Ishtiaq Mahmood

Ishtiaq Pasha Mahmood is a Professor at the NUS Business School where he studies and works with multinational and indigenous companies on their emerging market strategies. He joined the NUS faculty in 1999, after obtaining an economics degree from Oberlin College (1992) and a Ph.D. from Harvard (1999), and an interim stint as a management consultant in Chicago. From 2012 to 2014, Pasha was a Professor at IMD Lausanne where he continues to teach in its flagship Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP) program. He has also taught at the Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, and is a member of the Asian Service Business Research Institute (ASBS) at Waseda University. In 2002, Pasha won the Haynes Prize from the Academy of International Business (AIB) for the most prominent scholar in international business (under 40). More recently in 2014, he has won the Aspen Faculty Pioneer Award; dubbed "the Oscars of the business school world" by The Financial Times, the award recognises educators who integrate social and environmental issues into their academic research, educational programmes and business ethics. Pasha sits on the faculty advisory boards of the Evian Group, and the recently created SONY Reverse Innovation Community. At NUS, he teaches at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and directs the popular "Business Strategies for Asia" program for senior executives.

Pasha Mahmood is a Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School where he studies and works with multinational firms and local enterprises on their emerging market strategies. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s international panel of experts, acting as the co-curator for the ASEAN Transformation Map. Pasha obtained his B.A. in Economics from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Prior to joining academia, he had worked as a management consultant for Gemini in Chicago. From 2012 to 2015, Pasha was a Professor of Strategy and Innovation at the IMD Business School in Switzerland. He has also held several Visiting Professor appointments at universities such as Waseda and Hitotsubashi in Japan, and St. Gallen in Switzerland.Pasha’s work looks at the interface between innovation and strategy in the context of emerging markets.

He won the Haynes Prize by the Academy of International Business (AIB). In 2014, Pasha also won the Aspen Award by the Aspen Institute for promoting sustainable business models in his research and teaching. His recent case on bKash, a fintech firm in Bangladesh, won the bestselling case award in 2021 from Ivey Publications. Pasha’s research has been published at leading management journals including Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), Management Science, Organization Science, Research Policy, Strategic Management Journal, etc.

He has also served as an Area Editor for JIBS from 2010-2013 and as a Senior Editor for the Management Organization Review from 2013-2015. Literature, history, coffee, and train rides are some of his passions. It is the opportunity to be useful to his students and colleagues that excites Pasha the most about his job as a business school professor.