Faculty & Research
Gary P. Pisano

Gary P. Pisano

Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration
Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotions and Tenure

Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration
Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotions and Tenure

Technology and Operations Management
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Gary P. Pisano
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Featured Work Publications Research Summary Awards & Honors

Gary Pisano is the Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School where he currently serves as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1988. 

Over the course of his career, Pisano has explored fundamental questions about how organizations innovate, learn, compete, and grow.   His research and consulting have spanned a broad range of industries including aerospace, automobiles, apparel, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, entertainment, financial services, semiconductors, software, specialty chemicals, and web services.  

Pisano has published over 100 scholarly articles and case studies on such topics as technology and operations strategy, competitive strategy, intellectual property, the management of innovation, organizational learning, commercializing science, business model design and innovation, global competitiveness, and corporate growth.   His co-authored article “Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management” (Strategic Management Journal, 1997) is one of the most highly cited papers in the field of management over the past two decades and was instrumental in launching a new capability-based framework for strategy.  Pisano has written six books, including his latest, Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation. Throughout his career, Pisano’s work has won numerous awards including, Strategic Management Society’s Best Paper (2003) and Strategy + Business best books (2006, 2019). He is a two-time winner of the McKinsey Award (2009, 2019) for the best article published in Harvard Business Review, and the inaugural winner of the Clayton M. Christensen Prize  (2020) for his work on innovative cultures.   In 2020, he received the Greenhill Distinguished Services Award from the Harvard Business School.

At Harvard, Pisano has taught MBA, executive, and doctoral courses, and has mentored a number of doctoral students.  He has created a new MBA course on corporate growth strategies. He is also the co-creator and co-chair of two new executive programs, “Driving Profitable Growth” and “Strategic Agility for Turbulent Times.”  

In addition to his academic research and teaching, Pisano serves as an advisor to senior leaders at leading companies around the world and has been a director of both public and private company boards.   Professor Pisano currently serves on the board of directors of Axcella Health and Generate Biomedicines.

Professor Pisano received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in economics from Yale. 

Featured Work
Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation
Every company wants to grow, and the most proven way is through innovation. The conventional wisdom is that only disruptive, nimble startups can innovate; once a business gets bigger and more complex corporate arteriosclerosis sets in. Gary Pisano's remarkable research conducted over three decades, and his extraordinary on-the ground experience with big companies and fast-growing ones that have moved beyond the start-up stage, provides new thinking about how the scale of bigger companies can be leveraged for advantage in innovation.

He begins with the simply reality that bigger companies are, well, different. Demanding that they "be like Uber" is no more realistic than commanding your dog to speak French. Bigger companies are complex. They need to sustain revenue streams from existing businesses, and deal with Wall Street's demands. These organizations require a different set of management practices and approaches--a discipline focused on the strategies, systems and culture for taking their companies to the next level. Big can be beautiful, but it requires creative construction by leaders to avoid the creative destruction that is all-too-often the fate of too many.
Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance

For years—even decades—in response to intensifying global competition, American companies decided to outsource their manufacturing operations in order to reduce costs. But we are now seeing the alarming long-term effect of those choices: in many cases, once manufacturing capabilities go away, so does much of the ability to innovate and compete. Manufacturing, it turns out, really matters in an innovation-driven economy. In Producing Prosperity, Harvard Business School professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih show the disastrous consequences of years of poor sourcing decisions and underinvestment in manufacturing capabilities. They reveal how today's undervalued manufacturing operations often hold the seeds of tomorrow's innovative new products, arguing that companies must reinvest in new product and process development in the U.S. industrial sector.

Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech

Why has the biotechnology industry failed to perform up to expectations despite all its promise? In Science Business, Professor Gary Pisano answers this question by providing an incisive critique of the industry. Pisano not only reveals the underlying causes of biotech's problems; he offers the most sophisticated analysis yet on how the industry works. And he provides clear prescriptions for companies, investors, and policymakers seeking ways to improve the industry's performance. The payoff? Valuable improvements in health care and a shinier future for human well-being. Named Best Biotech Book in 2007 by strategy+business.

