Geert Duysters

Geert Duysters (1966) is a professorial fellow at UNU-MERIT and a professor of Organization Science at the Eindhoven University of Technology. He obtained a masters’ degree in economics from the Universiteit Maastricht. In 1995 he obtained a PhD in Economics and Business Administration at the same University.
After working at the University of Maastricht and the TU Eindhoven as subsequently, researcher, assistant professor, associate professor and full professor he is currently employed as a Professorial fellow at UNU-MERIT. UNU-MERIT was formally established on 1 January 2006 following the integration of the former United Nations University Institute for New Technologies (INTECH) and the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology. He is also a part-time full professor of Organization Science (in particular knowledge acquisition and integration strategies) at the faculty of Technology Management of the Eindhoven University of Technology. He worked as an alliance expert for the European Commission and the OECD. From 2000-2003 he has been the Director of the Eindhoven Centre for Innovation studies (ECIS). He also acted as Associate Dean of the faculty of technology Management from 2004-2006.

His academic research mainly concerns international business strategies, innovation strategies, mergers and acquisitions, network analytical methods and strategic alliances. He has published over 60 international refereed articles and book chapters in among others: Organization Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Research Policy, Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Small Business Economics and many other international refereed journals. He is on the editorial board of a number of international journals such as the Journal of Management Studies, The Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, the Serbian Journal of Management, The South East Asian Journal of Management, The Open Management Journal and the International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development. He also acts as an associate editor of the Journal on Chain and Network Science.

His interest in business strategies and innovation strategies is not only academic, as he worked as a consultant (senior manager) for KPMG Alliances at the international headquarters in Amstelveen (the Netherlands). He also acts as a founding global board member of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP). As an entrepreneur he founded three internet companies over the past decade.

Works on:

  • Alliance Capability as a Mediator
    8 April 2009, Article

    This study centres around the way in which firms can enhance alliance performance through the development of alliance capabilities. Whereas most research has focused on inter-firm antecedents of alliance performance, research on intra-firm antecedents pointing to prior experience and internal mechanisms to foster knowledge transfer has only recently emerged. As little is known about how firms develop alliance capabilities explain performance heterogenity. The data are derived from a detailed survey held among alliance managers and Vice-Presidents of 151 firms. The survey covers over 2600 alliances for the period 1997-2001. This study not only finds that alliance capabilities partially mediate between alliance experience and alliciance performance, but also yields novel insights into the micro-level building blocks underlying the process of alliance capability development.