Ravi Madhavan is a Professor of Business Administration and the Alcoa Foundation International Faculty Fellow at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business. He is also the former director of the school’s International Business Center. Ravi earned his PhD in strategic management at the University of Pittsburgh in 1996, and joined the Katz faculty in 2001 after serving on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 1995 to 2001. Prior to getting his PhD, he spent eight years as a manager in the information technology industry, gaining experience in consulting, executive education, and marketing.
Ravi’s research and teaching interests focus on the Recombinant Enterprise in a Networked World: Alliances, M&A and Networks as drivers of enterprise evolution. Ravi has published several studies of how such enterprise recombination reshapes the global competitive context. Empirical contexts of primary interest have been steel and venture capital, two very dissimilar industries that have both been relatively slow to globalize. New projects explore enterprise recombination in three up-to-date settings: New models of growth (Key message: Cross-sector networks and recombinant innovation will be critical success drivers as the world responds to growth challenges stemming from global superindustrialization and urbanization,) Age of surprises (Key message: Connected systems are more volatile. However, connectedness is also a source of resilience); and Complex capabilities (Key message: Against the background of China’s entry into apex systems integration industries such as nuclear power and large commercial aircraft, we need to better understand the strategic and organizational features of systems integration enterprises.)
Ravi has published papers in premier journals including Academy of Management Review, Journal of International Business Studies, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, and Journal of Marketing. His dissertation, “Strategic Flexibility in the Global Steel Industry: The Role of Interfirm Linkages,” was a finalist in the Dissertation Award Competition of the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management. He has received Best Paper Awards from the American Marketing Association, as well as from the Eastern Academy of Management and presented papers at professional conferences and workshops both in the United States and internationally. He has also authored or coauthored several cases, reports, teaching notes, and book chapters.
Among the organizations that have supported his research are the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Posco Research Institute, the Center for Human Resource Management at the University of Illinois, the Illinois Center for International Business Education and Research, the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and the International Business Center at the University of Pittsburgh.