Olav Sorenson

Olav Sorenson is currently the Frederick Frank ’54 and Mary C. Tanner Professor of Management and Director of the Core Curriculum at the Yale School of Management, and Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), at Yale University, where he teaches electives on entrepreneurial finance and venture capital, as well as modules on strategy, innovation and organization design. His primary stream of research pertains to economic geography, focusing on how entrepreneurship influences the growth and competitiveness of regions within countries. In particular, he has called attention to some of the unexpected consequences of the fact that social capital plays an important role in entrepreneurial success. Olav’s most recent projects within this stream have been examining the regional ecology of venture capital and how going to work for a startup affects the future careers of employees.

Olav’s secondary streams of research have been on the relationships between basic science and innovation and on how organizations can better learn from their interactions with customers and from their manufacturing experience. In total, he has delivered more than 300 research presentations and has had more than 75 papers published on these subjects, in journals such as Science, the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, the Strategic Management Journal, and Research Policy.

Olav serves as a Department Editor for the Organizations Department at Management Science and as a Deputy Editor at Sociological Science . He has also served in editorial positions at a dozen other journals.

Prior to coming to Yale, Olav Sorenson held the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto (2006-2009), where he taught courses on both venture capital and the commercialization of technology. He has also held a professorship in Strategic and International Management at London Business School (2005-2006), associate and assistant professorships of Policy at UCLA (1999-2005), and an assistant professorship in Strategy at the University of Chicago (1997-1999). Olav has also had shorter-term visiting appointments at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, SDA Bocconi, Universidad Carlos III, Melbourne Business School and Singapore Management University. He grew up in South Dakota and received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. He has also received an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University.