Professor Read’s research is focused on effectuation. Derived from practices employed by expert entrepreneurs, effectuation is a set of heuristics that describe how people make decisions and take action in situations of true uncertainty. As uncertainty is pervasive across all aspects of firms, markets and organizations, his work on effectuation applies to, and has been published in a variety of disciplinary areas such as strategy, Marketing, new ventures, innnovation, finance, organizational behavior, policy and economics.

Professor Read has nearly twenty years of industry experience, having participated in the creation of six high technology start-up firms. Four of those firms were acquired by industry leaders including Sun Microsystems and Lotus Development Corporation. Two are publicly traded. He also spent six years with enterprise database software provider, Oracle Corporation. Read holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington and an A.B. from Harvard University. On Tuesday’s show, Stuart Read discussed a recent study he performed. He compared experienced entrepreneurs to novices in the way they approach starting a new business and their though processes. Novices woudl try to find a market and target it, but the product was completely new, so there was no existing market. Experienced entrepreneurs would find a way to create a new market. The study found 9 different opportunity generation techniques used by these experienced entrepreneurs. Read discussed, specifically, “deleting and supplementing” and “composing and decomposing” techniques. He finished his segment with 4 pieces of advice for novice entrepreneurs.

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Shana Dressler has built a decade-long career leading and nurturing entrepreneurs, creative professionals, and social change leaders. As the Executive Director of Google’s 30 Weeks, Shana Dressler ran an incubator for design entrepreneurs that Fast Company named as one of the World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies of 2015 in design.

A deeply committed social entrepreneur, Shana is widely recognized as the first person in New York to organize rigorous educational programming for social entrepreneurs and creatives interested in achieving both financial sustainability and measurable impact. To fill a notable gap in the lack of resources available, Shana co-created the Social Good Guides, a series of guides focused on the essential small-business skills that would-be changemakers need to know and an 8-week workshop called Social Good Startup: Idea to Launch.

Shana is an Aspen Institute Scholar, a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judge for The Webby Awards and a graduate of the THNK School of Creative Leadership. In 2014 she became a Delegate to the United Nations Foundation Global Accelerator which brought together “100 of the world’s top entrepreneurs to work together with policy leaders on global issues.” In 2015, Shana was honored by the World CSR Congress as one of the 50 Most Talented Social Innovators. She has given keynote talks and led workshops at the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, HarvardxDesign, Core77, Social of Visual Art’s Impact Design for Social Change, A Better World By Design, 99u, the Social Good Summit, the Disruptive Innovation Festival and many others. In addition to frequent travel to far-flung places, Shana loves all things chocolate and makes her way around New York on a midnight blue Vespa. You can follow her @shanadressler.