Prof. Ajay Bhalla

Born into a third-generation family business in India, Ajay is regarded as one of the leading global experts on family businesses and strategy.  He is currently a Professor of Family Business & Innovation at Bayes Business School, City, University of London, where he teaches Family Business courses on graduate programmes and leads Masters in Executive Leadership programme. He has held visiting appointments at Thomas Schmidheiny Centre for Family Business at Indian School of Business.

His deep commitment to family businesses over the past 25 years has led him to engage in research and work with family businesses across the world, offering advice on issues ranging from family governance, succession, next generation engagement to digital transformation.

Since 2018, he has been a board trustee at Institute for Family Business Research Foundation (IFBRF) which aims to foster greater knowledge and understanding of family firms and their contribution to the UK economy and society.

His work stream on ownership has helped shape British government’s policy on promoting employee ownership. He has won multiple awards for his research including the most prestigious award for producing impactful research from Academy of Management and Charted Management Institute (CMI). His work is published in leading journals such as Academy of Management Perspectives, Strategic Organization, Journal of Operations Management and Asia Pacific Journal of Management.

Winner of multiple teaching awards, he is most passionate about helping next generation leaders build resilient family businesses. He is the co-author of Amazon best-seller ‘The Resilient Decision Maker: Navigating Challenges in Business and Life’.