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Peter Williamson

Honorary Professor of International Management
Fellow Commoner and Director of Studies in Management at Jesus College

BA (Macquarie Univ.), PhD (Harvard Univ.)

Professional experience

Professor Williamson has wide experience in research, consulting and executive education as well as serving as a non-executive director and chairman of both publically listed companies and new ventures in industries as diverse as whisky, textiles, hedge fund management and Chinese software. He has lived and worked in Australia, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States, before returning to Britain to join Cambridge Judge Business School where he is Academic Director of the Advanced Leadership Programme and Jesus College, where he is Director of Studies in Management. He currently serves as a non-executive director of the global renewal energy firm Green Gas International B.V. and non-executive chairman of the technology-enabled training company Imparta Ltd.

Professor Williamson was formerly with the Boston Consulting Group in London, and Merrill Lynch. He serves on the editorial boards of European Management Journal, Business Strategy Review, and Academy of Management Learning and Education. Peter has acted as consultant on business strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and international expansion to numerous companies, governments and international organisations throughout the Asia-Pacific region as well as in Europe and North America. He has experience in China since 1983, assisting numerous multinationals and joint ventures, and more recently, Chinese companies venturing abroad.

Previous appointments

Prior to joining Cambridge Judge Business School, Professor Williamson was ten years with the Asian Business and International Management faculty at INSEAD (1997-2007). Between 2003 and 2007 he was also Visiting Professor in Strategy at the Cheung Kong Business School in Beijing. He was Visiting Professor of Global Strategy at Harvard Business School (1993-1996) and Dean of MBA Programmes and Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School (1987-1992).

Awards and scholarships

• Sloan-Pricewaterhouse Coopers Award honouring those articles that have contributed to the enhancement of management practice, 2005
• Lloyds Tercentenary Fellow, 2001
• Fulbright Scholar, 1980-1984
• Frank R. Knox Memorial Fellow, 1980-1984

Research interests

Globalisation and its implications for corporate strategy; strategies for success in China and the internationalisation of Chinese companies and their global impact, merger and acquisition strategy and post-merger integration; business ecosystems and the management of networks of strategic alliances; strategies for a carbon-constrained world.

Peter Williamson is a member of the Strategy & International Business subject group.

Selected publications

Markides, C.C. and Williamson, P.J. (1994) "Related diversification, core competences and corporate performance." Strategic Management Journal, 15(Special Issue, Summer): 149-165

Doz, Y., Santos, J. and Williamson, P. (2001) From global to metanational: how companies win in the knowledge economy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. (Also translated into Korean, Italian, and Portuguese)

Santos, J., Doz, Y. and Williamson, P. (2004) "Is your innovation process global?" MIT Sloan Management Review, 45(4): 31-37

Zeng, M. and Williamson P.J. (2007) Dragons at your door: how Chinese cost innovation is disrupting the rules of global competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. (Also translated into Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian and Russian)

Williamson, P.J. and Raman, A.P. (2011) "How China reset its global acquisition agenda." Harvard Business Review, 89(4): 109-114

Williamson, P.J. and De Meyer, A. (2012) "Ecosystem advantage: how to successfully harness the power of partners." California Management Review, 55(1): 24-46

More publications »