David J. Teece is an authority on subjects including the theory of the firm and strategic management, the economics of technological change, knowledge management, technology transfer, and antitrust economics and innovation. He is the Thomas W. Tusher Chair in Global Business and director of the Institute of Management, Innovation, and Organization (IMIO) at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. In 1988 he co-founded LECG, a global expert services firm that provides independent expert testimony and analysis, original authoritative studies, and strategic consulting services. He has served many years as Chairman and since 2007 Vice Chairman of the board. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, has held teaching and research positions at Stanford University and Oxford University, and has also received three honorary doctorates. He is the author of more than 200 books and articles, and is the co-editor of Industrial & Corporate Change. He is one of the top 10 cited scholars in economics and business for the decade, and has been recognized by Accenture as one of the world's top 50 business intellectuals.

Tina Dacin is the E. Marie Shantz Professor of Strategy and Organizational Behavior at Queen's University’s School of Business. Her research interests include organizational and institutional change, social entrepreneurship, and strategic collaboration with an emphasis on partner selection in alliances. Her work has been widely published and she sits on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Management & Governance, the SMJ and as Section Editor for Journal of Management Inquiry and Senior Editor for Organization Science. She has previously served as a Senior Editor and a Consulting Editor for Journal of International Business Studies and for multiple terms on the Editorial Review Boards of other leading journals. She is currently Incoming Chair of the College of Organization Science at Informs and is the recent past Chair of the Corporate Strategy and Governance IG of the SMS as well as recent past Chair of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the AoM.

Nicolai Foss is a Professor of Strategy and Organization at the Copenhagen Business School, the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration and the Director of CBS' Center of Strategic Management and Globalization. His research interests lie within knowledge governance, the economics of the firm, and the foundations of strategic management. His work has appeared in Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science and other journals, as well as in numerous books.

Marjorie Lyles is the OneAmerica Chaired Professor and Professor of International Strategic Management at Indiana University Kelley School of Business. Her research addresses organizational learning, international strategies, management of technology, and alliances, particularly in emerging economies. She has over 60 articles that have appeared in such journals as SMJ, ASQ, AMR, JIBS, AMJ, and JMS. She has received two NSF grants, one to assess the development of the private sector after the transition in Hungary and the second to assess alliances in the pharmaceutical industry. She and Jeff Reuer will be co-chairs of the SMS 2009 conference.

Gabriel Szulanski is Professor of Strategy at INSEAD, where he earned his Ph.D. in Strategy. He joined the faculty of INSEAD in 2002 after serving on the faculty of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1995. His twin research passions focus on the management of knowledge assets and the making of strategy. In the domain of knowledge, he is best known for his work on Stickiness and Replication. Gabriel Szluanski sits on the editorial board of leading academic journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Long Range Planning and the Journal of International Business Studies.

Wulf H Bernotat was appointed Chairman of the Board of Management and Chief Executive Officer of E.ON in 2003. E.ON, based in Duesseldorf, Germany, is one of the major public utility companies in Europe and member of the DAX stock index of major German companies. It came into existence through the 2000 merger of VEBA and VIAG, two energy companies. Wulf Bernotat had joined VEBA in 1996 and became a member of the Board in 1998. Wulf H. Bernotat received a doctorate in law from the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen. His first position was as a corporate attorney in the legal department of Shell AG in Hamburg. In 1981 Wulf Bernotat went to Shell's headquarter in London to become business development manager for Eastern Europe. He remained with Shell until 1996, working in various European offices with increasing amounts of responsibility: In London, he became Shell's coordinator of business interests in Africa, as well as of coal-business interests in the entire Southern Hemisphere; later in Lisbon, he was general manager for Shell in Portugal; and in France, he became a member of Shell Paris's Board of Management, responsible for downstream activities.

Philip Evans is a Senior Vice President in the Boston Office of the Boston Consulting Group. He founded BCG’s media and then multimedia practices and has consulted to corporations worldwide in the consumer goods, media and high technology industries. Blown to Bits, his book on the new economics of information was the best-selling book worldwide on technology and strategy in 2000. Philip Evans graduated with Double First Class Honors in economics from Cambridge University. He was a Harkness Fellow in the Economics Department at Harvard and also obtained an M.B.A with honors from the Harvard Business School.

