Raj Krishnan Shankar

Associate Professor and Program Director, PGPM

Area of Expertise: Entrepreneurship and Strategy

Raj Krishnan Shankar is an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Great Lakes Institute of Management. Prior to joining Great Lakes, Raj was an associate professor of entrepreneurship at Nord University, Norway. He joined the academic world after over a decade of consulting and entrepreneurship experience. Raj completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Nord University after receiving his doctorate from Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India. He holds a B.E in computer science from Madras University and an MBA in finance from Symbiosis Institute of International Business. Prior to joining the doctoral program, Raj worked as a consultant with Deloitte Touché Tohmatsu and i-flex Consulting (now Oracle). His entrepreneurial endeavor (ichiban Consultants) involved helping emerging enterprises achieve scale.

Research

Raj is a globally recognized entrepreneurship scholar with research interests spanning corporate entrepreneurship, sustainability, and organization theory. Apart from studying how new ventures and teams come into being, Raj is a keen observer of corporate entrepreneurial behavior (venturing, strategic renewal). In recent times, he has been exploring ways in which organizations embrace ESG to become sustainable, how organizations learn from startups, and how organizations develop foresight. Raj has published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, among others. He has authored several books, book chapters, and cases.

Teaching

A national award-winning entrepreneurship educator, Raj Shankar is a highly sought-after teacher, mentor, and advisor. He was empaneled as a national entrepreneurship expert by the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India and has been on global missions. Raj has designed and delivered management development programs for CxO level executives and teaches courses on entrepreneurship across Asia, Americas, and Europe. He is a highly desired educator at global faculty development programs. Raj teaches strategic entrepreneurship courses to MBA students and corporate executives, and qualitative research methods to PhD scholars.

Service

Raj is an active member of the Academy of Management (AoM). Raj serves as an editorial review board (ERB) member of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice Journal; and reviews for top entrepreneurship (JBV) and management (AMR) journals. He sits on academic and PhD committees across Universities in India, Europe, and the US.

Journal Articles (Refereed)

• Shankar, R. K. & Corbett, A. C. (2024). Quasipractice: How the Entrepreneurship Educator Develops Entrepreneurial and Practice Expertise? Journal of Business Venturing https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2024.106435
• Shankar, R. K. Schuckes, M., & Gutman, T. (2024). Heterogeneity in organizational search behaviors: The case of corporate venture capital units. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1508
• Giones, F., Shankar, R. K., Winston Smith, S., Garcia-Herrera, C., & Timmermans, B. (2024). Introduction to special issue on corporate and startup collaborations in an age of disruption: looking beyond the dyad. Industry and Innovation, 31(5), 533–543. https://doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2024.2346315
• Shankar, R. K., Bettenmann, D. & Giones, F. (2023). Building Hyper-Awareness: How to Amplify Weak External Signalsfor Improved Strategic Agility. California Management Review, 65(4), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00081256231184912
• Abootorabi, H., Shankar, R. K., Rasmussen, E., & Wiklund, J. (2023). Do Hybrid Goals Pay off? Social and Economic Goals in Academic Spin-Offs. Journal of Management Studies, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joms.12967
• Shankar, R. K., Rasmussen, E., Mathisen, M. T., & Widding, Ø. (2022). Overcoming Buyer-Seller Tensions in the Pre-Acquisition Process. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10422587221102110
• Shankar, R. K., & Gopalakrishnan, S. (2021). A Reflective Entrepreneur: Ashok Vasudevan and the Journey of Tastybite. Journal of Management Inquiry, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10564926211059015
• Mathisen, M. T., Shankar, R. K., Widding, O., Rasmussen, E. & McKelvie, A. (2021). Enabling the process of exit through trade sale: The case of early-stage research-based spin-offs. Small Business Economics. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-021-00484-7
• Shankar, R. K. & Clausen, T. H. (2020). Scale quickly or fail fast: An inductive study of acceleration. Technovation, 98 (December), 102174. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166497220300468
• Subramaniam, R., & Shankar, R. K. (2020). Three Mindsets of Entrepreneurial Leaders. The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 29 (1), 7-37. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0971355719893498
• Shankar, R. K., & Shepherd, D. A. (2019). Accelerating strategic fit or venture emergence: Different paths adopted by corporate accelerators. Journal of Business Venturing, 34(5), 105886. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883902617308376
• Shankar, R. K. (2016). UDAN – Playing to learn the nuances of entrepreneurship, Simulation & Gaming, 47 (6), 837-850. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1046878116662185
• Shankar, R. K. (2016). Indian Entrepreneurship through a Historical Lens: A dialogue with Dwijendra Tripathi, The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 25 (1), 1-18. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0971355715616504

Cases (Refereed)

• Shankar, R., K. (2017). Incubator or Accelerator – A Tech Startup’s Dilemma. Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies. doi: 10.1108/EEMCS-06-2016-0103.
• Shankar, R. K. (2016). Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust. In J. Brewer & S. W. Gibson (Eds.), Institutional Case Studies on Necessity Entrepreneurship (pp. 57-74). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Shankar, R., K. (2015). Kalpathy Kumaraswamy. The Journal of Entrepreneurship, 24(2), 63-72.
• Shankar, R., K. (2015). Kalycito: When engineers turn explorers. In D. Awasthi and R. Joshi (Eds.), The Innovators: Stories of Hi-tech Entrepreneurs supported by the Department of Science and Technology (pp. 165-180). New Delhi, India: Bookwell Publishers.
• Shankar, R., K. (2015). Bioklone: A scientist gets bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. In D. Awasthi and R. Joshi (Eds.), The Innovators: Stories of Hi-tech Entrepreneurs supported by the Department of Science and Technology (pp. 225-240). New Delhi, India: Bookwell Publishers.
• Shankar, R., K. (2015). Xcode: Decoding the entrepreneurial DNA. In D. Awasthi and R. Joshi (Eds.), The Innovators: Stories of Hi-tech Entrepreneurs supported by the Department of Science and Technology (pp. 241-256). New Delhi, India: Bookwell Publishers.

Books

• Shankar, R., K. (2012). Essentials of Entrepreneurship. Chennai, India: Vijay Nicole Imprints.
• Shankar, R., K. (2011). Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice. Chennai, India: Vijay Nicole Imprints.
• Shankar, R., K. & Krishnan, M. (2010). Entrepreneurship: A life of Commas, not Full Stops. Chennai, India: Vijay Nicole Imprints.

Reviewer for Conference/Journals

• Journal of Business Venturing
• Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice Journal (FT50 Journal)
• Academy of Management Review
• Annual Conferences: Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC); Academy of Management; Strategic Management Society.

Conferences

Raj regularly presents papers annually at the Academy of Management (AOM), and Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC). He has also presented papers at Biennial Conferences on Entrepreneurship, PAN IIM World Management Conference, and INDAM Conferences.