Robert Burgelman carries out longitudinal field-based research on the role of strategy in firm evolution. He has examined how companies enter new businesses (through corporate entrepreneurship and internal corporate venturing as well as through acquisition) and leave others (through strategic business exit), and how success may lead to co-evolutionary lock-in with the environment.

Professor Burgelman’s research has focused on organizations where strategic action is distributed among multiple levels of management. He has written some 145 case studies of companies in many different technology-based industries.