Ulrike Bentlage has been Director for Corporate HR Strategy and Controlling at the Bertelsmann AG since 2007. She studied Mathematics and Literature in Muenster, Germany and Nantes, France. She started her career as a Director for Media and Education at the Bertelsmann Foundation in 1998. In 2001, she joined The Boston Consulting Group as General Management and Strategy Consultant with a focus on HR and Organization.

Steve David has been a Senior Advisor for Boston Consulting Group since 2005. He previously spent 34 years with Proctor & Gamble, where he held the roles of Chief Information Officer as well as Chief Business to Business Officer. He serves as Chairman of the Board for Iomega Corporation, and on the Boards of Institute for the Future and Kovio. As board members for Transora and the Uniform Code Council, he has helped develop data synchronization standards and the new world of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and its potential uses in business. He was recently named one of the twenty-five most influential executives by Consumer Goods Technology. Steve David has a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska

Marion Horstmann is Head of Global Learning & Leadership Development with Siemens. She is also head of Leadership Excellence Program where she is responsible for developing and implementing executive learning program, which enables and strengthens Siemens global talent pool. She is also head of Learning Campus and head of Talent Acquisition. Marion Horstmann received her degree in Mathematics from the Technical University of Braunschweig, and attended INSEAD for her executive education in Strategic Management Tools & Systems.

Alexis von Hoensbroech is heading the department for strategy and investment management in the passenger airline division of Lufthansa German Airlines. Prior to joining Lufthansa in 2005, Alexis worked for The Boston Consulting Group in Munich and Tokyo. Alexis has an academic background, holding a PhD in Physics (Astrophysics) from the University of Bonn.

René Obermann has been the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of its Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom AG since November 2006 and a Member of its Board of Management since 2002. Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading telecommunications and information technology service providers, more than half of the revenues are generated outside of Germany. René Obermann joined the Group in 1998 as the Managing Director Sales for T-Mobile Deutschland. In April 2000, he became Chief Executive Officer of T-Mobile Deutschland. From the end of 2002 to December 2006, he was CEO of T-Mobile International and the Deutsche Telekom Board Member for Mobile Communications. In this period, T-Mobile continued its growth course as one of the leading mobile operators in the world with more than 100 million customers, successfully introducing the T-Mobile brand in eleven countries. René Obermann's career began with a business traineeship at BMW in Munich. Following that, he set up his own business ABC Telekom in Münster in 1986. He became Managing Partner of Hutchison Mobilfunk GmbH, the successor of ABC Telekom, in 1991. From 1994 to 1998, Obermann was Chairman of the company's Management Board.

Philip Evans is a Senior Vice President in the Boston Office of the Boston Consulting Group. He founded BCG’s media and then multimedia practices and has consulted to corporations worldwide in the consumer goods, media and high technology industries. Blown to Bits, his book on the new economics of information was the best-selling book worldwide on technology and strategy in 2000. Philip Evans graduated with Double First Class Honors in economics from Cambridge University. He was a Harkness Fellow in the Economics Department at Harvard and also obtained an M.B.A with honors from the Harvard Business School.

Ramon Bacardit is Corporate Senior Vice President of Adhesives Technologies Research for Henkel AG & Co. KGaA in Duesseldorf. He joined Henkel Iberica in 1981 and has occupied different functions including R& D for Surface Technologies and Adhesives, Manufacturing, Commercial Management Adhesives, Business Management for Industrial Adhesives, Consumer Adhesives and Surface Treatment until 1997. He was the general manager of Henkel Mexico and responsible for the Latin America sector for Surface Treatment until the end of 2001. Since 2002 he has been a member of the board of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA. Ramon Bacardit holds a PhD in chemistry, business education from IESE.

Thorsten Huebschen is currently Manager of Business Productivity Infrastructure (BPI) with Microsoft Germany. With an academic background in math and computer science, he has worked five years as a strategy consultant with McKinsey. In 2006, Thorsten Huebschen moved to Microsoft, where he now co-leads the Business Group Information Worker and is responsible for Office, Exchange, OCS and the whole Business Productivity Infrastructure.

Andreas Mueller is the founding Head of ERSTE University, the corporate university of Erste Group Bank AG, one of the major banks in Central and Eastern Europe. He previously held positions with Volkswagen AutoUni where he assisted in the establishment of the School of Science and Technology, and was responsible for the master's degree concept on "Sustainable Mobility" and for delivery of various learning content, ranging from Management of Technology to Mobile Aging. With Volkswagen AG, he was responsible for AutoUni's activities in Latin America and for the collaboration with the MIT. Andreas Mueller received his PhD in Geometry at the University of Karlsruhe.

