Raphael Amit

Raphael (“Raffi”) Amit is the Marie and Joseph Melone Professor and a Professor of Management at the Wharton School. Dr. Amit founded and leads the Wharton Global Family Alliance (WGFA), a unique academicfamily business partnership established to enhance the marketplace advantage and the social wealth creation contributions of global families through thought leadership, knowledge transfer and the sharing of ideas and best practices among influential global families.

Dr. Amit holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics, and received his Ph.D. in Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Dr. Amit’s current research and teaching interests center on family business management, governance, and finance, on venture capital and private equity investments, on entrepreneurship, on the design of business models and on business strategy.  He has published extensively in leading academic journals and is frequently quoted in a broad range of practitioner outlets.

He has published widely cited, award winning research on a broad range of issues that relate to ownership, management and control of family businesses. He has been working with substantial families around the world on such issues as creating governance systems for families and their businesses, succession, valuation, wealth management and the formation of a family office, and more. Overall, the work of Dr. Amit with families integrates the behavioral and emotional issues that characterize the life of each family, with the economic and financial issues that must be addressed to sustain family harmony and happiness alongside with the longterm prosperity of the family business.

Professor Amit has held a range of management and Board of Directors positions in various companies. He served as Chair of the Board of Directors of Creo Products Inc. for 6 years. (NASDAQ: CREO until May 2005 when it was acquired by Kodak.)  Professor Amit has helped form the Korean Global IT Fund, a $100 million VC fund and has served as the first Chairman of the KGIF Advisory Board. He has served on the Board of Directors of Alvarion Ltd. a wireless communication equipment company, and has been a member of the Audit and Compensation Committees of Alvarion. He has also served as the only external director of a private family owned and controlled firm in Hong Kong.  Dr. Amit advises numerous private and publicly held family businesses, on a broad range of strategic, governance and financial issues.

Research Interests: business model innovation, family business, strategic management, entrepreneurship, venture capital financing of startups

Awards and Honors

• Sage Scholarly Impact Award – Finalist, 2016
• Best Paper in Financial Management, Financial Management Association Annual Meeting, 2012
• Elected Fellow of the Strategic Management Society, 2009
• The Idea Award for thought leadership. Entrepreneurship Division, the Academy of Management, 2008
• The Greif Entrepreneurship Research Impact Award, 2007
• European Corporate Governance Institute for best paper in Finance prize “Benefits and costs of control: Enhancing Mechanisms in U.S. Family Firms”, 2007
• Family Firm Institute best unpublished research paper (“Benefits and Costs of Control enhancing mechanisms in U.S Family Firms”), 2006
• Strategic Management Journal Best Paper Prize “Strategic Assets and Organization Rents” (with Paul Schoemaker, Volume 14 Number 1, January 1993), 2000
• McKinsey & Company/Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Prize Honorable Mention. 20th Annual International Conference October 2000 Vancouver Canada for “Value Drivers of e-Commerce Business Models” (with C. Zott), 2000
• Discovery Foundation Research Fellow, 1994
• Ascendant Scholar Award, Western Academy of Management, 1993
• Richard M. Paget Research Professor, 1989-1990
• J.L. Kellogg Research Professor, 1984-1989
• Northwestern University Doctoral Fellowship, 1974-1977