Jay Rao

Jay Rao is an academic, author, and professor specializing in innovation strategy, entrepreneurial leadership, Corporate entrepreneurship, enterprise culture and leading change. He serves as Professor in the Operations and Information Management Division at Babson College, where he teaches undergraduate, MBA, and executive education.

Education

Rao received a Bachelor of Science in Naval Architecture from The INDIAN Institute of Technology Madras. He subsequently earned a Master of Science in Operations Research from the University of Kentucky before completing a Doctor of Philosophy in Management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Career

Rao joined Babson College in 1995 His executive education activities focus on innovation strategy, scaling innovation inside large enterprises, entrepreneurial leadership, and corporate entrepreneurship. He has led executive programs Medtronic, Novartis, Bancolombia, Assa Abloy Americas, Fayat (France), OceanSpray, Pictet (Switzerland), Honeywell, Continental (Peru), TCL (China), Infosys (India), Promigas (Colombia), BBVA, Collette Travels and dozens of others.

He was on the Innovation Advisory Boards of OceanSpray and Bancolombia and on the Flavor Advisory Board of Firmenich. He is the creator of the Gorillas v Chimps v Monkeys Battlefield Playbook (based on Geoffrey Moore’s work) that has been implemented in many companies around the world. Also, his Bowling Alley Growth strategy model (also based on Geoffrey Moore’s work) has been used by many firms globally. Finally, he is the creator of InnoQuotient, an innovation Culture Survey that has been used in more than 600 firms worldwide and in more than 10 languages.

Rao’s research has focused enterprise culture and innovation performance. He has written dozens of business cases in the areas of strategy, innovation, entrepreneurial leadership, digital transformation, leading change, and enterprise culture.

Books

• Innovación 2.0 (with Fran Chuan, 2012).
• The Discipline & Culture of Innovation: A Socratic Journey (with Fran Chuan, 2013).

Book chapters

• “Creation Logic in Innovation: From Action Learning to Expertise”, in The New Entrepreneurial Leader (with Scott K. Fixson, 2011).
• “Measuring Culture of Innovation: From Assessment to Action”, in Handbook of Research Methods for Organisational Culture (with Shelby Danks, 2022).

Selected journal articles

• “How Innovative Is Your Company’s Culture?” (with Joseph Weintraub), MIT Sloan Management Review (2013).
• “Measuring Culture of Innovation: A Validation Study of the Innovation Quotient Instrument” (with Shelby Danks and Jeff Allen), Performance Improvement Quarterly (2017).
• “Six Innovation Pain Points and How to Overcome Them” (with Matthias Tietz and others), IESE Insight (2018).
• “What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong (and Right) About Culture” (2018).
• “Los Mitos de la Innovación – A la Luz de los Datos” (with Fran Chuan and Daniel Cerda), Harvard Deusto Business Review (2022).