Igor Ansoff: Father of Modern Strategic Thinking
Igor Ansoff was born in 1918 in Vladivostok, Russia. His mother was Russian while his father was an American diplomat. When he was 18, the family moved to New York where he studied mechanical engineering and physics. He joined Rand Corporation in 1950 where he worked on strategic problem-solving for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Later he worked for Lockheed Aircraft Corp and rose to the rank of vice president. In 1963, he chose to become an academic at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburg. Later he was the founding dean of the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.