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 an organizational engineer specialized in building businesses in emerging markets, building businesses around emerging science/technology, and building A.I. into 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 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 has one of the strongest entrepreneurship track record of any tenured/tenure-track business professor in the world. In 2023, Dr. Coles and team accepted/initiated eight startup projects commercializing research related to A.I., energy, blockchain, biomaterials, agriculture, and aerospace. Over 2023, Dr. Coles and his team oversaw millions in new sales contracts for those eight startup projects using their proprietary Colossus Method.

The startups commercializing research where Dr. Coles is a coauthor have an estimated value of over $1.1 billion. One such startup, based on research where Dr. Coles is a coauthor, ranks among the top 30 A.I. companies in the world in terms of revenue. Another startup, based on research where Dr. Coles is a coauthor, was one of six disruptive startups out of over 200+ startups designated as “poised to transform” global finance by Money 20/20, the world’s leading fintech show. Dr. Coles’s research commercialization projects include collaborators such as IBM, J&J, and SpaceX. 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  served on the advisory board of Old Silver Venture Capital, known for its early investment in Moderna. Dr. Coles speaks Spanish and Arabic, is an avid wrestler and skier, as well as an advocate for sustainable economic development and scientific exploration. 

Contact Information
Emailryan.coles@uconn.edu
Mailing Address2100 Hillside Rd., Storrs CT 06269
Office LocationStorrs BUSN 345
CampusStorrs
Office HoursStudent Hours: T & TH 5pm-6pm
CoursesBADM/MGMT 2234 "The Entrepreneurial Journey"
Linkhttps://www.daiglelabs.business.uconn.edu
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