Martin Ihrig

Martin Ihrig is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. He is also associate dean and clinical professor at New York University and an adjunct professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. As a faculty member at Penn GSE, Dr. Ihrig teaches in the Penn Chief Learning Officer program and the Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership. Also at Penn GSE, he served as the founding academic director of the nation’s first executive master’s in Education Entrepreneurship program.

As a faculty member at the Wharton School, Dr. Ihrig teaches strategy, entrepreneurship, and innovation in the open enrollment and customized programs at the Aresty Institute of Executive Education. His research and consulting focuses on the strategic and entrepreneurial management of knowledge (SEM-K), and he is the co-founder and former research director of the SEM-K initiative at Wharton's Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center.

In his position at New York University, Dr. Ihrig runs the Division of Programs in Business at the NYU School of Professional Studies. Dr. Ihrig is also the co-founder and president of I-Space Institute, an applied research and consulting venture that helps organizations create innovation growth opportunities. In addition, he has previously served as a visiting professor at Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland. He received his Master of Business Studies from University College Dublin and his doctorate in Business Administration from Technische Universität Berlin.

Education

• Ph.D. (Management) Technische Universität Berlin, 2010
• M.B.S. (Strategy) University College Dublin, 2003

Areas of Expertise

• Strategy
• Entrepreneurship
• Knowledge
• Innovation
• Work-based learning

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Ihrig is interested in knowledge strategy, including how organizations can identify their critical knowledge assets and deploy them most effectively. Dr. Ihrig’s academic research focuses on studying entrepreneurial opportunity recognition strategies with the help of agent-based simulations. He has also investigated the evolution and mapping of knowledge in the multi-billion dollar ATLAS experiment at CERN.

At Penn GSE, Dr. Ihrig has focused on innovation and entrepreneurship in education. Being passionate about music and the arts, he most recently led a research project mapping the arts education ecosystem in Philadelphia. The findings of the study resulted in the School District of Philadelphia’s launch of the Arts & Creativity Framework.

In 2015, Dr. Ihrig’s article, “Managing Your Mission Critical Knowledge” (Harvard Business Review), co-authored with Ian MacMillan, was nominated for the HBR McKinsey Award. His work was also featured in the interview “How to Determine Which Part of What You Know Really Matters” on Knowledge@Wharton. His article, “How to Get Ecosystem Buy-In” (Harvard Business Review), also co-authored with MacMillan, highlights his work on ecosystems and innovation.

In developing strategy tools for corporate and public sector decision makers, Dr. Ihrig has worked with organizations such as BAE Systems (U.S.), the Boeing Company (U.S.), Vale (Brazil), Merck (U.S.), and the Philadelphia Orchestra (U.S.). His research projects have been funded by the Economic & Social Research Council (UK), the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN (Switzerland), Tekes (Finland), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (U.S.), and the Neubauer Family Foundation (U.S.).