prof. dr. Ben M. Bensaou

About Ben M. Bensaou

Ben M. Bensaou is a Professor of Technology Management and of Asian Business and Comparative Management at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School for 1998-1999 and a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School of Management for 2007-2008.

He holds a PhD in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, USA, an MA in Management Science from Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan, a Diplôme d’Ingénieur (MS) in Civil Engineering and a DEA in Mechanical Engineering from respectively the Ecole Nationale des TPE, Lyon and the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, two Grandes Ecoles in France.

His research and teaching activities focus on: (1) how to build innovative organizations and how to enhance an organization's innovation capability, (2) Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Innovation implementation and roll out processes across the whole organization, (3) how to build social capital within firms, (4) new forms of organizations, in particular networked corporations, strategic alliances, joint ventures and value-adding partnerships, and (5) the impact of information technology on innovation. Professor Bensaou addresses these issues from an international comparative perspective, with a special focus on Japanese organizations. Professor Bensaou's research on buyer-supplier relations in the U.S. and Japanese auto industries won him the best doctoral dissertation in the field of information systems and a finalist award for the Free Press Award for outstanding dissertation research in the field of business policy and strategy. His cases on the Circus Industry won the 2006 and 2008 ECCH Best Case Awards in Strategy (with Kim & Mauborgne). His publications include papers in Management Science, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, book chapters and conference proceedings. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly and MISQ Executive. He has been listed in the Who’s Who in the World since 1998.

He has been consulting for Asian, European and US corporations since 1993. At INSEAD, Professor Bensaou developed two new MBA courses: 'Managing Networked Organizations' and 'Understanding Japanese Business'. He also teaches courses on Competitive Strategy, Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Innovation, Information Technology and Comparative Management (in English and French). He was a Visiting Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo where he taught his course on 'Information Technology and Corporate Transformation.' He has also been teaching (in Japanese) in Executive Programs at Keio Business School, Tokyo, Japan.

Professor Bensaou grew up in France. He has also lived and was educated in Japan. He and his wife Masako live in Fontainebleau, with their younger son Lennon (14). Their two elder sons Sophian (21) and Alexis (19) have left the family nest to pursue their college education in Philadelphia and New York.