STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Whether declaring that "a little paranoia may help" a company's performance or arguing about marketing organizational structures ("If it's everybody's job, it's nobody's responsibility"), David Montgomery of the Graduate School of Business Faculty has been a pioneer in marketing research since the 1960s.

"Dave has always demonstrated an abiding interest in real problems of real marketing managers. His research has shown both relevance and rigor," Professor Marian Moore of the University of Virginia said in August during the American Marketing Association Educator's Conference, where Montgomery was presented with the prestigious Mahajan Award.

Montgomery, the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing Strategy, Emeritus, is the third researcher to be honored for lifetime contributions. Each recipient has had a Business School connection—including David Aaker, PhD '70, of the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School, who is the father of current Business School marketing faculty member Jennifer Aaker, and George Day of the Wharton School, who taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for more than five years.

Montgomery's prize-winning 1988 paper "First Mover Advantages" argued that firms don't choose to be pioneers; rather, "pioneering opportunities arise endogenously…[gaining] first mover opportunities through a combination of proficiency and luck." A 1996 paper, "Perceiving Competitive Reactions: The Value of Accuracy (and Paranoia)," found that performance is enhanced for teams that are paranoidÑthose that perceive their competitors as reacting to them when, in fact, they are not. But missing reactions was found to badly hurt a firm. He also has written on strategic alliances, strategic intelligence, marketing models, and on why marketing and manufacturing should work together in some 10 books and nearly 100 articles.