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Soumitra Dutta, the Roland Berger Chaired Professor in Business and Technology at INSEAD, will become the 11th dean of Johnson July 1.

Soumitra Dutta, a professor of business and technology and founder and faculty director of a new-media and technology innovation lab at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, will become the 11th dean of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell July 1.

Johnson becomes the first major business school in the United States to hire a dean from a business school outside the country.

"Professor Dutta's appointment is a natural fit with Johnson's increasingly global outlook," said President David Skorton. "He has expertise in new and emerging media, he has studied the conditions that promote innovation, and he has extensive experience on the international stage. Among other qualities, these prepare him well to oversee the education of our next-generation business leaders and entrepreneurs. Johnson students, Cornellians who take courses at Johnson and, in the very near future, aspiring entrepreneurs at our new tech campus in New York City will benefit from this appointment."

Dutta is the Roland Berger Chaired Professor in Business and Technology at INSEAD, a top-ranked graduate business school with other campuses in Singapore and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Dutta has held visiting professorships at the Haas School, University of California-Berkeley, Oxford Internet Institute at University of Oxford and Judge School at University of Cambridge. He has advised several governments on national information and innovation policies and has consulted with leading international organizations. Dutta worked in the United States as an engineer with General Electric and in Japan for Schlumberger.

"This appointment is an exciting opportunity for me, in part because of Johnson's commitment to global perspectives, entrepreneurship and innovation, and business sustainability, but also because as an early adopter of approaches such as performance learning, the school itself exemplifies innovative thinking in business," Dutta said. "I am excited about the close connections the school has to the broader university and especially the opportunities available through collaboration on the tech campus. I am eager to take up the leadership position building on the strong foundations laid by Dean [L. Joseph] Thomas."

Dutta is co-editor and author, respectively, of two influential reports in technology and innovation, the Global Information Technology Report (co-published with the World Economic Forum) and the Global Innovation Index (to be co-published with the World Intellectual Property Organization). Both reports have been widely used by governments around the world in assessing and planning their technology and innovation policies.

He is a member of the Davos Circle of longtime participants in the annual Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum. He has published 20 books and monographs and held several deputy dean-level management positions at INSEAD, including handling global executive education with total annual revenues of $110 million. He serves on the advisory boards of several international business schools and startups and co-founded two firms.

He succeeds Thomas, who will return to teaching and research after a five-year term as dean, during which he launched the school's long-term strategic plan and led creation of the Emerging Markets Institute and the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute.

Dutta received a B.Tech. in electrical engineering and computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology and an M.S. in business administration, an M.S. in computer science and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California-Berkeley.

"I am delighted that Professor Dutta will be joining us," said Thomas. "His extensive research on global business and the conditions that encourage innovation make him the right leader to carry forward our strategic plan, and I look forward to working with him as he assumes his new role as dean of Johnson."