Dr. Kennedy's research focuses on the emergence of new markets and industries and the more basic building blocks of organising—categories, identities, forms, strategies, practices, reputation criteria and so on. Within this broad topic, he pays particular attention to meaning construction processes, often by using text-mining techniques to extract and analyze patterns of association among actors, ideas and objects as they appear in conventional and new social media. His publications have appeared in American Sociological Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Managment Studies, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations.
Dr. Kennedy was educated at Northwestern University and Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. (Joint Program in Management and Organizations and Sociology) and MBA degrees from Northwestern and its Kellogg School of Management and his A.B. in Philosophy (Program in Formal Systems) from Stanford. Before coming to Imperial, Dr. Kennedy was at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business.
Dr. Kennedy also has substantial work experience in consulting and high technology. Before becoming an academic, he was a Principal in the management consulting unit of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and, before that, a software engineer and product manager for a Santa Clara, CA-based startup. As a consultant, Professor Kennedy has served clients in technology, healthcare and entertainment on difficult issues at the intersection of strategy, leadership, and organisational change.