Atul Nerkar

Atul Nerkar is a Visiting Faculty in Executive Education, at Mahindra University. He is Jeffrey Allred Distinguished Scholar, and Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, USA. Dr Nerkar was the former Associate Dean of the Executive MBA Evening and Weekend Programs at UNC Kenan-Flagler.

Prior to joining the Kenan-Flagler Business School, Atul was on the faculty at Columbia Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His academic qualifications include a Bachelors in Production Engineering from the University of Bombay, India and a Masters in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India. Subsequently Atul worked with Unilever as a Manager in their Exports Group. After a brief stint at Unilever, Atul decided to return to academia and completed both a Masters of Arts in Managerial Science and Applied Economics and a PhD in Strategic Management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a visiting faculty member at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad and the Graduate School of Business at Seoul National University.

Atul is an award-winning teacher who has taught in a variety of programs globally, where the audience has varied from young executives to CEOs. He has worked and / or delivered custom programs on strategy formulation and execution, technological innovation and entrepreneurship for a range of organizations, (many of which are part of the Fortune 500) across the world across sectors that include Financial & Insurance; Manufacturing; Retail & Consumer Products; Chemicals & Materials; Energy; Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals & Bio-technology; Heavy Machinery & Equipment; Telecommunications; and Government.

Atul’s research focuses on how technology, innovation and entrepreneurship affect business and corporate strategy. He studies research productivity in organizations and the evolution of technological capabilities in the context of the pharmaceutical, chemical and optical disc industries. His current research examines the drivers of R&D success in the pharmaceutical, chemical and optical disc industries. In particular, he focuses on firms’ patent portfolios and the evolutionary process underlying their development.

Atul is a thought leader in his field and sits on the editorial boards of top tier journals such as the Strategic Management Journal. He is also a Departmental Editor at the IEEE-Transactions in Engineering Management. His research has won awards such as the McKinsey Best Conference Paper award at the Strategic Management Society Meetings.