Joel West, Ph.D. Keck Graduate Institute

Since July 2011, Dr. Joel West has been Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, California, east of Los Angeles.

Founded in 1997, KGI is one of seven members of the Claremont Colleges. Its largest degree program is a two-year Master of Bioscience (MBS), which combines science and business courses for students pursuing careers in biomedical, healthcare or bioagricultural industries. It also offers the Postdoctoral Professional Masters (PPM), a unique one year business program for life science PhDs.

At KGI, Joel teaches business classes in innovation and entrepreneurial management, and supervises Team Master Projects. He is also active in KGI’s technology transfer efforts and is continuing his research on high-tech companies.

Biographical Information

An internationally known researcher on innovation management, Dr. West has been invited to speak at industry and academic events on five continents. He is particularly known for his work on open innovation, as co-editor of Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm (Oxford, 2006) and co-founder (with Henry Chesbrough) of the Open Innovation Community. His other research areas include renewable energy, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, open source software, international business and strategies for IT vendor firms. According to Google Scholar, his research has been cited more than 3,500 times.

He is professor emeritus at San José State University, where he spent nine years as an associate professor and then professor at the College of Business and Lucas Graduate School of Business until retiring in 2011. He has also taught at UC Irvine, Pepperdine and Temple University Japan. He has a Ph.D. in Management from the University of California, Irvine and an S.B. in Interdisciplinary Sciences (Meteorology) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to becoming an academic, he had an extensive industry career as an engineer, manager and entrepreneur in the software industry.

More biographical information is available at LinkedIn, from his curriculum vita, or from his papers indexed by Google Scholar.

He regularly comments on the business of technology in his weblogs, including these directly related to the KGI mission:

• Bio Business, primarily about the economics of drug discovery; Twitter feed: @BioBizBlog
• Cleantech Business, with an emphasis on California renewable energy; Twitter feed: @SolarProf
• Engineering Entrepreneurship, about technology-based startups.

Contact Information

His contact information is:

Professor Joel West
Keck Graduate Institute
535 Watson Drive
Claremont, CA 91711-4817

Direct: (909) 293-8550 (preferred)
Office: (909) 607-0130
Fax: (909) 607-8086
E-mail: 

His official KGI web page is at http://www.kgi.edu/joelwest

Last Updated October 11, 2012

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