Ben M. BENSAOU

Ben M. Bensaou is Professor of Technology Management and Professor of Asian Business and Comparative Management at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France. He served as the INSEAD Dean of Executive Education from 2018 to 2020. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School for 1998-1999, a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School of Management for 2007-2008 and a Visiting Scholar at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley for 2013-2015. He was also a Visiting Professor at Kobe University for 2021-2022.

Bensaou is a leading expert on Innovation and how to build, maintain, and enhance a company’s collective innovating capabilities. He was nominated for the 2023 Thinkers50 Innovation Award and his book Built to Innovate: Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into Your Company’s DNA (2021, McGraw-Hill) was selected as one of the Thinkers50 Top 10 Management Books for 2022. Bensaou explains in detail his systematic approach. It defines specific innovative practices and roles for employees at each level of the organization, offers tools and a process methodology for innovating, and presents a host of vivid case studies that illustrate the dramatic benefits possible.

He holds a PhD in Management from MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, USA, an MA in Management Science from Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan, a Diplôme d’Ingénieur (MS) in Civil Engineering and a DEA in Mechanical Engineering from respectively the Ecole Nationale des TPE, Lyon and the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, two Grandes Ecoles in France.

His research and teaching activities focus on: (1) how to create innovating capabilities and competencies as a way to Build an Innovating Organization and Culture, (2) Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Innovation implementation and roll out processes across the whole organization, (3) how to build social capital within firms, (4) new forms of organizations, in particular networked corporations, strategic alliances, joint ventures and value-adding partnerships, and (5) the impact of digital technologies on innovation. Professor Bensaou addresses these issues from an international comparative perspective, with a special focus on Japanese organizations. Professor Bensaou's research on buyer-supplier relations in the U.S. and Japanese auto industries won him the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award in the field of information systems and a finalist award for the Free Press Award for outstanding dissertation research in the field of business policy and strategy. His cases on Innovation won the 2006, 2008 and 2009 ECCH Best Case Awards (with Kim & Mauborgne). His publications include papers in Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, book chapters and conference proceedings. His new book, Built to Innovate – Essential Practices to Wire Innovation into Your Company’s DNA, is scheduled for publication by McGraw-Hill in Fall 2021. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly and MISQ Executive. He has been listed in the Who’s Who in the World since 1998.
He has been consulting for Asian, European and US corporations since 1993. At INSEAD, Professor Bensaou developed two new MBA courses: “Managing Networked Organizations” and “Understanding Japanese Business.” He also teaches courses on Innovation, Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Innovation, Competitive Strategy, Information Technology and Comparative Management (in English and French). He was a Visiting Professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo where he taught his course on “Information Technology and Corporate Transformation.” He has also been teaching (in Japanese) in Executive Programs at Keio Business School, Tokyo, Japan.
Professor Bensaou grew up in France. He has also lived and was educated in Japan. He and his wife Masako currently live in Paris. Their son Sophian lives in Tokyo, Alexis in Paris, and Lennon in London.