Dovev Lavie

Dovev Lavie is a Full Professor at the Department of Management & Technology Department at Bocconi University. Before joining Bocconi University in 2017, he served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a Full Professor and Vice Dean for MBA Programs at the Technion. He also held visiting positions at the London Business School, University College London, and BI Norway.

He has extensive experience working with companies in executive corporate training and consulting. Parallel to his academic career, he worked as a consultant, advising companies in the biotechnology, chemicals, cosmetics, healthcare, education, software, computers, and aerospace and defense industries. He delivered strategy-training modules in companies such as Intel and Microsoft, and engaged in field research and consultation in companies such as National Instruments, Cadence Design, Vignette, Unisys, and Johnson & Johnson. He has also designed and directed unique academic programs, such as the Startup MBA program that enables students to start their companies while earning their MBA. He is an invited speaker in various forums, such as the Strategic Management Society and the Academy of Management conferences.

His research focuses on two fundamental questions: how do alliance portfolios evolve? and how does the configuration of these portfolios influence value creation and capture? His research in the information technology sector reveals how technological advancements guide firms' strategic decisions, which in turn determine the composition of partners and the respective nature of alliance relations. He further examines how software firms balance tendencies to explore versus exploit in their alliance portfolios, arguing that absorptive capacity and inertia impose conflicting pressures, but firms balance these tendencies over time and across domains. In subsequent research, he demonstrates how firms balance exploration and exploitation across modes of operation, such as alliances, acquisitions, and internal development, which enhances their performance. He also shows how the interplay of internal resources and network resources of partners contributes to knowledge creation and application in emerging industries, such as nanotechnology. His primary research stream focuses on value creation and capture in alliance portfolios. He contends that in networked industries the nature of relationships matters more than the nature of firms’ resources and that firms can reconfigure their resources following technological changes and by learning from performance feedback. He demonstrates how network resources contribute to firm performance, unless partners enjoy strong bargaining positions. These caveats can be mitigated, however, when the firm facilitates competition among its partners. In related studies, He further reveals how the composition of partners in the alliance portfolio matters, for instance, by considering partners’ countries of origin and strategic and organizational differences. Besides alliance portfolios, he has studied multi-partner alliances, such as the Wi-Fi Alliance, in which firms can benefit by timing their entry to the alliance, deciding about their level of organizational involvement and participating in competing alliances. This research enhances understanding of how alliance portfolios promote value creation and capture and how they balance exploration and exploitation.

He is a Sloan Industry Studies Fellow, a recipient of the Strategic Management Society Emerging Scholar Award, a winner of the Academy of Management Newman Award for Best Paper based on a Dissertation, a recipient of the Academy of Management BPS Distinguished Paper Award, a recipient of the INFORMS Best Dissertation Award, and grant holder from United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation, Israel Science Foundation, the Mack Center for Technological Innovation and CIBER. He has served as an Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Journal and Strategic Management Journal and on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and Strategic Organization. He was elected to the Executive Committee and the Research Committee of the Academy of Management BPS Division, and to multiple roles at the Strategic Management Society, including Program Chair of the Cooperative Strategies Interest Group, Track Director of the Conference Program Committee, and initiator and Co-Chair of the Special Conference in Tel-Aviv. In addition, he has served on the Organizing Committee and Advisory Committee of the Israel Strategy Conference (ISC), which he co-founded. His research has been published in top journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Management, Strategic Organization, and Academy of Management Annals, among other outlets, and noted in the business press, such as by the Wall Street Journal.

Dovev received his PhD in Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. He also holds an MA in Managerial Science and Applied Economics from Wharton (2002), as well as an MSc in Business Administration (1998), a BA in Economics and Management (1996), and a BSc in Industrial Engineering and Management (1996) from the Technion. He enjoys travel, classical music and poetry writing.