Mark Milstein

Dr. Mark Milstein is Lecturer of Strategy, Innovation and Sustainable Global Enterprise and Director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. Professor Milstein teaches and conducts research on strategy, decision-making, technology management and innovation. Dr. Milstein is a member of the Management & Organization group at the Johnson School as well as the University-wide Entrpreneurship@Cornell Program.

Dr. Milstein’s research is focused on different aspects of how and why firms generate new business growth opportunities by treating social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs. His work includes private sector approaches to poverty alleviation and technology commercialization strategies to catalyze sustainable innovation. Currently, he is co-PI on a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant focused on bridging management and engineering education to improve technology commercialization opportunities by concentrating on endemic social and environmental issues. From 2002-2006, he was Project Director of another NSF-sponsored study of corporate initiatives to build new businesses that serve the world’s poorest people.

Professor Milstein’s writings have appeared in the Academy of Management Executive, Sloan Management Review, Environmental Finance and Value as well as various edited books. He is an award-winning author of several popular teaching cases. Dr. Milstein has taught strategy, innovation, and sustainable enterprise to undergraduates, MBAs, and executives in the US, Latin America and Asia. He is a frequent speaker on the topics of on strategy, organizational change and innovation related to business and sustainability and consults with a number of multi-national firms, small and medium sized enterprises, and NGOs.

From 2004-2006, Dr. Milstein was the Business Research Director for the Sustainable Enterprise Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a non profit, non partisan think tank located in Washington, D.C. where he oversaw a number of projects and initiatives in the United States, Latin America, and China related to strategy and innovation in the private sector. From 2002-2004, Mark was on faculty at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mark earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics and Japanese from the University of Michigan. He later earned both an M.B.A. in general management and an M.S. in natural resource policy from the University of Michigan’s dual-degree Corporate Environmental Management Program. Mark received his PhD in strategic management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.