Dr. Niyazi Taneri

Niyazi Taneri is Professor of Innovation and Operations Management at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. His research combines analytical modelling, empirical analysis, randomised trials, and data analytics, with a focus on innovation, operations, human–AI collaboration, and the design of incentives within and across firms. His work has applications to technology-enabled business models, sustainability, resilience, and risk management. He studies how better decisions, organisational design, and strategic partnerships can improve performance in complex organisations and systems. His research is particularly relevant to pharmaceutical and healthcare organisations managing R&D portfolios, biotech–pharma partnerships, incentive design, operational transformation, and AI-enabled decision-making.

His executive teaching and advisory work support leaders seeking to improve decision quality, manage complex portfolios, build resilient operations, and translate innovation into measurable organisational impact. He has advised more than 60 industry projects with organisations including Changi Airport Group, Google, Infineon, Panalpina, PSA, RedMart, SBS Transit, SingHealth, and SMRT. He has also worked with Executive Education clients at NUS and Cambridge across sectors, including HSBC, Barclays, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, MinMed, and Merck. In the GCC, he has worked with several ministries and Saudi Awwal Bank. In selected GCC engagements, he has developed and deployed bilingual Arabic- and English-speaking Voice AI agents.

Prof. Taneri was awarded a Fulbright Commission scholarship for his first degree in Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He holds a master's degree in Management Science from the University of Cambridge, where he studied as a British Chevening Scholar. His master's thesis was conducted with Cambridge Antibody Technology and examined the evaluation of interrelated R&D projects within a portfolio. He completed his PhD at Cambridge as a Commonwealth Scholar. His PhD thesis focused on the design of incentives for pharmaceutical partnerships and received the ISPIM-Wiley Best PhD Dissertation in Innovation Management Award. He has secured and managed more than USD 1 million in research grant funding.

Prior to joining Cambridge, Prof. Taneri worked at NUS Business School, Singapore University of Technology and Design, where he was the Singapore lead for the MIT-SUTD International Design Center's Decision-Making Research Thrust, and Tesco, where he served as an Operations Analyst. He has also held visiting positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and INSEAD.