Quy Huy

The Solvay Chaired Professor of Technological Innovation
Professor of Strategy

INSEAD

Dr. Quy Nguyen Huy has been professor of strategy at INSEAD since 1998 and chair of the strategy department from 2010 to 2012. He is known for his pioneering work linking social-emotional and temporal factors to the organizational processes of strategic change and innovation. Professor Huy has published over 80 works on strategic change, strategy execution and organizational innovation. His research has won 11 international awards and has been published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals such as the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal.

Professor Huy was ranked among the top 2 percent of most cited scientists in Business & Management (by a 2020 Stanford study that took into account the impact of each co-author’s contribution). His research on middle managers was published in Harvard Business Review as a “Breakthrough Idea for Today's Business Agenda." His work has garnered over 10,000 Google Scholar citations, over half of them attributed to five of his single-authored publications in prestigious scientific journals.

Prof Huy produces management research that is both scientifically rigorous and relevant for management practice – his work features in both academic and practitioner publications – a conviction forged by 20 years of management experience prior to his academic career. Initially trained as an electrical engineer—he graduated with distinction in Engineering from McGill University in 1978—he worked for 16 years in various managerial functions at several large IT firms in North America. As a telecommunications engineer he enthusiastically promoted digital transformation in the early 1980s. His managerial career covered systems and software engineering, sales and marketing of digital platforms, and corporate finance, where he dealt with institutional investors and credit rating agencies. He had experience of working on joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, and turnarounds of firms with annual turnover up to 10 billion dollars. In 1994, he became a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and specialized in analyzing very large capital projects, capital structure and debt financing, and the valuation of business ventures and risks.

From 2001 to 2010, Huy joined world-renowned professors Henry Mintzberg and Jonathan Gosling to offer a pioneering management development program focused on developing diverse mindsets rather than traditional functional disciplines: the International Masters for Practicing Managers. An 18-month global leadership development program, it is offered by academic institutions in France, Canada UK, India, Korea and Japan. The pedagogy was described in a Harvard Business Review article, The Five Minds of a Manager (November 2003) and in Henry Mintzberg’s book, Developing Managers, Not MBAs. Professor Huy worked in various related teaching and leadership roles including Program Director of IMPM INSEAD: the Action Mindset, and as pedagogical and administrative director covering all academic institutions (2005-08).

Since 2011, Professor Huy has co-developed a cutting-edge action-learning training program on strategy execution for senior executives at INSEAD, with a focus on the intangible, hidden barriers in this domain. Covering organizational politics, collective emotions and organizational culture, it is practice- and data-driven. At the forefront of executive training programs in strategy execution, it is fed in part by Professor Huy’s world-leading research on this topic, teaching participants in how collective emotions and emotional capital enhance organizational innovation and how they impact the success of strategy execution.

Dr. Huy is involved in executive development, consulting and coaching for a wide range of for-profit and non-profit organizations worldwide. He is passionate about developing a new generation of scholars who aspire to conduct rigorous and relevant research by his teaching, coaching and working with advanced doctoral students and professors worldwide. He has developed one of the rare PhD-level courses on managing organizational change, and co-developed a course on strategy process research, one of the core doctoral strategy courses at INSEAD. His seminars on how to publish qualitative research in top academic journals are popular with scholars worldwide.

Dr Huy’s published work can be downloaded from: https://www.emotionalcapital.net/publications