Some people are called creatures of habit; I am and I suspect always have been a creature of change. Life is a permanent state of change and I am interested in how we (and our organizations) change ourselves and the world around us, how we can get better at changing, and how we can better choose and control what we’re changing into. I am fortunate to spend my days studying, teaching, coaching, and practicing change and to be able to share what I find along the way.

BIO

Andrew Hargadon is the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship and Professor of Technology Management at the Graduate School of Management at University of California, Davis. He is the author of How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate (Harvard Business School Press 2003) and Sustainable Innovation: Build Your Company’s Capacity to Change the World (Stanford University Press 2015). Hargadon’s research focuses on the effective management of innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly in the development and commercialization of sustainable technologies. His research has been used to develop or guide new innovation programs in organizations as diverse as Hewlett-Packard, Avery Dennison, Clorox, Edmunds.com, Mars, Canadian Health Services, and Silicon Valley start-ups. Prior to his academic appointment, he worked as a product designer at Apple Computer and taught in the Product Design program at Stanford University.

As the founding director of two key centers at the University of California, Davis—the Mike & Renee Child Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and the Energy and Efficiency Institute— Prof. Hargadon is at the forefront of teaching, research, and practice in cross-disciplinary entrepreneurship. The two programs are dedicated to enabling university scientists and engineers to move their ideas out of the lab and into the world. He received the 2009 Olympus Emerging Educational Leader Award in recognition for his strong entrepreneurship curriculum and success with the two centers.

Prof. Hargadon founded the Mike & Renee Child Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management in 2006. The Institute’s programs are designed for science and engineering graduate researchers and faculty and include entrepreneurship academies as well as a year-long fellows program. The academies provide a framework for universities to build a network between their research and the investment community and combine a comprehensive and pioneering curriculum developed by Professor Hargadon with hands-on exercises that participants use to develop business opportunities and investigate the potential opportunities for commercialization around their research. The curriculum is taught by university faculty and practicing professionals: venture capitalists, angel investors, entrepreneurs, intellectual property lawyers, and others.

Prof. Hargadon also launched the nation’s first university-based Energy and Efficiency Institute at UC Davis in 2006 and served as the founding director. As Director, he built relationships with the three largest independently-owned utility companies (PG&E, Sempra, and Edison International), the California Public Utility Commission and the California Energy Commission, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in the market, and major customers like WalMart and Chevron Energy Solutions. The EEC works with faculty researchers to identify and develop the commercial potential of their research as well as prepares graduates students in engineering, science, and business to build successful businesses advancing technologies in energy efficiency, including buildings, transportation, and agriculture and food processing.

Prof. Hargadon received his Ph.D. from the Management Science and Engineering Department in Stanford University’s School of Engineering, where he was named Boeing Fellow and Sloan Foundation Future Professor of Manufacturing. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Stanford University’s Product Design Program in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Additional information and articles by Hargadon can be found at entrepreneurship.ucdavis.edu/hargadon.

ANDREW B. HARGADON
Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship
Professor, Graduate School of Management
University of California, Davis

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In the News

Entrepreneurship Academy helps place researchers on path to next wave of innovation – Nearly 50 researchers from LLNL and Sandia National Laboratories/California got down to business for three days in early June, learning about life as an entrepreneur. (Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Jun. 26, 2015)

The ‘Recombinant’ Nature of Digital Innovations – In the Wall Street Journal, UC Davis Graduate School of Management Professor Andrew Hargadon dispels the myth of the lone inventor: “Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and now their modern counterparts were able to create one breakthrough after another because they built innovation strategies around recombining existing technologies rather than inventing new one.” In this innovation-as-building-block view of the world, building blocks don’t ever get used up. (Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2014)

Want to invest like Buffett and Soros? Try this – UC Davis Graduate School of Management Professor Andrew Hargadon is cited in a column about the Direxion iBillionaire Index that tracks an index made of 30 large-cap stocks that appear to be the favorites of people like Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, David Einhorn and George Soros. (MarketWatch, August 3, 2014)

UC Davis biomed academy moves research to market – Story about the UC Davis Biomedical and Engineering Entrepreneurship Academy, which connects students, researchers and faculty with industry representatives and investors. UC Davis Graduate School of Management Professor Andrew Hargadon is quoted in the story about the academy, which is organized by the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. (Sacramento Business Journal, July 9, 2014)

Davis Roots Works to Ensure There’s Fertile Ground for Entrepreneurs – Story about Davis Roots, a nonprofit business accelerator bridging the city of Davis and UC Davis, incubating its third class of entrepreneurs. UC Davis Graduate School of Management Professor Andrew Hargadon helped found Davis Roots. (Cathie Anderson: Merced Sun-Star, June 26, 2014)

Andrew Hargadon: Creating a path for entrepreneurs – Professor Andrew Hargadon profiled in the Sacramento Business Journal. (Sacramento Business Journal, April 11, 2014)

Interview with ictQATAR – Interview with ictQATAR, on innovation in green technology and energy efficiency. (ictQATAR, October 19, 2009)

UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship Gets $2 Million to Boost Entrepreneurship Studies – A $2 million gift to boost entrepreneurship studies at UC Davis was announced this week by the university’s Graduate School of Management. (Sacramento Bee, November 3, 2009)

The Networked Path to Breakthroughs – Interview with Andrew Revkin, Dot Earth, in Santa Fe, N.M., for the first “Summer School on Global Sustainability.” (New York Times, July 17, 2009)

Photograph by Jamie Kripke
UC Davis’s Energy Efficiency Center Makes Conservation Sexy – Professor Andrew Hargadon believes energy efficiency can be sexy — and he’s winning fans at Chevron, Samsung, and Wal-Mart, and in Silicon Valley. (Fast Company, May 1, 2009)

Hargadon is Named Educational Leader – Professor Andrew Hargadon, UC Davis Graduate School of Management is among the 2009 winners of the Olympus Innovation Awards. (Davis Enterprise, March 29, 2009)

Recombinant Innovation: The best new product ideas are hatched by collaboration, not soloists
(by Art Kleiner, strategy+business, November 30, 2004)