Max Boisot

Max Henri Boisot (1943–2011) was a Professor of Strategic Management at the ESADE business school in Barcelona.^[1] known for his ideas about the information economy,^[2] the Information Space,^[3] social capital and social learning theory

Biography

Boisot attended Gordonstoun boarding school in Moray, Scotland. and later studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and city planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before taking his PhD in technology transfer at Imperial College London.

After working as a manager for construction firm Trafalgar House, in 1972 Boisot co-founded an architectural partnership, Boisot Waters Cohen, and from 1975 to 1978 acted as a consultant on projects in France and the Middle East.^[4] from 1983 to 1989, he was Director and Dean of China Europe Management Institute in Beijing China.

Afterwards Boisot was Professor of Strategic Management at the ESADE business school in Barcelona. Associate Fellow at Templeton College, University of Oxford, and Senior Associate at the Judge Institute of Management Studies at the University of Cambridge.^[5] He was also a research fellow at the Sol Snider Center, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

His book Knowledge Assets was awarded the Ansoff Prize for the best book on strategy in 2000. The I-Space framework which is central to his work is an acknowledged early influence on the development of the Cynefin framework.^[6]

Max Boisot died from cancer on 7 September 2011, aged 67.^[7]

Selected publications

• Information and Organization: The Manager as Anthropologist. London: Collins (1987)
• (Editor) East-West Collaboration: the Challenge of Governance in Post-Socialist Enterprises, London: Routledge (1993)
• Information Space: A Framework for Learning in Organizations Institutions and Cultures, London: Routledge (1995)
• Knowledge Assets: Securing Competitive Advantage in the Information Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1998). ISBN 978-0-19-829607-2
• Explorations in Information Space: Knowledge, Agents and Organization, co-authored with Ian C. MacMillan and Kyeong Seok Han, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2007). ISBN 978-0-19-925087-5

References

1. "ESADE – GRACO Who we are > Esade members". Retrieved 9 July 2010.
2. Kurtz, Cynthia F., and David J. Snowden. "The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world." IBM systems journal 42.3 (2003): 462-483.
3. Nahapiet, Janine, and Sumantra Ghoshal. "Social capital, intellectual capital, and the organizational advantage." Academy of management review 23.2 (1998): 242-266.
4. Morgen Witzel (2003). "Max Boisot". Fifty key figures in management. Routledge.
5. "People – CIBAM – Faculty & Research – Cambridge Judge Business School". Retrieved 9 July 2010.
6. Snowden, D. (2002) “Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self Awareness” in the Journal of Knowledge Management – Vol. 6, No. 2 (May), pp. 100–111
7. Max Boisot 1943-2011

Further reading

• Leong, Lam Chuan. "Complexity, Bureaucracy and the Information Space". Ethos (Jul–Sep 2005).
• Savory, Clive (2006). "Translating knowledge to build technological competence". Management Decision 44 (8): 1052–1075.

External links

• Remembering Max Boisot, 1943 - 2011
• Max Boisot at Strategic Learning Partners