20050127:robert ronstadt

Dr. Robert C. Ronstadt

Vice President for Technology Commercialization

  Dr. Robert Ronstadt has pursued careers in academia and private business. He is one of the few “entrepreneurship professors” in the United States who gave up tenure to run a high growth enterprise. Later he returned to academic life, not to pursue a traditional teaching career, but to continue innovating new programs and entities that fostered change within the university. His change-agent role led one publisher to describe him as “a heretic in the ivory tower.”

  Most recently, Dr. Ronstadt was the founding Director of Boston University’s Technology Commercialization Institute in 2003. He also became the nation’s first Vice President of Technology Commercialization at a major university. As such, he was responsible for integrating over 20 programs that were directly involved with moving technology from over 1000 labs at Boston University into the marketplace.

  Prior to working with Boston University, Dr. Ronstadt was the Director of the prestigious IC² Institute at the University of Texas from 1997 to 2002. IC² is a unique “think & do” tank with “hands-on” involvement in economic development, technology commercialization, and innovative education. Dr. Ronstadt expanded the number of IC² Fellows from 80 to 230 distinguished scientists, business leaders, and government officials located around the world. Together they pursued a variety of commercialization programs in the United States and abroad.

  Earlier academic service included an appointment as Pepperdine University’s first Professor of Entrepreneurship (1991-1997) where he worked in Orange County, Long Beach, and Silicon Valley with middle managers from high tech companies, focusing largely on the management of technology.

  Dr. Ronstadt spent 11 years at Babson College (1975-1986) where he worked with Ralph Sorenson, Jack Hornaday, and Walter Carpenter to create Babson’s entrepreneurship program. During this time, Dr. Ronstadt became a tenured professor, served as Director of Planning, Department Chair, and Academic Head of the Entrepreneurship Program. In 1985, Dr. Ronstadt was awarded the Leavey Prize from the Freedoms Foundation for his pioneering work in entrepreneurship at Babson College. Dr. Ronstadt left Babson in 1986 to start and run a software business that continued operations until 2001.

  Dr. Ronstadt holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Oregon, and Harvard University where he received his doctorate with a specialization in International Business and the Management of Technology. He and his wife, Rebecca, are former Peace Corps volunteers who met in Peru during the 1960s. They have two grown children and currently reside in Gilmanton, New Hampshire in their home, the 1793 historic Temperance Tavern.

¹(By 2003, Boston University had become the fourth-largest private university in the United States, with an enrollment of approximately 30,000 students in 17 schools and colleges. The University’s research budget exceeded $400 million in 2003, largely devoted to the life sciences).