Marc Ventresca

Marc Ventresca is an organisational and economic sociologist who teaches technology and innovation strategy at Saïd Business School. He joined Oxford in 2004, where he is Governing Body Fellow, Wolfson College, and Fellow, Institute for Science, Innovation, and Society. He is Research Associate Professor of Global Public Policy at the US Naval Postgraduate School and Senior Scholar, Centre for Innovation and Communication, Stanford University. He holds research affiliations at the Center for Organizations Research at UC Irvine and at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University.

Marc is active in teaching and research initiatives focused on innovation & entrepreneurship. With Oxford colleagues, he is the architect of popular MBA-EMBA-Diploma courses on Strategy and Innovation and on ‘Rethinking Business’ to meet 21st c challenges. He developed the first EMBA elective on entrepreneurial and organizational strategies and the first MBA-EMBA course on strategy implementation. He is the faculty lead for Science Innovation Plus, a teaching partnership between the School and Division of Materials, Physical and Life Sciences that engages researchers in the basic sciences with MBAs to increase innovation and tech transfer. He works with MPLS colleagues to offer a series of business plan events for doctoral researchers and MBAs on renewable energy, digital economy, and other timely topics.

He is a core faculty member for the Goldman Sachs 10K Women Entrepreneurs Programme in the Oxford-Zhejiang University collaboration. He is an advisor to five start ups founded by recent Oxford alumni and also for the ‘Inspiring Women in Leadership and Learning’ initiative. His work is recognized in several teaching awards: Sidney Levy Teaching Award at the Kellogg School (2003), MBA Teaching Award at Copenhagen Business School (2004); and recently the EMBA Faculty Teaching Prize at Oxford (2010).

His research investigates governance innovation among global financial markets, entrepreneurial leadership in knowledge- and -information-intensive organisations, and emerging ecosystem services markets. He is founding convenor of the research seminar series ‘Strategies, Institutions and Practices at Saïd’ (SBS). He publishes in management, sociology, and policy journals, as well as in scholarly books, most recently in Organization Science, Theory and Society, Environmental Science and Policy, and Academy of Management Journal. He is also author of several classroom teaching notes and cases, mostly recent ‘New Leaf Paper’ on innovation strategies in the green paper industry. He serves on journal editorial boards and is a regular reviewer for the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Oxford University Press.

Marc is a popular executive teacher in strategy, leadership, and innovation, and he teaches occasionally for the University of California, Mediterranean Business School, and the Naval Postgraduate School and Geneva Center for Security Policy. Firms and civil society agency partners include Allergan, Association of European Psychiatrists, BT, British Energy, Career Innovation, Connections for the Homeless, Citizens Information Service, Danish Centre for Leadership, El Pollo Loco, Forum UK, IBM, League of Women Voters of Illinois, Oxford Executive Education, U.S. Navy Executive Leadership Office, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Standard Chartered Bank, U.S. Navy 3rd Fleet, and Zurich Insurance.

He earned the Ph.D. at Stanford University and held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford. Prior to joining Oxford, he served on faculty at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and Department of Sociology, Northwestern University. He has held visiting faculty posts at the University of Illinois, Stanford University School of Engineering, the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, and the University of California at Irvine. After earning a BA in politics (social theory and policy) at Stanford University, Marc worked for the US Congressional Budget Office and in social innovation and university administration, then returned to Stanford for graduate degrees in education policy analysis and organizational and cultural sociology.