Tony Michael O'Driscoll

O'Driscoll

Adjunct Professor of Business Administration

Tony O’Driscoll is a professor, speaker, author, and advisor whose engaging message emphasizes that the key digital-age differentiator is not technology, but people.

Tony has spent the bulk of his professional and academic career at the nexus of Business, Innovation, Technology and Learning, creating and implementing strategies that enable organizations to realize the full potential of their most valuable asset: Human Beings. 

Dr. O’Driscoll’s current appointments as Adjunct Professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Pratt School of Engineering coupled with his role as Research Fellow at Duke Corporate Education afford him the unique opportunity to apply cutting-edge academic research to address increasingly complex business challenges. 

During his 18-year corporate career, Tony held several strategic leadership positions. At Duke Corporate Education, he launched the company’s Asian operation and led innovation at CE Labs. At IBM, he was a founding member of IBM Global Service’s Strategy and Change consulting practice where he consulted at the highest level with business executives on creating competitive advantage in increasingly complex environments. He also served as a member IBM’s Almaden Services Research Group where he investigated the changing roles of leadership, innovation, and collaboration as enterprises become more global, virtual, open and digitally mediated. At both IBM and Nortel Networks, Tony had strategic responsibility for crafting and implementing enterprise-level learning, transformation, and human performance improvement strategies.

Dr. O’Driscoll is a frequently invited speaker at both corporate and academic conferences. He has been a keynote speaker, workshop leader, moderator, speaker and panelist at over 130 national and international conferences. He has also provided expert analysis and interviews to media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Wired Magazine, TheFinancial Times, India Today, Chief Learning Officer Magazine, Training Magazine and for industry analysts such as Gartner and Forrester. 

Tony has authored and co-authored articles for business periodicals such as Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, Strategy and Business, and Dialogue and writes a column for Training Magazine.  He has also published two books on Learning and Organization Performance: Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning andCollaboration, and Achieving Desired Business Performance.  His next book, Everyday Superheroes - to be released inMarch 2022 - proposes a revolutionary People-Centered Transformation (PCT) approach to enable sustained and sustainable organization agility. 

Dr. O’Driscoll has contributed to science via publications in journals such as Management Information Sciences Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, Performance Improvement Quarterly and the Journal of Product and Innovation Management. His current research and practice examines how rapidly emerging technologies are disrupting existing industry structures and business models. He specifically focuses on how to develop leadership systems that enable organizations to adapt and evolve in increasingly unpredictable and turbulent business environments.  

Along with his teaching, research and formal speaking engagements, Dr. O’Driscoll maintains an active consulting practice. His client list includes Fortune 500 companies across a broad range of industries including High-Technology, Banking, Biotechnology, Software Development, Gaming, Energy, Retail and Professional Services.  

Dr. O’Driscoll holds an Ed.D. in Organization Learning and an M.S. in Management from North Carolina State University.  His B.S. in Electrical Engineering is from Virginia Tech. 

Appointments and Affiliations

  • Adjunct Professor of Business Administration

Contact Information

  • Office Location: W205 Fuqua School of Business, Durham, NC 27708
  • Office Phone: +1 919 660 7772
  • Email Address: tony.odriscoll@duke.edu
  • Websites:

Education

  • Ed.D. North Carolina State University, 1998
  • M.B.A. North Carolina State University, 1994
  • B.S.E.E. Virginia Polytech Institute and State University, 1991

Courses Taught

  • STRATEGY 899: Independent Study
  • STRATEGY 895F: Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum
  • STRATEGY 559Q: People Analytics
  • MGMTCOM 506F: Business Communication 2
  • FUQINTRD 681G: Global Markets and Institutions 3
  • FUQINTRD 680G: Global Markets and Institutions 2
  • FUQINTRD 679G: Global Markets and Institutions 1
  • EGRMGMT 590: Advanced Topics in Engineering Management
  • EGRMGMT 542: Competitive Strategy in Technology-Based Industries
  • EGRMGMT 510: Marketing

Representative Publications

  • Kapp, K; O'Driscoll, T, Designing virtual immersive environments, T and D, vol 64 no. 4 (2010), pp. 30-32 [abs].
  • Reeves, ; Malone, ; O'Driscoll, , Letter to the editor, Harvard Business Review, vol 86 no. 9 (2008), pp. 130-131 [abs].
  • Reeves, B; Malone, TW; O'Driscoll, T, Leadership's online labs, Harvard Business Review, vol 86 no. 5 (2008) [abs].
  • O'Driscoll, T; Sugrue, B; Vona, MK, The C-level and the value of learning, T and D, vol 59 no. 10 (2005), pp. 70-78 [abs].
  • Sugrue, B; O'Driscoll, T; Blair, D, What in the world is WLP?, T and D, vol 59 no. 1 (2005), pp. 51-52 [abs].