Prior to joining Georgia Tech and after completing her Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Cheryl was a Tenured faculty at Ohio State University. While there, Cheryl worked with a leading machine tool maker in the Midwest that was among the first to manufacture automated machine tools. In a tour of its manufacturing facility by the V.P. for Research, Cheryl observed that the automated machines were being built with manually driven tooling. She was shocked that the firm could not justify the internal investment in its own automated machine tools. How then could it hope to sell that equipment to external customers? This profound observation inspired Cheryl’s career-long study of technology management beginning in the mid-1980’s.
Cheryl’s research demonstrated that the decision to invest in innovative technology cannot be captured in a simple “equipment justification form.” It is a radical strategy impacting every dimension of a firm’s competitive performance in both manufacturing and service industries. Cheryl’s decades-long research in technology management examined critical questions: Given dynamic competitive markets, anticipated technical improvements, and reductions in investment costs, when should a firm adopt innovative technology? How does that investment impact dimensions of competitive performance including operating costs, quality, and the pricing of goods and services? Why must a firm invest in workforce knowledge to benefit from process and product innovation? What strategies reduce disruption and improve the ultimate increase in performance when a firm introduces major technological innovations such as information technology? How should a firm create, share, value, and integrate knowledge across internal and external partnerships? How is knowledge management a driver of entrepreneurial success? Her answer to these questions appears in journals including Management Science, Manufacturing Service Operations Management, Operations Research, Organization Science, and Production and Operations Management.
Early in her career, Cheryl was among those who believed that research in operations management should embrace a range of methodological perspectives. This vision is evident in the cutting-edge scholarship of her doctoral students, the junior faculty she guided at Georgia Tech, and other scholars she impacted through her editorial advisement. In her own 1989 paper in Operations Research, she was the first to employ dynamic game theory in management science and operations research.
Cheryl’s translated her decades of study in technology management to the creation and delivery of an academic program at Georgia Tech. The graduate Certificate in Management of Technology is multidisciplinary experience for graduate students in business, computing, engineering, and science focusing on the transformation of technical and scientific expertise to impact both established and start-up firms operating in global and uncertain markets. The program has awarded Certificates for over 30 years.
Beyond her contributions to teaching at Georgia Tech and her own contributions to research, Cheryl has been a driving force for innovative research in operations and technology management through her 14 years as Associate Editor in Management Science and 20 years as Department Editor in Production and Operations Management. Along with her co-authors, in a 2017 paper in Production and Operations Management, Cheryl identified multidisciplinary research challenges and opportunities in the management of technology domain. Inspired by that seminal article, another leading journal in operations management started a Technology Management Department.
Cheryl has been actively involved in the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS). Cheryl was one of the two founders of the College on Product Innovation and Technology Management. She served as POMS President in 2008-2009, became a POMS Fellow in 2009, and received POM’s Department Editor Award in 2025. In recognition of her astounding contributions to the field, in 2023 POMS initiated the Biennial Cheryl Gaimon Best Innovation Paper Award.
Reflecting upon her vast scholarly achievements, Cheryl is most proud of inspiring and guiding more than 25 outstanding Ph.D. students, many of whom now hold leading academic positions around the world, and of establishing a trailblazing and collegial OM faculty at Georgia Tech. She is an example of pioneering thinking combined with rigorous standards as well as patience, encouragement, and guidance. Cheryl’s career reminds us that while academic success entails publications, it also requires impact on practice, program development, building communities, and inspiring others to do their best work.
