Dr Sougata Ray is Thomas Schmidheiny Chair, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship Practice, and Executive Director of the Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise at Indian School of Business. Earlier he served Indian Institute of Management Calcutta for over two decades as a Professor of Strategic Management, a member of the Board of Governors and Dean. He also served as senior level executive in Infosys Technologies Limited in a strategic role as General Manager & Head of Innovation Lab. He blends over three decades of experiences in diverse roles – international quality academic, research and institution building practices with hands on corporate managerial and governance experiences as an executive, member of the Board of Directors, co-founder of start ups, corporate advisor, trainer, mentor and coach. He has two decades of board level experiences and served as member of the boards of multiple Indian Oil and Tata Group companies and chaired nearly all statutory board committees such as audit committee, nomination and remuneration committee, stakeholders relationship committee, and CSR committee.

Sougata has developed deep insight into strategy, innovations, entrepreneurship, international business, global competitiveness, digital transformation, corporate governance of firms and business groups in high growth economies through intense academic research, consulting and varied corporate and start up experiences. Given the ubiquity of family firms in India and observing how family owners and leaders play a pivotal role in shaping the future of enterprises, he was drawn into family business research. Since the past few years, under the aegis of the Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Enterprise, he has been spearheading a mega program involving multiple research projects towards developing a solid research based understanding of business families, family firms and business groups in India.

Sougata helps ambitious entrepreneurs, family firms and business groups in crafting their business and growth strategies following sustainability principles. He regularly conducts visioning, strategy crafting, strategy review and innovation workshops for companies in India and abroad. He has advised national and state governments on attracting investments, promoting exports of goods and services, forming industry clusters and start up ecosystems, and improving competitiveness of local industries and firms. Sougata has taught in scores of executive education programs; designed and conducted many workshops exclusively for Owner-managers, Entrepreneurs and CXOs of companies in India, Asia, Middle East, Nordic and Scandinavian countries.

Sougata has delivered key note addresses and participated in panel discussions on wide ranging contemporary topics at regional and global events of leading global corporations and industry and trade bodies. He has led over thirty senior level executive delegations to multiple countries in every continent for high-level meetings with the Ministers and high ranking officials, multilateral agencies such as WTO and ILO, Chambers of Commerce, MNCs, Industrial Organizations, Research Labs and Institutions. Sougata is perhaps the most prolific and cited home-grown strategy scholars in India with over 150 research papers, monographs, book chapters, case studies and teaching notes. He has been publishing regularly in top-tier international journals and presenting in prestigious peer-reviewed international conferences. He has received many research, teaching, case writing and service awards and award nominations. He is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology, Shibpur.