T.S. (Tony) Frost
Associate Professor
Walter A. Thompson Faculty Fellow

Tony Frost is an associate professor of international business, and the former MBA Program Director at the Richard Ivey School of Business. Frost received his Ph.D. from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. His thesis "The Geographic Sources of Innovation in the Multinational Enterprise" received the inaugural Gunnar Hedlund Award for the best doctoral dissertation in international business. Before earning his Ph.D., Frost completed the first year of Sloan’s MBA program and worked as an intern at Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Washington. His undergraduate degree (BComm) is from the University of British Columbia.

Frost’s research interests revolve around strategy and competition in a global context. The main focus of his research is on the capacity of foreign subsidiaries to assimilate, utilize and transfer geographically localized knowledge during the process of technological innovation. Papers from this research stream have been presented at various academic conferences and published in leading academic journals. More recently, Frost has embarked on a research project looking at competitive dynamics between multinationals and local firms in emerging markets. A paper from this project, co-authored with Ivey’s Niraj Dawar, was recently published in Harvard Business Review. Frost’s research has been funded by various organizations including Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Center for European Studies at Harvard University, Industrial Performance Center at MIT, and Carnegie Bosch Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Since joining Ivey in 1996, Tony Frost has taught Ph.D., MBA and undergraduate courses in Business, Economics and Public Policy and strategic management. He has also taught on several Ivey executive programs, including the recently launched Accelerating Management Talent program. He is currently Program Director of the Erasmus program in partnership with the Rotterdam School of Management. Frost also teaches specialized executive programs for emerging market companies in various locations around the world.

PROGRAM TEACHING

Global Environment of Business
General Management
Business Policy Special Fields I & II

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Frost, Tony S., J. Birkinshaw and P. Ensign. Forthcoming. “Centers of excellence in multinational firms”. Strategic Management Journal. Center of Excellence survey (Click to download PDF file)
• Frost, Tony S. 2001. “The geographic sources of foreign subsidiaries’ innovations”. Strategic Management Journal. 22: 101-123
• Frost, Tony S. and C. Zhou. 2000. “The economy geography of foreign innovation: An evolutionary perspective on location-technology selection by multinational firms”, International Studies of Management and Organization, Special Issue on “MNE Clustering: Leading-edge multinationals using leading-edge clusters”. 30:2 (Summer), pp.10-43.
• Dawar, N. and T. Frost. 1999. "Competing with giants: Survival Strategies for Emerging Market Companies". Harvard Business Review, March/April.

EXPERIENCE

Associate Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business, U.W.O., 2004-Present
Assistant Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business, U.W.O., 1996-2004
Teaching Assistant, Sloan School of Management, MIT, 1991-1994

EXPERTISE

Foreign Investment and Host Country Economies
Geography of Technological Innovation
Multinational Corporations