Robin Gustafsson

Professori (Associate professor)

T307 Dept. Industrial Engineering and Management

I am an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management (TUTA) at Aalto University, with over 20 years of research and teaching in strategy, transformation, and cognition, including research stays at Stanford University, the University of Sussex, and HEC Lausanne.

My research follows two connected themes. The first examines strategy, organization, and policy amid technology-induced disruption: digitalization and the platform- and data-based economy — how business logic is disrupted, sources of competitive advantage, business models, and strategy work — together with, more recently, AI-driven compliance and risk-data capabilities in regulated industries. This work has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Research Policy, Organization Studies, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and Information Systems Research. I have published several book chapters and have co-edited the volume Cognitive Aids in Strategy (Emerald, 2023).

The second, newer research theme, the Visible Mind research program, studies metaphor-rich, physical thinking and expression artifacts, and the method for utilizing such objects for dialogue, sensemaking, and inducing collective intelligence. My research focuses on how physical, symbolic tools recruit the perceptual, intuitive, and inter-subjective systems that language alone leaves underused. Grounded in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and research on visual and inter-subjective communication, this program is the scientific foundation behind the Epics® tools and method we have developed and that have been spun off to the company Epicmeets.

I teach advanced courses in strategy, platform and data business strategy, and innovation strategy at the Master's, doctoral, MBA, and EMBA levels, and have delivered 60+ executive strategy modules and processes for leaders worldwide since 2014. I have supervised +60 Master's theses, +20 Bachelor's theses, and eight doctoral dissertations to completion, with three more underway. I have specialized in flipped-classroom and experience-based learning methods, including the Harvard case method, and am a trained facilitator, an Epics® Master facilitator, and a certified LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator.

You can reach me through my Aalto University email for any research- or expertise-related inquiries.

Research projects:

AI-Driven Compliance Capabilities: The Impact and Risks of Artificial Intelligence in RegTech and SupTech Solutions (CCRS-AI)

Policy Rationales in the Shift to Digital Platform Economy

Infrastructure to Accelerate Mission-Oriented System-Level Transformations (IN2MISSION)

The Consortium of 'Digital History of Telco and Exchanges in Finland and Sweden'

Playfulness at Work & in Workshops

SUPERVISION OF DOCTORAL STUDENTS

Supervised Doctoral Student

Eero Aalto (2025) Theorizing in strategy research with analytically structured history approach using a relational database method Essays on Telecom Finland’s strategizing between 1981–1998

Sarri Nykänen (2025) Drivers of collective action in contemporary democracy

Tomasz Mucha (2024) Machine learning in organizations: The processes of diffusion, capability development, and reframing