Alan MacCormack
Leadership
Alan MacCormack is a Fellow with Cutter Consortium. Dr. MacCormack is an Associate Professor in the Technology & Operations Management Unit at the Harvard Business School, where his research examines the management of technology and innovation in high-technology industries, with a particular focus on the software industry.
Dr. MacCormack's work explores the dynamics of product development in these industries as well as the mechanisms by which firms can sense emerging threats to their core businesses and new opportunities for value creation. He is currently conducting a multiyear study of how firms use global collaboration networks to bring innovations to market, with a focus on how these networks are designed and managed. Dr. MacCormack's work has appeared in several books and journals, including Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review, and he is the author of more than 50 cases and teaching notes.
Innovation requires that we explore new ideas and opportunities outside our past experiences. It involves divergence before convergence, exploration before exploitation. Ultimately, it dictates that we learn to love uncertainty, to discover and exploit the new possibilities that it brings.
Dr. MacCormack has worked with leading organizations like Intel, Microsoft, and General Motors to help develop better approaches to the management of innovation as well as to understand how these firms leverage global networks in the pursuit of newly emerging technologies. He received his PhD from Harvard Business School in 1998, where he was a recipient of the George S. Dively Entrepreneurship Award for distinguished research. Dr. MacCormack has a master's degree in management from MIT's Sloan School of Management and a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Bath in England. He currently teaches an MBA course titled "Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World," which explores the mechanisms through which firms identify and exploit new innovation opportunities. He can be reached at experts@cutter.com.