Unlocking the Ivory Tower: How Management Research Can Transform Your Business - Softcover

Ball, Eric R.; LiPuma, Joseph A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0988380706 ISBN 13: 9780988380707

Publisher: Kauffman Fellows Press, 2012

Synopsis

Translated into Japanese and published by Keio University Press as a 3-volume set. The Japanese edition features a new introduction for Japanese readers by Dr. Jiro Kokuryo, Vice President for International Affairs and Professor of Policy Studies at Keio University, and leader of the translation team. Management is a discipline that can be learned from study. A large and diverse set of academic management research, often accessible only to academics, has practical, actionable implications to help in managing an organization today.

Unlocking the Ivory Tower addresses the major components of academic business literature: strategy, leadership, entrepreneurship, organizational theory, international business, innovation, and finance. Doctors Ball and LiPuma act as field guides and interpreters, bridging the divide between scholarship and practice, and distilling each research contribution into a brief outline while preserving the message of that thinker. They also provide context regarding how the particular contribution fits into the rest of the field, and how it can be applied in the real world. The result is a rich book that covers a lot of ground and provides a basis for understanding the major schools of thought in primary management fields.

Today’s managers are faced with responsibilities for functional and staff management, as well as developing strategies for growth, leading teams, and staying competitive in evolving industries and markets globally—the range of knowledge and skills required by corporate managers requires the breadth of readily applicable concepts present in this book.

Eric and Joe have helped create, develop, and run organizations. They both have executive experience in finance, mergers and acquisitions, and entrepreneurship in international contexts. Each also has invested time publishing in academic journals and teaching business school students in different countries. These authors live in the middle ground as practical academics.

Unlocking the Ivory Tower is light on anecdotes and heavy on actionable research results, making it an essential reference for both managers and students. This book can serve as an education for those who did not pursue a management degree, a refresher course for those who did, or a way to expand beyond the concepts taught in many MBA programs. In particular, Eric and Joe provide a means for managers to reassess and extend their academic knowledge in the context of their professional experience, and for management students to review the major concepts and put them into context with each other.

Edited by Anna F. Doherty and Leslie F. Peters of Together Editing & Design, www.togetherediting.com.

About this title

About the Author:

Dr. ERIC BALL is general partner of Targhee Ventures and a board member at Glu Mobile. Until May 2016, he served as Chief Financial Officer of C3 IoT in California. From 2005 to 2015, he served as Senior VP and Treasurer of Oracle Corporation and was named as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Finance” in 2011 by the editors of CFO and Treasury & Risk Management magazines. His team raised $52 billion in acquisition financing for Oracle. After studying at the University of Michigan and University of Rochester, Dr. Ball earned a Ph.D. in management from Claremont's Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management; his research in venture capital has been published in the Dr. Ball is also a Kauffman Fellow—a participant in a selective program to groom leaders of the venture capital industry. He has taught at Rochester, Rutgers, and USC’s Marshall School of Business; and has worked at Fortune 500 companies including AT&T, Avery Dennison, Cisco Systems, and Flextronics. He lives in Menlo Park, CA with his wife, Sheryl Axline, and their two sons.

Dr. JOSEPH LIPUMA combines an academic career in business strategy and entrepreneurship with 25 years of professional experience in technology and consulting in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. He serves as Senior Lecturer and Entrepreneurship Curriculum Coordinator at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, in Business Strategy and Innovation. Dr. LiPuma has started businesses in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, and Saudi Arabia and has held executive management and board-level roles at SMEs and multinational companies. He holds an MBA from SUNY Buffalo and a DBA in Strategy and Policy from Boston University; he has taught at both of these schools, Drexel University, St. Joseph’s University, and EMLYON Business School in France, where he was Associate Professor and Director of the International MBA program. Dr. LiPuma's research centers on International Entrepreneurship, and he has been published in leading academic journals including Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, the International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, Journal of Business Research, and Small Business Economics. He consults with companies on international expansion and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with his wife, Mary Roark, and their two sons.

