Timothy Bernarr Folta

Professor

Thomas John and Bette Wolff Family Chair in Strategic Entrepreneurship

Management &

Entrepreneurship


See Professor Folta’s CV

Education/Professional Certification

  • Ph.D. in Management, Purdue University (1994)

Areas of Expertise

  • Entrepreneurship and Innovation
  • Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy
  • Corporate Strategy and Diversification
  • Market Entry and Exit
  • Managing Uncertainty

Biography

Timothy B. Folta (Ph.D. Purdue University) is Professor; Thomas John and Bette Wolff Family Chair of Strategic Entrepreneurship at University of Connecticut.

His research and teaching examine both entrepreneurship and corporate strategy, analyzing decisions around entry, exit, and diversification. He is currently examining the role of the corporate headquarters in multi-business firms in reallocating strategic resources across businesses, and the effectiveness of government grant programs in supporting technical entrepreneurship. His research has garnered a number of awards, including several Best Paper awards at the Academy of Management (1994 Business Policy and Strategy; 1992 Entrepreneurship), the 2012 IDEA Foundational Paper Award by the Entrepreneurship Division at the Academy of Management honoring a paper that has powerfully and positively changed the conversation in the field of entrepreneurship for at least a decade; the 2009 Fulbright Special Senior Scholar Award for the 60th anniversary of the Fulbright program in Italy; the 2006 Office of Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration Award for the best conference paper exploring the importance of small business to the U.S. economy or a public policy issue of importance to the entrepreneurial community; and appeared in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and Strategic Management Journal. He co-Edited the 2016 volume of Advances in Strategic Management on Resource Redeployment and Corporate Strategy, and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Strategy Science. Tim served as the 2020-21 Chair of the Strategic Management Division (>5,600 members) of the Academy of Management and has held leadership positions in the Academy of Management, serving as a member of the executive committees of the Strategic Management (STR) Division (2003-2005, 2017-2022) and the Entrepreneurship Division (2015-17), co-Chair of the STR Doctoral Consortium (2004-2005), and member of the STR Research Committee (1999-2001). In 2022, he launched a research seminar series on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy.

He is a Visiting Research Professor at Instituto de Empresa (Madrid), and has been a Fellow at the University of Strasbourg (France) Institute for Advanced Study (2012-2016), ESADE Business School (Barcelona), Ecole de Management Lyon, and LUISS University (Rome). Prior to his UConn appointment he held the Brock Family Chair of Strategic Management at Purdue University. He regularly teaches executives, masters, undergraduates, and Ph.D. students.

Achievements

  • 2023 Nominated for the 2023 Responsible Research in Management Awards co-sponsored by Fellows of the Academy of Management and the Community for Responsible Research in Business and Management, for paper titled “Does government fund the best entrepreneurial ventures? The case of the Small Business Innovation Research Program” and published in Academy of Management Discoveries
  • 2021 Bright Idea Award for paper titled “Does government fund the best entrepreneurial ventures? The case of the Small Business Innovation Research Program”. The award is selected annually for the top 10 publications by business school faculty in the State of New Jersey.
  • 2019, 2020 Award for Teaching Excellence, Instituto de Empresa (Madrid)
  • 2018 Best Paper in the Corporate Strategy Interest Group at the 2018 Strategic Management Society Conference in Paris, for paper titled “How does the potential for resource redeployment affect market exit decisions? Evidence from the global retail sector”, with T Sohl.
  • 2012-2016 Fellow to the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study, which strives to encourage and support research in science and humanities at the highest level by bringing together local and foreign scholars from diverse disciplines and fostering interactions among researchers and with the wider community of the university.
  • 2012 IDEA Foundational Paper Award in the Entrepreneurship Division at the Academy of Management honoring a paper that has powerfully and positively changed the conversation in the field of entrepreneurship for at least a decade
  • 2009 Fulbright Special Senior Scholar Award for the 60th anniversary of the Fulbright program in Italy
  • 2006 Office of Advocacy, U.S. Small Business Administration Award for the best conference paper exploring the importance of small business to the U.S. economy or a public policy issue of importance to the entrepreneurial community
  • 1994 Gleuck Best Paper award in the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management
  • 1992 Best Empirical Paper award in the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management

Select Book Chapters, Monographs, or Videos

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Contact Information
Emailtimothy.folta@uconn.edu
Phone+1 (860) 486-3734
Mailing AddressUnit 1041
Office LocationBUSN 344
CampusStorrs