Innovate or Perish

Jagdish N. Sheth, Ph.D., is the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Business at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University. He has over 60 years of combined experience in teaching and research at the University of Southern California (USC), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Emory University. Dr. Sheth is a recipient of the 2020 Padma Bhushan Award for Literature and Education, one of the highest civilian awards given by the Government of India. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB), the Association of Consumer Research (ACR), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the American Marketing Association (AMA), and a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS), and the International Engineering Consortium (IEC). Dr. Sheth received an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2016) and an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from Shiv Nadar University (2017). He has received all four top awards from the American Marketing Association (AMA). Professor Sheth has authored or co-authored more than three hundred papers and several books. His autobiography, The Accidental Scholar (2014), has inspired others in education and academic entrepreneurship. His latest book is India's Road to Transformation: Why Leadership Matters (Vibrant Publishers, 2024). Dr. Sheth is the Founder of the Center for Telecommunications Management (CTM) at the University of Southern California (USC), which has since evolved into an Institute. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the India, China, and America (ICA) Institute, which analyzes the trilateral relationship and its impact on geopolitics, security, trade, and investment. He and his wife, Madhu Sheth, have established the Sheth Family Foundation to support several charities in India and the United States. They have also established the Madhuri and Jagdish Sheth Foundation to support scholars and scholarship in the field of marketing. The Sheth Foundation supports the AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium, which is hosted annually by various universities. It also supports research in emerging fields through AMA, ACR, AMS, and AIB. Finally, Professor Sheth is the Founder and Chairman of the Academy of Indian Marketing (AIM), which supports research and scholarship among Indian scholars in marketing and management.

Suresh Sharma is a business and academic leader with diverse experience in technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation. He is recognized for his exceptional knowledge of commercializing innovations and has made significant contributions to venture capital, investments, and entrepreneurship. As a former GE executive-turned-entrepreneur, Mr. Sharma has a unique understanding of building profitable innovation ecosystems in private, public, and university domains worldwide. In addition to his extensive industry experience, Mr. Sharma is actively involved in academic research and teaching. He served as a special faculty member at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he worked with cutting-edge R&D teams to commercialize innovations in various fields, including energy, digital technologies, sensors, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), nanomaterials, power electronics, manufacturing, biotech, and biomedical areas. He is the co-author of the books Energy 2040: Aligning Innovation, Economics, and Decarbonization (Springer, 2024) and Industrializing Innovation - The Next Revolution (Springer, 2019), and the author of The 3rd American Dream (2014). He has also extensively published in leading technology journals, magazines, and newspapers. Mr. Sharma has created significant value in energy, power, and healthcare through his entrepreneurial journey. He has served on the boards of public and private companies and in VC/PE investment firms.