My research centers on the individual, organizational, and institutional drivers of decision making under disruption and the economic consequences of such decisions. I study strategic choices, such as business creation, innovation, and philanthropy, in the face of large disruptions–such as COVID-19, natural disasters, wars, and economic disintegration, like Brexit, among others.
I am an assistant professor of strategy and innovation at the Questrom School of Business of Boston University and co-director of GLOB~S, The Global Scope Research Lab, a platform for multi-disciplinary collaboration among scholars, managers, and policymakers to generate science-based evidence on the drivers and consequences of uncertainty and risk shocks in business decision making.
I hold a PhD in Applied Economics and Management from Wharton and degrees from the MIT and ITAM. Before academia, I worked with financial derivatives for two banks and with policy instruments to finance catastrophic risk for two multilateral agencies.
I am in the review boards of the Academy Management Journal and the Strategic Management Journal.
Deciding under uncertainty is at the essence of contemporary business decision making. What organizations do during disruption can be more consequential for their performance and social welfare than strategy under stable conditions. Uncertainty shocks shatter regulations and establish temporal social norms, industries undergo technological change, firms try innovations, and consumers modify their willingness to pay for certain goods. I seek to understand what factors make some decision-makers comparatively efficient to capture and some contexts particularly conducive to generate private benefits and economic value for society at large.
What makes some firms comparatively responsive to shocks that affect social welfare? What are the benefits and costs of taking market (e.g., investment in innovation) and non-market action (e.g., strategic philanthropy) in the face of those shocks? Do societies benefit from these responses? How do they affect the relationship between the firm and key stakeholders? And how experiencing disruption affects the likelihood to start new ventures or engage in innovative behavior? My research agenda centers on similar questions and the fundamental transformation that the business community is now undergoing in attention given to risk and uncertainty at the global level.
Luis Ballesteros 