Alain Fayolle

Alain Fayolle is Professor of Entrepreneurship at CREA – Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Activities, University of Cagliari, Italy and at IDRAC Business School. He is visiting professor at Turku School of Economics and the university of Beira Interior (Portugal). He is also Chair of the Strategic and Prospective Committee at IFAG, school of management and entrepreneurship, France. Alain has been Distinguished Professor and the Founder and Director of the Entrepreneurship Research Centre at emlyon business school, France. He published forty-five books and over two hundred articles. He is a member of the editorial board of several international journals and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Small Business Management. In 2013, Alain Fayolle got the 2013 European Entrepreneurship Education Award and has been elected officer of the Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division for a five-year period (2013-2018), a position that culminated as Chair of the Division during the 2016-2017 academic year. In 2015, he has been awarded Wilford L. White Fellow by ICSB.

Benson Honig

Benson Honig (Ph.D. Stanford University) is the Teresa Cascioli Chair in Entrepreneurial Leadership, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University. Research interests include business planning, nascent entrepreneurship, transnational entrepreneurship, ethics in scholarship, immigration and social entrepreneurship, social capital, and entrepreneurship in transition environments.  He has published in leading academic journals (over 100 peer reviewed articles) and serves on ten editorial boards, including the AMLE,AMD,JBV,JMS & ET&P. Past chair of the Academy of Management Ethics Education Committee, Ethicist blogger, has served on the Babson conference board and on the Entrepreneurship Division of AOM. He is a board member of the Africa Academy of Management.

Sarfraz MIAN

Sarfraz A. Mian is Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management, Department Chair at School of Business, State University of New York (SUNY), Oswego. He earned his Master’s in Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences from Northwestern University and an MBA and PhD in Business Administration from the George Washington University.  He was a visiting faculty at University of Maryland (US), Osnabruck University (Germany), LUMS (Pakistan).

Mian is the first scholar who highlighted the prominent role of modern universities in supporting knowledge/technology based entrepreneurship by promoting startup ecosystems with the help of business incubation mechanisms. Building on his early doctoral work on university business incubators, he continued to study entrepreneurial universities and business incubation programs around the world over the last 30 years. Recently, he was ranked both by the Journal of Technology Transfer (2018) and the Journal of Business Research (2016) as the most productive scholar with highest impact (measured in citations of his work) on technology business incubation and acceleration research in the world. He has authored/coauthored 4 books and more than 50 articles in professional journals including: Journal of Business Venturing, Research Policy, Small Business Economics, Technovation, Journal of Technology Transfer, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, R&D Management, Journal of High Technology Management Research, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Project Management Journal.

Mian’s research interests include new venture creation and startup support through incubation mechanisms, entrepreneurial university and its role in innovation & entrepreneurship ecosystems development, entrepreneurship education, support for student entrepreneurs and STEM startups, entrepreneurial management of SMEs and family businesses.

Dr. Mian had been an elected officer at the Academy of Management and INFORMS. As lead faculty in entrepreneurship, he directs his business school’s entrepreneurship initiatives, and has developed an entrepreneurship program available to students from all academic disciplines.   

Andrew Maxwell

Andrew Maxwell, P.Eng., is the inaugural Bergeron Chair in Technology Entrepreneurship at the Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, and is director of both the BESTLab, a centre to support student-led technology ventures, and Lassonde’s new Manufacturing, Technology and Entrepreneurship Research Centre. Andrew is winner of the President’s University-Wide Teaching Award (2022), and the Academy of Management’s Heizer Award (2012) for entrepreneurship research (based on his PhD in technology entrepreneurship at the University of Waterloo).

In addition to his teaching roles, Andrew has garnered a unique blend of experience in industry, entrepreneurial ventures, and university technology transfer offices. This allows him to contribute to ongoing research in technology entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, and the transformation of university educational experiences. He has spoken at a number of global industry and academic conferences on topics such as trust and innovation, transforming university technology commercialization, and the reimagination of the student learning experience.  He is an editor of the  Journal Of Business Venturing and serves as a subject matter expert for two publications: IEEE’s Transactions in Technology Management and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.