Julia Ivy, Ph.D., is a Professor of Strategy and International Business Group at D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University and a Faculty Director for the MS in International Business.
Many of the cases presented in this series have been initially developed by students as final projects in Dr. Ivy’s “Global Business” and “Strategy in Action” courses, as then converted into teaching cases for the purpose of publication. These cases focus on the intersection of market strategy and global business and the varied challenges therein. Students will be asked to apply critical thinking, market analysis, and cultural agility to work through market entry issues across a range of different contexts.
Dr. Ivy’s teaching and research interests fall in the area of strategic relationships in a low-trust vs. high-trust context, significant choices of personality, strategies for venture development in a state-controlled economy, and pragmatism as a method for use-inspired business research and practice.
Prior to joining Northeastern University in 2012, Dr. Ivy served as a tenured Associate Professor of Management at the University of Alaska and as a principle of the international PSF. Within NEU, Dr. Ivy served as a senior fellow for MS in Leadership and a visiting professor for Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Australia) and for International University of Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City). She also continues her executive coaching and consulting practices in leadership, strategy, and management.
As mentioned above, Dr. Ivy holds two PhDs. Her first is in Psychology, with an emphasis on the making of significant choices by young adults. Her second is in Management, with a specialty in strategy, entrepreneurship, and innovation for business ventures in low-trust vs. high-trust contexts. Through these two disciplines, Dr. Ivy has found that the subjects of both specializations—young adults and business ventures—are seeking new ways to establish rapport on personal and professional levels. Young professionals are frustrated with their inability to prove their potential for injecting a new stream of value into companies’ existing talent pools at a level commensurate with their education and skills. Meanwhile, too often, business executives, unfamiliar with the strengths highly skilled millennials bring, mistake their unconventionality for a lack of traditional work ethic, reliability, and inward focus.
Aware that these two groups of professionals would have much to offer each other if provided a point of intersection, initiated Julia’s work on the BE-EDGE method, which becomes as foundation of her upcoming book “Grafting Your EDGE for Today’s Job Market” (Emerald Publishing Group). In this book, Dr. Ivy illustrates how a process of choosing a consulting case to work on that fits a professional core of the author, developing connection with the industry and company through the process of working on the case, and generating value for the industry and company with the case solution serves as a tool for investing to a person’s personal, social, and professional capital and therefore helps this person craft her own, boutique, space in the job market.
In her work at Northeastern University, Dr. Ivy has been given multiple opportunities to test and perfect the book’s model. In 2012, she launched a Consulting Case Writing Competition for master’s students based on this methodology, and she included a company case as a final project assignment in my courses on leadership, organizational transformation, strategy, and international business, which resulted in my receiving a WOW Award from the College of Professional Studies, a Teaching Innovation Award from D’Armore-McKim School of Business. She has served as keynote speaker and guest presenter with her “Make Your Case to Shape Your Space” speech on BE-EDGE methodology of boutique employability for recent graduates and those who are ready to change their careers.