Media Releases

Book by Rotman School Professor Receives Award From Association of American Publishers

February 6, 2017

Toron­to, ON – A book on dis­rup­tion and inno­va­tion by a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment has received a 2017 PROSE Award for Excel­lence award.

The Dis­rup­tion Dilem­ma by Prof. Joshua Gans won in the ‘Busi­ness, Finance & Man­age­ment’ cat­e­go­ry. The PROSE Awards rec­og­nize excel­lence in pub­lish­ing, and are spon­sored by the Pro­fes­sion­al & Schol­ar­ly Pub­lish­ing divi­sion (PSP) of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Pub­lish­ers. The awards are judged on how note­wor­thy and orig­i­nal their con­tri­bu­tions are to the pro­fes­sion­al and schol­ar­ly pub­lish­ing world.

In The Dis­rup­tion Dilem­ma, pub­lished by The MIT Press, Prof. Gans looks at com­pa­nies that have proven resilient and those that have fall­en, and explains why some com­pa­nies have suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged dis­rup­tion and why some have not. Depart­ing from the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, Prof. Gans iden­ti­fies two kinds of dis­rup­tion: demand-side, when suc­cess­ful firms focus on their main cus­tomers and under­es­ti­mate mar­ket entrants with inno­va­tions that tar­get niche demands; and sup­ply-side, when firms focused on devel­op­ing exist­ing com­pe­ten­cies become inca­pable of devel­op­ing new ones.

Prof. Gans holds the Jef­frey S. Skoll Chair in Tech­ni­cal Inno­va­tion and Entre­pre­neur­ship. His research is pri­mar­i­ly focused on under­stand­ing the eco­nom­ic dri­vers of inno­va­tion and sci­en­tif­ic progress, and has core inter­ests in dig­i­tal strat­e­gy and antitrust pol­i­cy. He serves on the edi­to­r­i­al board of Man­age­ment Sci­ence, is the man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Core Research con­sul­tan­cy and writes reg­u­lar­ly for Forbes, Har­vard Busi­ness Review, MIT Sloan Man­age­ment Review and Dig­i­topoly.

A book from the Rot­man-UTP Pub­lish­ing imprint received an hon­ourable men­tion in the same cat­e­go­ry. Achiev­ing Longevi­ty: How Great Firms Pros­per through Entre­pre­neur­ial Think­ing is writ­ten by Jim Dewald, Dean of the Haskayne School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Tel: 416–946-3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca