Robin Gustafsson
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:
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
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
Niko Lipiäinen (2024) The interplay of internal and external determinants of value creation and capture in transforming business environment
Ruben Vicente-Saez (2021) Open Science in the Digital Era
Zeerim Cheung (2019) Analytically Structured History Approach Using a Relational Database - Essays on the Historical Embeddedness of Strategy Formulation
Kimmo Karhu (2017) Managing Competitive and Cooperative Strategizing in Open PLatform Ecosystems using Boundary Resources
Christopher Rowell (2017) Signaling and Shaping Legitimacy - Weaving webs of meaning in time and new markets