Jay Barney is a Professor of Management and holds the Chase Chair for Excellence in Corporate Strategy at the Max M. Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University. His research focuses on the relationship between costly-to-copy firm skills and capabilities and sustained competitive advantage. He is an associate editor for the Journal of Management and senior editor for Organization Science and has been published in numerous leading publications. In addition to his teaching and research, he presents executive training programs throughout the US and Europe. His consulting work focuses on large-scale organizational change and strategic analysis. Jay Barney is an SMS Fellow as well as a fellow of the Academy of Management. . In 1997 he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Lund, and has honorary visiting professor positions in New Zealand, China.

Richard A. Bettis is Luther Hodges Distinguished Professor at Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is the past president of the SMS Board of Directors and served as co-chair of the SMS 21st Annual International Conference in San Francisco. He is consulting editor of the Academy of Management Review and serves on the Editorial Review Board of the SMJ. Richard Bettis has served as a consultant and speaker to such clients as General Electric, Mansanto, and Motorola. He formerly served as a member of the editorial review board of the Academy of Management Journal, associate editor of the planning and forecasting department of Management Science, and as product development engineer for General Motors. He has published widely on strategic topics in numerous leading journals.

Rudi Bresser is a Professor of Strategic Management at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. Prior to joining the Free University, he was a faculty member of the City University of New York at Baruch College. He is a committed member of the SMS since 1984. He has been a Conference Co-Chair of the 1999 Strategic Management Society Conference in Berlin, and he served as a member of several SMS-Conference Review Committees. Dr. Bresser is an Associate Editor of the Strategic Management Journal and has been a member of the Journal’s Editorial Board for 13 years. He is a founding member of the European Management Review, and an ad hoc reviewer to a dozen scholarly management journals. He has published many scholarly articles in American and European refereed journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Omega, Organization Studies, European Management Review, Administration & Society, Zeitschrift fuer Betriebswirtschaft, Schmalenbach Business Review, and Die Betriebswirtschaft. He has authored or co-authored several books on management and strategic management topics. Professor Bresser maintains intensive contacts to the business and consulting communities. He is a former Managing Director of the business administration faculty at the Free University of Berlin.

Michael A. Hitt is a Distinguished Professor and holds the Joseph Foster Chair in Business Leadership and the C W & Dorothy Conn Chair in New Ventures at Texas A&M University. Currently, in addition to serving as President of the Board for the SMS, he is coordinator of the SMS Book Series. He has authored or co-authored many journal articles published in leading journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Academy of Management Executive, among others. Mike Hitt is a former editor of the Academy of Management Journal, and former president of the Academy of Management. He is a member of the Academy of Management's Hall of Fame and Deputy Dean of the SMS Fellows. He has received awards from the American Society of Competitiveness for Outstanding Academic Contributions (1996) and Outstanding Intellectual Contributions (1999) to Competitiveness.

Dan Schendel is the Blake Family Endowed Chair Emeritus in Strategic Management at the Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University. His research work was the first to take new empirical directions in the strategy field away from traditional case methods by developing and testing mathematical performance models of strategy in the early 1970s. He has also done work on turnaround strategies, strategy across the life cycle, generic strategies, strategic groups, and planning systems. He is the author of a number of articles and cases in these and other related topic areas that have appeared in numerous leading publications. Dan Schendel is a fellow of the Academy of Management and Dean of the SMS Fellows. He is also the founding president and current treasurer of the SMS. He received his doctorate from Stanford University.

Ed Zajac is the James F. Beré Distinguished Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Currently, he serves as Co-Editor of the Strategic Management Journal and as an Editorial Board member of many other leading journals. In 1993, he was chair of the 13th Annual SMS International Conference in Chicago. His consulting experience includes work in the areas of strategy formulation, implementation, and strategic alliances with organizations such as Abbott, Baxter, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Brunswick, Caterpillar, Commonwealth Edison, Dade Behring, R.R. Donnelly, Gemini, W.W. Grainger, Harnischfeger, Hearst, Hollister, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer and Phillips. Ed Zajac is the current director of the Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Strategic Alliance Research.