Ryan Coles

Assistant Professor

Chief Scientist, Daigle Labs

Management &

Entrepreneurship

---

 

EDUCATION

• PhD Cornell U., Organizational Sociology
• MS Cornell U., Organizational Sociology
• MS Brigham Young U., Sociology
• BA Brigham Young U., Middle Eastern Studies/Arabic

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

• Science & Technology Commercialization
• A.I. & Organizations
• Environmentally Sustainable Firm Growth
• Startup Internationalization

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Coles is a sociologist and venture architect specialized in building businesses around emerging technology, building businesses in emerging markets, and for building environmentally sustainable business organizations.  Dr. Coles’s lab was the first university research lab dedicated to academic research on A.I. and organizations.

Dr. Coles’s lab has active studies across a variety of national contexts including: the U.S., Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Ghana, China, Nepal, Iraq, Palestine, Ukraine, and the Kingdom of Jordan. Dr. Coles’s research on how to build organizations in emerging markets has been noted for its theoretical innovations and methodological rigor. He and his colleagues introduced Unified Institutionalism, a framework combining the Institutional Logics Perspective and the Institutional Pillars schematic, a feat that acclaimed sociologist Howard Aldrich called “a theoretical tour de force!”

Dr. Coles’s academic work has also resulted in a rethinking of how economic inequality impacts entrepreneurship. Methodologically, his lab team is responsible for conducting the largest randomized control trial in the field of Organizational Sociology. Dr. Coles is one of few business professors to win back-to-back proceedings “Best Paper” recognitions from the Academy of Management (2022 & 2023). His research has been published in top journals such as Strategy Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Organization Science. 

Dr. Coles’s quest to understand the social foundations of entrepreneurship has led him to Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring, Latin American communities with a history of drug cartel violence, remote villages in the Himalayas, the Amazon rainforest, and active warzones in Eastern Europe.  As an organizational sociologist interested in understanding how humans organize, Dr. Coles’s fieldwork with entrepreneurs is not limited to how organizations are created in the formal economy. Dr. Coles has also studied entrepreneurs creating and managing organizations in the informal and illicit economies. This broad range of experience allows Dr. Coles to offer unmatched organizational insights to executives, founders, and policymakers, and it has earned him a place on the editorial board of Strategy Science—a prestigious academic honor rarely given to pre-tenured professors that recognizes his expertise and influence in the field.

Dr. Coles is the creator of The Colossus Method, a proprietary framework for technology commercialization used to launch or scale ventures that collectively secured over $700 million in new sales contracts for eight startups in 2023. The startups where Dr. Coles is a founding stakeholder (Cofounder, founding executive, or founding advisor) hold a combined valuation of ~$1.1 billion. One of those businesses was among the top 30 AI companies in the world in terms of revenue in 2024. Another business was recognized by Money 20/20 in 2024 as one of six disruptive fintech startups poised to transform the global financial system. A third business was recognized by GreenBiz as a top climate-tech startup in 2024. Dr. Robert Langer, the 4th most cited scientist in history and co-founder of 30+ biotechnology companies, has hailed Dr. Coles as an “excellent business person.” In 2024, Dr. Coles was featured in Innovation in Connecticut, a documentary that won awards at eleven film festivals including “Best Feature Documentary” at the Florence Film Festival.

Dr. Coles works with several of the largest American corporations on technology commercialization strategies including IBM, SpaceX, and Constellation Energy. Dr. Coles also served as an advisor to Old Silver Venture Capital, an early investor in Moderna, and works actively at the intersection of science, entrepreneurship, and global development.

Dr. Coles speaks Spanish and Arabic, is an avid wrestler and skier, as well as an advocate for sustainable economic development and scientific exploration.