Review:

Too often, academic research lacks relevance to real-world business problems, or its most relevant lessons do not come to the attention of the people who can apply them. Unlocking the Ivory Tower is a valuable bridge between academic findings and the people who can most benefit from them. It delves into a variety of classical and recent works from the major academic fields and critically evaluates their relevance. (The annotated table of contents is an unexpected treat, too, providing an overview of a variety of important concepts.) Along the way, Ball and LiPuma also educate the reader about the evolution of each field, providing a rare—and fun—dose of intellectual history. –Noam Wasserman, Harvard Business School, author of The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

Ideas truly make the world go round. Given this impact, business leaders need to be able to ground their decision-making with state-of-the-art insights. Eric Ball and Joe LiPuma make this eminently possible through their wide-ranging and thoughtful compendium of leading management research on topics such as finance, strategy, entrepreneurship, leadership, and innovation. Their work allows a business leader to harness the best the “ivory tower” has to offer to create real-world professional success. –Mark Zupan, Dean of the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester

Imagine the greatest business thinkers in the world, all combined in a single classroom. Eric Ball and Joe LiPuma have written a monumental work that surveys the world of cutting-edge management thinking and makes it easy to grasp. This is no ordinary business book: it is both a useful tool for practitioners and a powerful exploration of the workings of organizations, entrepreneurship, innovation, and finance. This book is like an MBA and Ph.D. in one, guided by the hand of two highly experienced experts. Unlocking the Ivory Tower is a gift to the world, and it is a strongly recommended read for executives, investors, entrepreneurs, and others who seek to build successful businesses. –Victor Hwang, Cofounder of T2 Venture Capital, coauthor of The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley

When academic management research and operational business management look at each other, there is often a sizeable gap. Based on their own practice and variety of experience, Eric Ball and Joe LiPuma bring us a powerful and insightful view on essential themes such as leadership, international business, organization, and processes. Unlocking the Ivory Tower demonstrates how the academic and business worlds can efficiently get together to generate added value. –Dominique Carouge, Vice President Administration and Management at Sanofi, Member of the Global Leadership Team

Appealing to both academics and business leaders, Eric Ball and Joe LiPuma not only provide the reader with grounded insight into a selection of themes that are critical to business success, but offer a valuable resource in bridging the worlds of academia and business. Unlocking the Ivory Tower demonstrates how management research is relevant, and can be accessible to firms, in a very straightforward and concise manner. –Rickie A. Moore, Past Chair of the Management Consulting Division, Academy of Management

Ball and LiPuma do an impressive job of collecting and illuminating important business research in a wide range of areas. Even better, they translate that research into practical takeaways for managers. –Steven N. Kaplan, Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Peter Drucker taught us that in today’s rapidly changing world, people “have to be prepared to live and work simultaneously in two cultures—that of ‘the intellectual,’ who focuses on words and ideas, and that of the ‘manager,’ who focuses on people and work.” Unlocking the Ivory Tower bridges those often-alien cultures beautifully, and in doing so it stands as a major contribution. –Rick Wartzman, Director of the Drucker Institute

Unlocking the Ivory Tower is an excellent resource for business managers looking to make critical decisions based on best practices. The book represents a valuable summary of management research in key fields. Not only do Ball and LiPuma survey the literature past and present, but they inform what kind of research agendas can have the biggest real-world impact outside of the university environment. Their book should be required reading for both students and faculty in business schools globally. –Audrey MacLean, Venture Investor, Consulting Professor, Stanford University, and Chairman, Coraid

This book offers practical guidelines for clear thinking and informed decision-making distilled from the best business research. Eric and Joe masterfully remove the academic clutter, bringing into focus simple yet powerful frameworks for thinking clearly and making informed business decisions. –Clint Korver, Cofounder of Ulu Ventures and Partner at Crescendo Ventures

About this edition

• Publisher: Kauffman Fellows Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0988380706
• ISBN 13: 9780988380707
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 502