David Robertson is the LEGO Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at IMD.

Professor Robertson teaches innovation, technology and ICT management. Prior to joining IMD, he held several executive management positions in enterprise software companies, including:
• CEO of an enterprise software company, responsible for all phases of the company’s operations
• VP of product and industry marketing at Baan Company, a Dutch ERP software company (now part of Invensys)
• VP of ecommerce marketing at eCredit.com, a provider of online credit and financing services
• Director of consulting services at Art Technology Group, a provider of online sales and content management applications.

From 1991 to 1996, David Robertson spent five years at McKinsey & Company in the US and Sweden, where he worked on projects such as:
• Redesigning the product development process for a European automake
• Restructuring a steel maker to reduce annual costs from $600M to less than $500M, while improving quality and delivery performance
• Performing a strategic analysis of the automotive components business to identify opportunities for profitable growth
• Redesigning the order fulfilment process at an electronic device manufacturer to improve responsiveness and cut costs.

Professor Robertson’s research is currently focused in three areas:
• Enterprise Architecture: Companies, like buildings, have an architecture. Architecture, which is the standardization and integration of business processes, job roles, information, IT systems and databases, represents the core capability of the company. If the architecture doesn't support the strategy of the company, the company cannot operate efficiently, nor innovate effectively off that core. This project investigates how companies can transform their architecture to meet the needs of the business.
• Improving the Innovation System: Most companies by now have a clear idea of what they should do to bring creative new concepts for products and services to market. Yet they don't do what they know they should. While much has been researched and written about what companies should do, less has been written about how to transform the innovation system. The goal of this project is to understand the best practices in transforming the innovation system of an organization.
• Technology Leadership: Leadership in technical organizations, be they Engineering or IT organizations, is a difficult task, and companies often have difficulty finding or developing such leaders. This research project is focused on understanding the unique challenges of leading technical organizations, and how such leaders can be nurtured and managed.

David Robertson obtained his MBA and PhD in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management and his BS in computer engineering from the University of Illinois.