Joel West, Ph.D. Keck Graduate Institute

Dr. Joel West is 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.

Joel’s responsibilities at KGI include:

• teaching business classes related to innovation and entrepreneurship
• supervising Team Master Projects and helping prepare students for their projects
• champion (area coordinator) for the Business of Bioscience focus track within the MBS degree

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.

Before joining KGI in 2011, he spent nine years as an associate professor and then professor at San José State University in its College of Business and Lucas Graduate School of Business. 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 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: 

He also has an official KGI web page: http://www.kgi.edu/joelwest

Last Updated August 29, 2011

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