andrew M. Heller Professor and also holds a faculty appointment in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. Nicolaj is the David M. Knott Professor and a former department chair of Wharton’s Management Department.
Our research has appeared in many of the leading academic journals in our fields—Christian focusing on operations management and innovation management, and Nicolaj on strategy and organizational design—including Management Science, the Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and the New England Journal of Medicine. We are also members of the editorial boards of key academic journals. Christian is the coauthor of Matching Supply with Demand, a widely used textbook in operations management, and of Innovation Tournaments, a guide for creating and selecting exceptional opportunities within organizations.
Both of us very much enjoy teaching in our MBA and executive MBA programs. Together, we have won more than fifty teaching awards in the Wharton classroom. One key perk of working at a top business school is the opportunity to present our work in front of many executive audiences. Nicolaj serves as academic director at Wharton Executive Education for two open-enrollment courses on strategy (Creating and Implementing Strategy for Competitive Advantage and Effective Execution of Organizational Strategy), while Christian is academic director for a program on innovation management (Mastering Innovation: From Idea to Value Creation). We have researched with and consulted for more than one hundred different organizations, from small startups to Fortune 500 companies.
To achieve broader reach in our teaching efforts, both of us have created online courses as well. Christian was the first to launch a massive open online course (MOOC) in business on Coursera. By now, close to one million students have enrolled in his Introduction to Operations Management course, making this one of the largest online courses. Nicolaj is offering an online course titled Business Strategy from Wharton: Competitive Advantage and the course Strategic Management: Competitive and Corporate Strategy, which is part of Wharton’s online certificate on leadership and management.
Another way in which we have attempted to broaden our reach and have the opportunity to learn is by hosting radio shows on Wharton’s Sirius XM channel. Christian hosts the show Work of Tomorrow, highlighting how technological advances affect the daily operations of many firms, while Nicolaj cohosts Mastering Innovation, which addresses how organizations foster innovation that keeps them going strong year after year.
Lastly, both of us are codirectors of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at Wharton. The Mack Institute’s role is to bridge academic research and the world of practice by sponsoring research, conducting conferences, and connecting scholars, business leaders, and students. It was through our work with executive audiences in the classroom and through the Mack Institute that we became inspired to write this book. We observed that firms were connecting to customers in very different ways and were creating new connections between previously unconnected parties in the marketplace. It has been an amazing journey to write this book, allowing us to clarify our thinking and helping others to make more sense of the business world they live in. However, to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, we see this book certainly not as the end but only as the end of the beginning of our research into connected strategies. It is an exciting phenomenon that only has just started. Please stay in touch via our website, connected-strategy.com, as our thinking evolves on this subject.
We wouldn’t have been able to write this book without the support of many. First of all, we’d like to thank all our MBA and WEMBA students and Executive Education participants at Wharton who over the years have pushed our thinking and forced us to reevaluate how firms create and sustain competitive advantage. The second big thanks goes to Melinda Merino from Harvard Business Review Press, who believed in our project and has given us tremendously helpful feedback throughout the writing and publication process.
We received very valuable research assistance from Matthew Dabaco, Sunil Gottumukkala, Bryan Hong, Jeni Incontro, Ajay Jagannath, Pragna Kolli, Tony Li, Peter Mahon, Josh McLane, Venkat Mendu, Nikhil Nayak, Rohith Ramkumar, Alexandre Teixeira, and Hicham Zahr. Thanks also to four anonymous reviewers who had many helpful suggestions. We are very much indebted to Arik Anderson, Leah Belsky, Carter Cleveland, Justin Dawe, Steven Dominguez, Nick Franklin, John Hass, Josh Hix, Jeff Hurst, Stephan Laster, Sarah Mastrorocco, Eric Merz, Jennifer Neumaier, Florian Reuter, Sonesh Shah, Garth Sutherland, Rambabu Vallabhajosula, Greg Wallace, and Tom Wang for discussing their connected strategies with us. Very valuable editorial help was provided by Angie Basiouny, Greg Bates, Michelle Eckert, and Katherine Fitz-Henry, and Deborah Watson who performed some last-minute heroics. Special thanks are due to Adam Grant, who has graciously shared with us his extensive learnings concerning the publishing experience. Finally, we are very grateful to the Wharton School and the Mack Institute for Innovation Management for financial support.