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

Also published in Japanese! In April 2016, Unlocking the Ivory Tower was released in Japanese by Keio University Press as a 3-volume set. The work was translated by Dr. Jiro Kokuryo et al., and includes a new introduction for Japanese readers. Dr. Jiro Kokuryo is Vice President for International Affairs and Professor of Policy Studies at Keio University.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.

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.