US Northeast

 

 

The Pennsylvania State University

 

Dr. Anthony C. Warren   twarren@psu.edu

Director of the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship

and Farrell Professor of Entrepreneurship

 

Research Director:  Raghu Garud    rug14@psu.edu

Clinical Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship:  Robert Macy    rmacy@psu.edu

Administrative Assistant:  Anna Mary Loope    ams1@psu.edu

 

 

Center Overview

 

The Farrell Center was formed in 1992 through an endowment from Michael J. Farrell. The center has three major roles within the Smeal College of Business (www.smeal.psu.edu) at Penn State: creation and management of educational programs in corporate innovation and entrepreneurship; research; and outreach.  The center’s mission is to contribute to and interpret the best in academic research in the fields of entrepreneurship including innovation and knowledge management and translate this into actionable best practices in the commercial and government sectors.  Entrepreneurship is treated as a fundamental management discipline that can be applied at any enterprise scale, from start-ups to global corporations.  Of particular interest is the role of entrepreneurship in networks of corporations as well as so-called virtual corporations where the interfaces between existing entities become blurred.

 

Overview of Academic Programs

 

Undergraduate: Currently the Smeal College offers an UG minor in entrepreneurship together with Penn State’s College of Engineering. In this way, engineering students benefit from the exposure to business practices and the business students work on actual technology driven opportunities created within the engineering school. At the advanced planning stage is the addition of a full undergraduate entrepreneurship program within the business school.

 

MBA: The Smeal MBA program offers  six major portfolios including “corporate innovation and entrepreneurship”. The portfolio is largely clinical in content whereby students take actual current cases, both at the start-up level and in major corporations as vehicles for entrepreneurship training and execution. For example, the students manage a $5MM venture fund within the curriculum, undertaking due diligence on investment-ready companies, voting on the deal as venture partners and finalizing the transaction.

 

Executive Education: Market research at the CEO level has shown that corporate innovation is considered the number one factor for success. Customized and general enrollment courses in the “management of and investment in innovation” are offered by the highly rated Penn State Executive Education Division of the Smeal College.

 

Research  

 

The Research Director, Clemens Professor Raghu Garud, guides the research for the Center. Currently research covers in the following areas:  the relationship between ownership structure and ROI within VC funded companies; best practices for knowledge management in global corporations, metrics for innovation management, quantification of corporate propensity for change, open and networked innovation, service and hybrid innovation, new models for technology transfer and University’s roles in economic development, and problem-based pedagogies for entrepreneurship learning.. These programs are partly sponsored by corporate partners of the center as well as grants from State and Government agencies.

 

Outreach

 

The center provides help to emerging companies in the Middle Atlantic States.  Some of these companies are founded on technology generated from Penn State’s research programs currently funded to over $400MM annually.  Students in the Business School also undertake investment due diligence under the center’s guidance on behalf of Pennsylvania-based angel investor groups and the Ben Franklin Technology Partnership also located on campus. The center has also developed several web 2.0 tools including a teaching site for opportunity pitching, and a collaborative innovation network for economic development.

 

The Center Director is Dr. Anthony C. Warren, Farrell Clinical Professor for Entrepreneurship. Dr. Warren comes to the center after a career in corporate consulting and venture capital. He is also currently a Venture Partner in Adams Capital Management (www.acm.com), a major VC firm with over $700MM in management. This relationship provides students with hands-on experience in venture management. The center has three advisory boards, one each for the center direction, venture capital, and academic programs.

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Recent Publications

 

The Smeal College faculty undertakes significant academic research in entrepreneurship and related areas.  The following is a list of some recent publications:

 

Anthony Warren, Ralph Hanke, and Daniel Trotzer:  “Models for University Technology Transfer:  Resolving Conflicts between Mission and Methods and the Dependency on Geographic Location.”  Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 1(2):219-232 (2008).

 

Duncan Fong:  "Forecasting the Penetration of a New Product - A Bayesian Approach.”  Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 18(4):428-435 (2000).

 

Karen Jansen: "The Emerging Dynamics of Change: Resistance, Readiness, and Momentum.”  Human Resource Planning, 23(2):53-55 (2000).

 

Martin Kilduff:  "Organizational Culture from a Network Perspective.”  Handbook of Organizational Culture & Climate, pp. 211-221 (2000).

 

Charles Snow:  "Good for Practice:  An Integrated Theory of the Value of Alternative Organizational Forms.”  Strategic Flexibility:  Managing in a Turbulent Environment, pp. 93-113 (1998).

 

Charles Snow:  "Entrepreneurial Strategies.”  Entrepreneurship as Strategy,  pp. 101-114 (2000).

 

Ann Echols: "Forecasting the Penetration of a New Product - A Bayesian Approach.”  Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 18(4):428-435  (2000).

 

Gary Gittings: “Managing Product Liability to Achieve Highway Innovations NCHRP Synthesis.”  No. 265  (1998).

 

Gerald Susman:  “Test of a Model of Organizational Contributors to Product Development Team Effectiveness.”  Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, (1998).

 

Dunbar, R. and Garud , R. 2008. Distributed knowledge processes and indeterminate meaning: The case of the Columbia shuttle flight. Organization Studies. (Forthcoming)

 

Bartel, C. and Garud, R. 2008. “The role of narratives in sustaining organizational innovation Organization Science. (In Press)

 

Garud, R. 2008. Conferences as venues for the configuration of emerging fields: The case of cochlear implants” Journal of Management Studies, 45:6, 1061-1088.

 

Garud, R. Jain, S. and Tuertscher, P. 2008. Incomplete by design and designing for incompleteness, Organization Studies, 29(3): 351-371.

 

Garud, R. and Munir, K. 2008. From transactions to transformation costs: The case of Polaroid’s SX-70 Camera. Research Policy, 37/4 pp. 690-705

 

Garud, R. Hardy, C. and Maguire S. 2007 Institutional entrepreneurship as embedded agency: An introduction to the special issue, Organization Studies No. 7, 957-969.  

 

Beunza, D and Garud, R. 2007. “Securities analysts as frame makers” in M. Callon, Y. Millo and F. Muniesa Market Devices, Blackwell Publishers, UK, pp. 13-39.

 

Garud, R. Kumaraswamy, A. and Sambamurthy V. 2006. Emergent by design: Performance and transformation at Infosys Technologies, Organization Science, 17 (2): 277-286.

 

Garud, R., Kumaraswamy, A. and Sambamurthy, V. 2006. “Harnessing knowledge resources for increasing returns: Scalable structuration at Infosys technologies” In E. Hess and R. Kazanjian (eds.) The Search for Organic Growth Cambridge University Press, 211-243.

 

 

For More Information

 

The Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Smeal College of Business, 451 Business Building, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802. Telephone:  814-865-0195.

Email: fcfe@smeal.psu.edu Web site: http://www.smeal.psu.edu