Montreal Cocktail Reception with Dean Soumitra Dutta

Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean

Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University

Soumitra Dutta is the eleventh dean and professor of management and organizations in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He most recently served as the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Business and Technology and was the founder and academic director of the eLab at INSEAD, a top-ranked graduate business school in Fontainebleau, France.

Previous roles Dutta has held during his 23-year tenure at INSEAD include dean of external relations; dean of executive education; and dean of technology and e-learning. He has served as a visiting professor in the Haas School at Berkeley, Oxford Internet Institute at University of Oxford, and Judge School at University of Cambridge in England. He has lived and worked in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including stints as an engineer with GE in the U.S. and Schlumberger in Japan.

Dutta is an authority on the impact of new technology on the business world, especially social media and social networking, and on strategies for driving growth and innovation by embracing the digital economy. He is the co-editor and author respectively of two influential reports in technology and innovation -- the Global Information Technology Report (co-published with the World Economic Forum) and the Global Innovation Index (to be co-published with the World Intellectual Property Organization). Both reports have been used by several governments around the world in assessing and planning their technology and innovation policies.

His work has been widely published in the Harvard Business Review, European Management Journal, Management Science, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and other journals. Dutta and his ideas have been featured in myriad business magazines, newspapers, and blogs, including Global Intelligence for the CIO, Information Week, Brasil, BusinessWorld India, Chief Executive, Finance & Management, Chief Executive Magazine, Forbes, and The McKinsey Quarterly.

Dutta is a member of the Davos Circle, an association of long-time participants in the Annual Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, and has engaged in a number of multi-stakeholder initiatives to shape global, regional and industry agendas. He is on the advisory boards of several international business schools. He has co-founded two firms and is on the boards of several startups. He received the European Case of the Year award from the European Case Clearing House in 2002, 2000, 1998, and 1997.

Dutta received a B.Tech. in electrical engineering and computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. He received an MS in business administration, an MS in computer science, and a PhD in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.