Prof. Marc Gruber

Class @Collège: Venture Lab

Marc Gruber is Professor for Innovation at EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland) and full professor at the College of Management of Technology at EPFL where he holds the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization (ENTC). Marc also acts as Deputy Editor at the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), the highest ranked empirical research journal in the management domain. He joined EPFL in the fall of 2005 coming from the Munich School of Management, University of Munich, where he was the vice-director of the Institute of Innovation Research, Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (INNOtec) and manager of the ODEON Center for Entrepreneurship. He has held several visiting scholar posts at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he conducts research on technology commercialization and entrepreneurial marketing.

Marc Gruber's research focuses on new venture creation and the commercialization of innovative technologies. In theoretical as well as empirical studies, he has closely analyzed several aspects of the entrepreneurial process - for example, opportunity recognition, marketing planning in VC-backed companies, the adaptation of firms to changing business environments, and the contracting process between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Prof. Gruber graduated in management from the University of St. Gallen in 1995 and received a PhD in management from the same university in 2000.

At the Collège, he leads the Venture Lab, an interactive teaching format which serves to enhance the fellows’ entrepreneurial mindset and to dispute potential markets and clients of business ideas. Furthermore, Prof. Gruber also holds Entrepreneurship workshops for potential future Fellows.