Community event: Platform Strategies and Implementation with Michael Cusamano @MIT

This open event is presented by the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship as part of the delta v accelerator. It is open to student entrepreneurs at MIT and beyond.

UPDATE: Please note that the date of this event was originally listed as Thursday, July 14, but the event will actually take place Wednesday, July 13.

Presenter Background:
Michael A. Cusumano is the SMR Distinguished Professor of Management and Deputy Dean at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Previously he held a joint appointment in the School of Engineering. Professor Cusumano specializes in strategy, product development, and entrepreneurship in computer software as well as automobiles and consumer electronics. At MIT, he has recently taught Platform Strategy & Entrepreneurship as well as Strategy & the CEO. During 2016-17, he was on leave as Special Vice President and Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Tokyo University of Science, where he founded the Tokyo Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center and designed a new mid-career Management of Technology curriculum as well as a new business school that merged the Graduate School of Innovation and the School of Management.

Cusumano received a BA degree from Princeton 1976 and a PhD from Harvard in 1984, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Production and Operations Management at the Harvard Business School during 1984-86. He is fluent in Japanese and has lived and worked in Japan for more than eight years, with two Fulbright Fellowships and a Japan Foundation Fellowship for studying at Tokyo University. He has been a Visiting Professor at Imperial College, Tokyo University, Hitotsubashi University, the University of St. Gallen, the University of Maryland, and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He has consulted and lectured for approximately 100 organizations, including Alcatel, Amadeus, AOL, ARM, AT&T, BMC Software, Business Objects, Cisco, Ericsson, Fiat, Ford, Fujitsu, GE, Fidelity, Hitachi, Huawei, i2 Technologies, IBM, Intel, Liberty Mutual, Lucent, Microsoft, Motorola, NASA, NEC, Nokia, NTT Data, Philips, Robert Bosch, Schlumberger, Siemens, Texas Instruments, Toyota, Toshiba, and Verizon. He is currently a director of two publicly listed financial services and technology companies: Orix Corporation in Japan and Ferratum Group in Europe. He is a former director of Patni Computer Systems in India (sold in 2011 for $1.2 billion) and Fixstars Corporation, a Japanese developer of high-performance software applications. He was recently a director of Zylotech, a predictive analytics company operating out of Cambridge, MA. He has served as editor-in-chief and chairman of the MIT Sloan Management Review and writes regularly on Technology Strategy and Management for Communications of the ACM. In 2009, he was named one of the most influential people in technology and IT by Silicon.com.

Cusumano has published 14 books and more than 120 articles and columns. His latest book is The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power (2019, with Annabelle Gawer and David Yoffie). His prior book with David Yoffie, Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs (2015), has been translated into 18 languages and received wide media coverage from CNBC, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, The Economist, The Financial Times, Fast Company, and other media outlets. Other books include Staying Power (2010), based on the 2009 Oxford Clarendon Lectures and named one of the top books of 2011 by Strategy + Business magazine; and The Business of Software (2004), also named one of the best books of the year in Strategy + Business. Microsoft Secrets (1995, with Richard Selby) sold approximately 150,000 copies in 14 languages. Platform Leadership (2002, with Annabelle Gawer) is often considered the first management book to examine the phenomenon of industry-wide platforms and ecosystem-based competition. Competing on Internet Time: Lessons from Netscape and its Battle with Microsoft (1998, with David Yoffie), was named one of the top 10 business books of 1998 by Business Week, and played a central role in the Microsoft anti-trust trial.