T. (Ravi) Ravichandran

Irene and Robert Bozzone '55 Distinguished Chair, Professor of Information Systems, Associate Dean for Research Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

  • Troy NY

Leading expert in digitization and transformation, digital platforms, supply chain management, and innovation in business.

Contact

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

View more experts managed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Areas of Expertise

Digital Platforms
Competitive Dynamics
Information Technology
Supply Chain Management
Innovation
Software Development
Outsourcing
Strategic Alliances

Biography

T. Ravichandran is the Associate Dean for Research, and the Irene and Robert Bozzone’55 Distinguished Chair and Professor in the Lally School of Management & Technology, RPI. He is also the Academic Director for the MS in Supply Chain Management program and the Faculty Director for the Center for Supply Networks and Analytics.

Ravi’s long term research interests focus on digital strategies of firms and the mechanisms through which digitization is transforming firms, markets, supply networks and industries. His research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Ministry of Education, Singapore. His research has won several awards including the 1) Best Information Systems Publication in 2010 (Association of Information System); 2) Best Published Paper Award, 2010 (Information Systems Research); 3) Best Paper Award, Software Technology Track (HICSS, 2010); 4) Best Paper Award Honorable Mention (IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 2007); 4) Best Academic Paper Award (Second Supply Chain Management Symposium, McMaster University, 2004); 6) Best Paper Award (OCIS Division, Academy of Management, 2001).

He currently serves as a Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly and as a Department Editor for IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He recently completed a four year term as an Associate Editor of MIS Quarterly and a three year term as an Associate Editor of Information Systems Research.

Ravi led the effort to design, launch and scale two new graduate programs, MS in Business Analytics and MS in Supply Chain Management. He founded RPI’s Center for Supply Networks and Analytics and established corporate partnerships to support the Center. .

Prior to joining Rensselaer, Dr. Ravichandran had extensive business experience having served as a Consultant to the Reliance Group, as the Assistant Director of National Productivity Council, India and as a Production Manager in Flakt AB (now Asea Brown Boweri). He has also been a successful entrepreneur; he started, built and ran an IT services firm.

Education

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Doctor of Business Administration

Management Information Systems

1996

National Productivity Council, India

Post Graduate Diploma

Industrial Engineering & Information Systems

1987

University of Madras, India

Bachelor of Engineering

Production Engineering

1983

Media Appearances

7 signs it's time to kill an investment

CIO Magazine  print

2021-01-19

...
Strategic IT investments entail risk, but are generally forward-looking in nature. "They are bets made to proactively create digital options for the firm," explains T. Ravichandran, professor of supply chain management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Yet if an investment leads to a project that isn't fully up and running within a pre-defined time-frame — perhaps six months or a year — it might be time to rethink the initiative's strategy and goals, or to move on to something else.

View More

Articles

Value Gains in Business Process Outsourcing: The Vendor Perspective

Information Systems Frontiers

Sukruth Suresh & T. Ravichandran

2021-02-24

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is a contemporary phenomenon that has gained significant traction in recent years. Like other forms of outsourcing, BPO is both beneficial and risky. While extant research has examined the risks in outsourcing for clients, a limited insight exists on the risks associated with BPO for vendors. We examine the contexts in which the value proposition of BPO varies for vendor firms based on the risks associated with the contract. The risk in this context is posited to vary based on the type of task outsourced, the outsourcing motivation of the client and the duration of the contract. Using a sample of 231 BPO announcements over a thirteen-year period, we test our hypotheses using an event study. We find that BPO creates significant value gains for vendor firms, particularly for knowledge intensive processes. In addition, vendors lost value when they were sought out to develop specific capabilities for the clients that involved knowledge intensive processes. While vendors benefited from longer duration contracts, these benefits were not found to significantly vary across the different types of tasks outsourced.

View more

Knowledge Transfers in Alliances: Exploring the Facilitating Role of Information Technology

Information Systems Research

T. Ravichandran, Simona Ileana Giura

2019-08-29

Strategic alliances have become popular organizational forms in the last two decades. Prior research suggests alliances promote knowledge sharing between the partners. In this research, using patent data, we study the impact of information technology (IT) intensity on knowledge flows in alliances. Research has shown that prealliance knowledge stocks of the partners facilitate knowledge flows to the focal firm. We find that knowledge flows to the focal firm are enhanced when the focal firm and its partner have high IT intensity. We find support for our theorizing that IT is a necessary complementary resource that facilitates knowledge flows among partners in alliances.

View more

Exploring the relationships between IT competence, innovation capacity and organizational agility

The Journal of Strategic Information Systems

T. Ravichandran

2018-03-01

Business environments today are characterized as being very dynamic and hyper competitive. Organizations in these environments have to be agile in order to adapt their strategies and actions to be successful. While it is recognized that information technology can enable firms to be agile, there is a limited understanding of the mechanisms through and the contexts in which Information Technology (IT) enhances agility. This study examines two key antecedents of organizational agility, namely the IT competence of a firm and its innovation capacity and, examine their independent and joint effects on agility. We test our model using data collected from large firms in the US. The results provide strong support for our model. We found that firms with superior IS capabilities coupled with an aggressive IT investment orientation create digital platforms that enable them to be agile. We also found that the innovation capacity of the firm has a positive relationship with organizational agility and that firms with higher innovation capacity are better able to leverage their digital platforms to enhance agility. Our results indicate that organizational agility has a strong positive impact of firm performance. We interpret and discuss these results and their theoretical and practical implications.

View more

Show All +