Amol Joshi

Amol M. Joshi, Ph.D. is a Bern Beatty Fellow and an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the Wake Forest University School of Business.

Amol enjoys working with undergraduate and graduate students, managers, and aspiring entrepreneurs around the world to help them pursue their business dreams. Amol has trained startup founders and executives in the U.S., Austria, Denmark, and Vietnam.

Amol researches how inventors create and commercialize new technologies and manage their intellectual property across organizational boundaries and international borders. He developed his expertise in innovation management over a 13-year career as an engineer, entrepreneur, and executive in venture capital-funded startups and high-growth public companies in Silicon Valley. He is the co-inventor of 2 patents for voice products. Amol co-founded BeVocal, a speech recognition software startup (acquired by Nuance Communications) and served as VP of Sales & Marketing (1999-2003).

His research is funded through competitive external grants from private foundations and government agencies. Amol is a 2016 Kauffman Foundation Junior Faculty Fellow and a 2010 Kauffman Dissertation Fellow in Entrepreneurship Research. In 2020, Amol was the co-Principal Investigator for a $200,000 RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to examine the effects of COVID-19 on U.S. small business innovation ecosystem. He was also the Principal Investigator for a $50,000 NSF Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) grant (2015).

He is actively involved in analyzing and recommending improvements to innovation policies at the national, regional, and local government levels. Amol was appointed to three independent National Academies of Sciences Study Committees for evaluating the small business R&D grant programs and technology transfer processes at the NSF and National Institutes of Health (2020-Present), and the U.S. Department of Energy (2018-2020). These committees report their findings to the U.S. Congress. Amol also serves as a Faculty Research Fellow for CREATE, which is a non-partisan think tank and policy lab focused on statewide economic development issues in North Carolina.

Amol has published his research in leading scholarly journals, including: the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ), the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), Organization Science (OrgSci), the Journal of Management, Research Policy, Organizational Research Methods, Small Business Economics, the Global Strategy Journal, and Management Information Systems Quarterly Executive. He currently serves on the Editorial Review Boards of 4 journals ranked in the Financial Times Top 50: SMJ, JIBS, OrgSci, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.

Expertise

• Founding and launching high-tech entrepreneurial ventures
• Creating and commercializing scientific discoveries and new technologies
• Transferring and licensing out technologies from universities and government labs
• Analyzing and evaluating national, regional, and local innovation policies
• Managing and protecting intellectual property (IP)
• Funding and supporting minority-, women-, and veteran-owned small businesses
• Internationalizing and expanding R&D operations via partnerships

Education

• Ph D, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kenan-Flagler Business School (Business Administration (Strategy and Entrepreneurship)) - 2011
• MBA, Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business (Business Administration) - 1998
• MS, Dartmouth College, Thayer School of Engineering (Engineering Sciences (Computer Architecture)) - 1997
• BS, Georgia Institute of Technology (Electrical Engineering (with Highest Honor)) - 1992

Honors

• 2021 - Bern Beatty Faculty Fellowship, Wake Forest University, School of Business
• 2021 - High Impact Scholarship Award, Wake Forest University, School of Business
• 2020 - CREATE Fellow, Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
• 2020 - RAPID Grant for Research on U.S. Small Business Innovation Ecosystem ($200,000), National Science Foundation (NSF)
• 2019 - External Service Award, Oregon State University, College of Business
• 2019 - Prominent Scholar Award (received 2 awards, both in 2019), Oregon State University, College of Business
• 2019 - Scholarly Impact Award, Oregon State University, College of Business
• 2018 - Professor of the Semester Award for Teaching Excellence in Distance Learning Executive MBA Programs, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Shidler College of Business
• 2017 - Best Paper Prize for Article Published in 2017 SBE Special Issue on Minority Entrepreneurship, Small Business Economics (SBE)
• 2017 - Betty and Forrest Simmons Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award, Oregon State University, College of Business
• 2016 - Byron L. Newton Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, Oregon State University, College of Business
• 2016 - Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research (1 of 7 nationwide), Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
• 2015 - Innovation-Corps (I-Corps) Grant ($50,000), National Science Foundation (NSF)
• 2015 - Newcomb Associates Award, Oregon State University, College of Business
• 2013 - Best Reviewer Award, Strategic Management Society (SMS)
• 2013 - Professor of the Semester Award for Teaching Excellence in MBA Programs, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Shidler College of Business
• 2012 - Professor of the Semester Award for Teaching Excellence in Executive MBA Programs, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Shidler College of Business
• 2012 - Finalist (1 of 7 worldwide), Academy of Management Wiley-Blackwell Award for Outstanding Dissertation Research in Business Policy and Strategy , Academy of Management, BPS Division
• 2012 - Best Reviewer Award, Academy of International Business (AIB)
• 2012 - Runner-Up, Best Conference Paper Award, Academy of International Business (AIB)
• 2012 - Shirley M. Lee Award for Research Excellence, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Shidler College of Business
• 2010 - Finalist (1 of 8 worldwide), INFORMS Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition, INFORMS Organization Science
• 2010 - Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship for Entrepreneurship Research (1 of 15 nationwide), Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
• 2010 - Peggy Lee-Sunil Wahal Award for Most Outstanding Ph.D. Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kenan-Flagler Business School
• 2010 - Future Faculty Fellowship (1 of 25 university-wide), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Office of the Provost and Center for Faculty Excellence
• 2004 - Top 40 Business Leader Under 40, Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal