Ravi Ramamurti

Ravi Ramamurti is an expert on strategy and innovation in emerging markets. At Northeastern U., he holds the title of University Distinguished Professor, which is the highest honor bestowed on faculty members. Earlier he was the D’Amore-McKim School of Business Distinguished Professor of International Business & Strategy. He founded and heads the university’s Center for Emerging Markets. For over 35 years, he has studied the strategies of firms in and from emerging markets.

Professor Ramamurti obtained his BSC (Physics) from St. Stephen’s College, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, where he received the Gold Medal for graduating at the top of his class, and his doctorate from Harvard Business School, where he was awarded the HBS Dissertation Fellowship.

In recognition of his “outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business” Ramamurti was elected a Fellow of the Academy of International Business in 2008. A survey ranked him in the top 1% of all scholars in the field of international business. He was elected by members of the Academy of Management to serve on the board of its International Management Division (2003-08). In 2017, he was recognized by Global Awards (London) as the “most outstanding thinker on strategy and innovation in emerging markets in the world.”

Ravi has been a visiting professor at Harvard Business School in the Business-Government-and-International-Economy area, at the Wharton School (U. of Pennsylvania), and at MIT-Sloan School. He has also been a visiting professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, CEIBS Shanghai, and IMD-Switzerland. He is a six-time winner of the ADL Prize for Professor of the Year based on his teaching.

Ravi has done research and consulting with firms and governments in more than 20 emerging markets, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, and the UAE. He has also been an adviser to the United Nations, USAID, and Fulbright, and was principal adviser the World Bank’s board on privatization and to The Economist group for its online courses on emerging markets.

Ravi has done pioneering work on the strategies of multinationals from emerging markets, and how Western multinationals should respond to these new rivals. He has published six books in this area, including three with Cambridge University Press. His article on “reverse innovation” with Vijay Govindarajan (VG) won the 2012 EBS prize for Best Article on Innovation Management, and was the most downloaded article published in Global Strategy Journal. In 2017, it won the inaugural prize for the Best Article published in that journal. Related work on healthcare appeared as “Delivering World-Class Healthcare Affordably,” in Harvard Business Rev. (Nov 2013).

Ramamurti has published several articles in leading academic journals, such as the Academy of Management Review, Global Strategy Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, and Management Science, and also in practitioner journals, such as California Management Review and Harvard Business Review.

Ramamurti's consulting clients have included well-known public and private firms in the US and abroad. He is a frequent keynote speaker in academic and practitioner meetings and is quoted regularly in the business press.