Murmann’s research is mainly focused on studying systematically how firms gain and lose competitive advantage over long periods of time. His award-winning comparative study of the early history of the synthetic dye industry was published in 2003 by Cambridge University Press under the title Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology and National Institutions.

He is continuing his study of the synthetic dye industry, now focusing on the period from 1914 to the present. In this period Japan, China, and India entered the industry, which was previously dominated by entirely European producers. He recently began a multi-year global study with a Finnish team of researchers on how the paper and pulp industry developed over the past 200 years. He also commenced a study of how the Australian Financial sector developed.

Murmann’s research is driven by the conviction that managers, whose experience is focused by necessity on the firms they have worked for, can benefit greatly from learning how all players that make up an industry gained or lost competitive advantage over longer periods of time. By collecting data not only on successful firms but also on failed companies across many industries he strives to develop robust, evidence-based insights into what determines the competitive success of firms. Most recently Professor Murmann founded EEpedia (www.eepedia.net) to create an international, open-source encyclopaedia on the Internet, focusing on the history of firms, technologies, and industries.

Professor Murmann has published his research in books as well as in many scholarly journals such as Organization Science, Industrial & Corporate Change, Research Policy, Research in Organization Behavior, and the Journal of Evolutionary Economics.

Professor Murmann received numerous awards for his research on industrial and technological change. His book Knowledge and Competitive Advantage received the 2004 Joseph Schumpeter Prize and 2004 Stanley Reiter Best Paper Award at the Kellogg School of Management. He also received with Michael Tushman the 1998 Stefan Schrader Best Paper Award of the Academy of Management’s Technology and Innovation Management Division. Most recently he was awarded with Guido Bünstorf the K. William Kapp Prize by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.

Professor Murmann has lectured to diverse audiences all over the world. He has taught core MBA and Executive MBA courses in Strategic Management and the Management of Organizations. His portfolio of Executive teaching includes courses on General Management and Corporate Growth. He has also developed a Ph.D. course on Evolutionary Theories of Organization. While at the Kellogg School of Management, he won the Chair’s Core Course Teaching Award.
Professor Murmann is a member of many scholarly societies and edits websites on Evolutionary Theories in the Social Sciences (etss.net) and on Economic Evolution (economic-evolution.net). He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of International Business Studies.

Johann Peter Murmann is Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the Australian Graduate School of Management. He received a BA in Philosophy with honors from the University of California at Berkeley and a Masters and PhD degree with distinction in Management and Organizations (1998) from Columbia University. Professor Murmann’s award winning research focuses mainly on studying systematically how firms gain and lose competitive advantage over long periods of time. He has lectured at prestigious universities around the world. Murmann is the founder of the EEpedia (eepedia.net), an open-source Internet encyclopaedia for the history of firms, technologies, and industries.

Evolution of Competitive Advantage in the International Synthetic Dye Industry, 1850-Present;

Project on the Competitiveness of Firms in the Global Paper & Pulp Industry, 1805-2005;

Institutional Theory of Competitive Advantage;

Theory of the Management in High Tech Industries