Richard D'Aveni

D’Aveni was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2020 for his work on hypercompetition and additive manufacturing strategy, including strategies based on temporary advantage and disruption. He also received the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in the category of Strategy in 2017, and the prestigious A.T. Kearney Award from the Strategic Management Society.

The principles of Hypercompetition were adopted as doctrine (July 2020) by the US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), US Army War College, and the Strategic Studies Institute in “An Army Transformed: USINDOPACOM Hypercompetition and US Army Theater Design.” The USINDOPACOM is responsible for all integrated military actions in India, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii.

While at Tuck, D’Aveni was also a popular keynote speaker for over two hundred Fortune500 companies and conferences. In addition, he acted as a strategy consultant or advisor to numerous CEOs in the Fortune 500. At one point, D’Aveni was advisor to half of the Fortune 10 CEOs. From 2000 to 2021, he was the principal advisor and sounding board for over ten patriarchs of the Forbes top 100 richest families in the world.

A precursor to Clay Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997), Hypercompetition argues that market disruption and escalating rivalry can be powerful ways to build strategic momentum. Momentum can undermine the static competitive advantages of oligopolies, by creating temporary competitive advantages that are fierce and fast-paced, as well as destroying entry barriers and escalating rivalry.

He was a World Economic Forum Fellow (1995 – 2000) and sat on the Board of Scholars of the Chief Executive Institute at Yale University. D'Aveni's other published works on organizational decline, top management teams, and vertical integration have been cited almost 10,000 times in the academic literature.

Hypercompetition (1994) predicted the shift to temporary competitive advantage. In Beating the Commodity Trap (2010), D'Aveni predicted that hypercompetition would give way to commoditization as temporary advantages became shorter and shorter. Strategic Supremacy (2001) predicted the rise of corporate global expansion and the race to build strong spheres of influence to compensate for commoditization in western markets. In Strategic Capitalism (2012), D’Aveni predicted that global corporate competition would affect international dynamics and geopolitical strategies between certain nations. Nations using hypercompetitive principles were winning market share from nations using oligopolistic principles. To cope with these geopolitical challenges, The Pan-Industrial Revolution (2018) foresees industrial competition based on government support for 3D printing technologies that could revive manufacturing in the West over the long run. His work on corporate spheres of influence and geopolitical strategy led him to be described as "the Kissinger of corporate strategy" by Adrian Slywotzky, bestselling author of The Profit Zone and Value Migration. The Times (London) has also described D’Aveni as "strategy's answer to Realpolitik"

D'Aveni then became an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in 1988. While an Assistant Professor, he was mentored by James Brian Quinn, winner of three McKinsey Awards prior to 1980. D’Aveni advanced to the position of Associate Professor of Business Administration in 1992 and achieved tenure in 1993. Richard A. D'Aveni was promoted to Full Professor of Strategic Management in 1996 and became the distinguished Bakala Professor of Strategy in 2011, a post he held until his retirement in 2022.

D’Aveni pursued his PhD at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business and graduated in 1987. While there, he focused on Strategic Management/Management of Organizations and completed his dissertation under the supervision of Donald C. Hambrick, past president of the Academy of Management and the leading scholar in CEOs and top management teams.

After graduation, he became a Member of the Bar in Massachusetts and the Federal and District Court of Appeals (1979). D’Aveni then worked at Coopers & Lybrand in its tax division from 1979 to 1982 and received his CPA in 1982.

He started his collegiate education at Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences and graduated with an A.B. cum laude in 1975. He majored in Government Studies and minored in Chemistry. He continued his education at Suffolk University’s School of Law (JD, 1979) and Boston University's Graduate School of Management (MBA, 1979) evening programs. He graduated from both programs cum laude. D’Aveni earned these two degrees simultaneously while working full-time on the Governor of Massachusetts’ staff and the House Speaker's staff for the State of Massachusetts.

Richard D'Aveni was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1953. He is a Sicilian-American who grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood outside of Boston, MA.