Books
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
  • Pisano, Gary P. "Pharmaceutical Biotechnology." In Technological Innovation & Economic Performance, edited by Benn Steil, David G. Victor, and Richard R. Nelson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. View Details
  • Edmondson, Amy C., Richard Bohmer, and Gary Pisano. "Learning New Technical and Interpersonal Routines in Operating Room Teams: The Case of Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery." In Research on Managing Groups and Teams: Technology. Vol. 3, edited by B. Mannix, M. Neale, and T. Grifith, 29–51. Stamford: JAI Press, 2000. View Details
  • Pisano, Gary P. "In Search of Dynamic Capabilities: The Origins of R&D Competence in Biopharmaceuticals." Chap. 5 in The Nature and Dynamics of Organizational Capabilities, edited by Giovanni Dosi, Richard Nelson, and Sidney Winter, 129–154. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. View Details
  • Pisano, Gary P., Amy Shuen, and David Teece. "Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management." In The Nature and Dynamics of Organizational Capabilities, edited by Giovanni Dosi, Richard Nelson, and Sidney Winter. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. View Details
  • Henderson, Rebecca, Gary P. Pisano, and Luigi Orsenigo. "The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Revolution in Molecular Biology: Interactions Among Scientific, Institutional, and Organizational Change." In Sources of Industrial Leadership: Studies of Seven Industries, edited by David Mowery and Richard Nelson. Cambridge University Press, 1999. View Details
  • Ghemawat, Pankaj, and Gary P. Pisano. "Building and Sustaining Success." In Strategy and the Business Landscape, by Pankaj Ghemawat. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1999. View Details
  • Pisano, Gary P., and Paul Mang. "Collaborative Product Development and the Market for Know-How: Strategies and Structures in the Biotechnology Industry." In Research on Technological Innovation, Management, and Policy. Vol. 4, edited by Richard S. Rosenbloom and Robert A. Burgelman. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1989. View Details
  • Pisano, Gary P., and David Teece. "Collaborative Arrangements and Global Technology Strategy: Some Evidence from the Telecommunications Equipment Industry." In Research on Technological Innovation, Management, and Policy. Vol. 4, edited by Richard S. Rosenbloom and Robert A. Burgelman. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1989. View Details
  • Pisano, Gary P., Michael Russo, and David Teece. "Joint Ventures and Collaborative Arrangements in the Telecommunications Equipment Industry." In International Collaborative Ventures in U.S. Manufacturing, edited by David Mowery. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1988. View Details
  • Pisano, Gary P., W. Shan, and David Teece. "Joint Ventures and Collaboration in the Biotechnology Industry." In International Collaborative Ventures in U.S. Manufacturing, edited by David Mowery. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1988. View Details
Working Papers
Cases and Teaching Materials
Presentations
  • Edmondson, Amy C., Ann Winslow, Richard Bohmer, and Gary P. Pisano. "Different Patterns of Performance improvement for explicit and tacit knowledge: An empirical test." . View Details
  • Pisano, Gary P. "The Biomedical Revolution: From Promise to Reality." Paper presented at the HBS Healthcare Industry Alumni Conference, November 15, 2002. View Details
Other Publications and Materials
Research Summary
International Competitiveness in High Technology and Science Based Sectors

This research project examines shifts in competitive capabilities of companies and countries in high technology and science based businesses.  It is particularly concerned with the potential loss of such capabilities in various industrial sectors in the US.  This research conducted in collaboration with Professor Willy Shih of Harvard Business School seeks to understand how management behavior and decisions and institutional factors shape investments in scientific and technological capability.  This project builds upon our earlier work ("Restoring American Competitiveness" Harvad Business Review, July-August 2009) where we argued that the US economy was losing its competitive edge innovation due to the growth in outsourcing of manufacturing and increasingly of R&D.  The current research project is aimed at deepening our understanding of such issues as:

1. How does location, and in particular, geographic proximity to suppliers or customers, matter to innovative capabilities?  

2. What role does manufacturing competence play in a firm's capacity for innovation?  When does outsourcing of manufacturing damage a firm's ability to innovate?

3.  How do institutional factors (e.g. capital market, corporate governance,  immigration policies, government funding of R&D, etc.) influence innovation performance? 

This results from this research will be published in a book (expectation 2011).  

Understanding the Drivers and Limits of Corporate Growth

Perhaps no issues garners more attention of senior executives and Boards of Directors than growth.  Yet, the underlying factors shaping and limiting corporate growth are poorly understood.  Empirically, we know that some corporations grow much faster than others over long periods of time. Some appear to have done a better jobg managing growth than others.  But there is little consensus, and even less evidence, concerning the strategies companies can adopt to maintain desired growth rates.  This research examines the underlying economics of corporate growth, and seeks to shed light on some issues as:

1. Are their limits to the growth of organizations, and, if so, what governs those limits?

2. Why do some firms grow faster (and longer) than others?   

3. Are some growth strategies more effective than others?  Are some organizational and governance structures more conducive to sustained growth than others? 

 

This research is currently undertaken through a series of case studies on specific companies. The case study research will be supplemented with larger scale empirical analysis from growth patterns of US and European companies.

Awards & Honors
First Place winner of the McKinsey Award with Willy C. Shih for the best article in the Harvard Business Review during 2009 for the paper "Restoring American Competitiveness."
Winner of the 2003 Strategic Management Journal Best Paper Prize for "Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management" (with David Teece and Amy Shuen, August 1997).
Received the 2012 Emerald Management Reviews Citation of Excellence Award for "Which Kind of Collaboration Is Right for You?" with Roberto Verganti (Harvard Business Review, December 2008).
Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation was selected by Strategy+Business as one of the Best Business Books on Strategy in 2019.
Winner of the 2019 McKinsey Award for the best article in Harvard Business Review for "The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures" (January–February 2019).
Winner of the first Clayton M. Christensen Prize in 2020 for his Harvard Business Review article “The Hard Truth about Innovative Cultures” (January–February 2019).
Received the 2020 Robert F. Greenhill Service Award for continued outstanding contributions to the HBS community.
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