Richard P. Rumelt
My teaching, research, and consulting focus on competitive strategy and the nature of competitive advantage. To visit my academic home page, click here.
I am the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy–The Difference and Why It Matters, forthcoming in July 2011 from The Crown Publishing Group (Random House). I am also a co-author of Fundamental Issues in Strategy–A Research Agenda and the author of Strategy, Structure, and Economic Performance.
In addition to my academic work, I have been a consultant to numerous firms, non-profit organizations, the Department of Defense, and several governments.
I earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. During 1963-65 I worked as a systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. I studied decision sciences and corporate strategy at the Harvard Business School, receiving my doctorate in 1972.
Between 1972 and 1976 I was on the faculty of the Harvard Business School, with two of those years spent on assignment to found the Harvard-sponsored Iran Center for Management Studies (ICMS).
In 1976 I joined the UCLA faculty. During 1992-96 I was on long-term leave from UCLA, serving on the faculty at INSEAD, France. At INSEAD, I headed the Corporate Renewal Initiative, a research/intervention center devoted to the study and practice of corporate transformation.
I was a founding member of the Strategic Management Society and served as its president in 1995-98.
I am an avid skier and mountain climber and my second home in Santa Fe New Mexico gives me access to wonderful unspoiled country. I am married to Kate who was once a strategy professor but is today a prize-winning fabric artist specializing in three-dimensional geometric forms.