Faculty & Research

Michael A. Cusumano

Sloan Management Review Distinguished Professor of Management
Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management

Biography | Publications

Michael A. Cusumano specializes in strategy, product development, and entrepreneurship in the computer software industry, as well as automobiles and consumer electronics. He teaches courses on the software business, strategic management, and technological innovation and entrepreneurship.

Professor Cusumano is fluent in Japanese and has lived and worked in Japan for seven years. He received two Fulbright Fellowships and a Japan Foundation Fellowship for studying at Tokyo University. He has been a visiting professor in management at Hitotsubashi University and Tokyo University in Japan, Imperial College's Tanaka Business School in London, and in information technology and computer science at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, the University of Maryland, and Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. He has consulted for more than 50 major companies around the world. He has been a director of NuMega Technologies (sold to Compuware in 1998 for $150 million) and Infinium Software (sold to SSA Global Technologies in 2002 for $105 million), as well as a director and advisor to other private and public software companies. He is currently a director of Patni Computer Systems, one of the largest IT services and custom software development firms based in India (NYSE: PTI), and Eliza Corporation, a specialist in speech recognition software applications, focused on healthcare. He is also on the advisory board of FixStars Corp., a Japanese developer of high-performance computing applications; Buzzient, Inc., an MIT spin-off that provides analytic measurement tools for Web 2.0 social networks; and H-5 Technologies, a San Francisco-based firm that focuses on digital search technology. He has also served as editor-in-chief and chairman of the MIT Sloan Management Review, is a columnist for Communications of the ACM, and has written for The Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, The Washington Post, and other publications.

Professor Cusumano has published eight books. The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad, was named one of the best business books of 2004 by Steve Lohr of the New York Times. It is translated into Japanese and Chinese. Microsoft Secrets (1995, with Richard Selby) is a best-selling study of Microsoft's strategy, organization, and approach to software development, and has approximately 150,000 copies in print in 14 languages. Platform Leadership: How Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco Drive Industry Innovation (2002, with Annabelle Gawer) examines how industry leaders orchestrate complementary innovations that make their platforms more valuable. Competing on Internet Time: Lessons from Netscape and its Battle with Microsoft (1998, with David Yoffie), was named one of the top 10 business books of 1998 by Business Week and Amazon.com, and played a central role in the Microsoft anti-trust trial. Thinking Beyond Lean: How Multi-Project Management is Transforming Product Development at Toyota and Other Companies (1998, with Kentaro Nobeoka) analyzes product development and platform strategies in the auto industry. He is also co-editor of Strategic Thinking for the Next Economy (2001, with Costas Markides) and author of Japan's Software Factories: A Challenge to U.S. Management (1991) and The Japanese Automobile Industry: Technology and Management at Nissan and Toyota (1985).

Web Site: http://web.mit.edu/cusumano/www