IE Business School

Professor of Strategy / Vice-rector of Research

Marco Giarratana holds a PhD in Economics and Management from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy. He was assistant and associate professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2003-2010), and associate and full professor at Bocconi University in Milan (2011-2016).
His main research interests focus on the role of diversification, product strategies, resources, and performance. Do diversified firms suffer more or less compared to a specialised firm if competition increases? Do they flight or fight when competition increases in a particular market niche? How does this behaviour depend from the type of firm resources?
His second stream of research is related to strategies for Social Business Hybrids; he is studying new strategic business models that could help firms with a strong social connotation to thrive and survive. What are the advantage and the liabilities of a Social Business Hybrid? How could they build up a competitive advantage? What are the strategic actions recommended and the ones to avoid?
At 2017, Prof. Giarratana published 21 ISI Web of Science articles that received more than 300 citations. He accounts for more than 1,000 citations in Google Scholar. He has published in outlets like Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, and Management Science.
Since 2003, Prof Giarratana has taught in different institutions at different levels from bachelors to MBAs. He thinks that classroom is an amazing place to exchange his research outcomes with students’ feedbacks. He believes that strategy means to understand assumptions and theory mechanisms that help the development of a rigorous thinking and fine-tuning of firms’ actions into the real business environment. A good strategy “lies both in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation”.