Niccolò Pisani is Professor of Strategy and International Business at IMD. His areas of expertise are strategic management and international business, with an emphasis on globalization, sustainability and digitization.
His teaching on strategy formulation and execution translates complex research into practitioner-oriented lessons. In particular, participants learn to appreciate the nuances of doing business across borders and formulate strategies to compete in today’s increasingly multifaceted international landscape.
His empirical research work has been published in top-tier academic journals, such as the Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Management and the Journal of Management Studies. His article on international corporate social responsibility research in the Journal of World Business won the 2017 International Association for Business and Society (IABS) Best Published Paper Award.
Meanwhile, his practitioner-oriented work has been featured in both Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. He has also produced several popular case studies, and won The Case Centre’s Overall Award in 2022 for “adidas: How to keep running fast in a post-COVID-19 world?”, which was the best-selling case out of the over 60,000 held by The Case Centre, one of the world’s leading case distributors.
He is also a member of the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of International Business Studies and the Journal of International Business Policy.
At IMD, Pisani is Co-Director of the International Growth Strategies program, and he has partnered with a variety of companies – such as ArcelorMittal, Heineken, Mondelez, Jerónimo Martins, Ipsen and Audemars Piguet amongst others – to ensure a real-world learning environment in his sessions or generate and deliver applied research.
He has more than 10 years of teaching experience at different program levels, including master’s degrees, executive education and custom programs, and was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam before joining IMD in 2020.
In addition to his experience in academia, he brings four years of industry experience gained at Sanlorenzo. At this global leader in high-end luxury yachting, he was responsible for international sales of tailor-made motor yachts up to 36 meters.
Early in his career, he also worked as a researcher in finance and investments for Merrill Lynch in its San Francisco office. He speaks five languages – Italian, English, French, Spanish and German.
Selected publications
A relational-models view to explain peer-to-peer sharing (Journal of Management Studies, 2021)
How COVID-19 will change the geography of competition (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2021)
Unraveling the MNE wage premium (Journal of International Business Studies, 2020)
Does it pay to be a multinational? (Strategic Management Journal, 2020)
Accounting for firm heterogeneity in global value chains (Journal of International Business Studies, 2020)
How global is international CSR research? (Journal of World Business, 2017)
The Fortune Global 500 isn’t all that global (Harvard Business Review, 2014)
Are multinationals becoming less global? (Harvard Business Review, 2013)
International management research: Investigating its recent diffusion in top management journals (Journal of Management, 2009)
Recognition
The Case Centre Overall Award Winner (2022)
The Case Centre Best Selling Case – Strategy and General Management (2021)
Strategic Management Society Best Reviewer Award – Global Strategy Track (2018)
International Association for Business and Society Best Published Paper Award (2017)
Academy of Management Best Reviewer Award – International Management Division (2016)
Education
Master of Science (Economics and Management)
Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona
PhD (Management)
IESE Business School, Barcelona