Shailendra Vyakarnam

Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL)
Senior Member of Darwin College
Resident Senior Member of Wolfson College

MBA, PhD (Cranfield Univ.)

Professional experience

Dr Vyakarnam worked in industry for several years before completing his MBA and PhD. He has combined his academic interest with those of small business and entrepreneurship. He has worked in entrepreneurship policy for the UK government, UN agencies and for the EU and World Economic Forum. He has advised government agencies in several countries on the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems, technology commercialisation and entrepreneurship education. He has mentored entrepreneurs and held non-executive directorships of small firms in addition to developing growth programmes for SMEs over several years. More recently he has been asked to develop educational approaches for generating an entrepreneurial culture and mindset shifts in larger "blue chip" organisations. His main contribution over the past 10 years has been to develop practitioner-led education for entrepreneurship.

Dr Vyakarnam is presently Co-Founder and Director of AcceleratorIndia. He is on the board of Enterprise Educators UK and the UK India Business Council. He is on the editorial board of the International Small Business Journal and the Journal of Strategic Change.

Previous appointments

Dr Vyakarnam was on the faculty of Cranfield School of Management for 10 years before taking up a Chair in Enterprise at Nottingham Business School. He has held Visiting Professorships at University of Reading and University of Aarhus.

Research interests

Entrepreneurship and growth; how entrepreneurial teams form and develop; how firms grow through their glass ceilings.

Shai Vyakarnam is a member of the Organisational Behaviour subject group.

Selected publications

Vyakarnam, S. and Adams, R. (2001) "Institutional barriers to enterprise support: an empirical study." Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 19(3): 335-353

Vyakarnam, S. and Handelberg, J. (2005) "Four themes of the impact of management teams on organizational performance: implications for future research of entrepreneurial teams." International Small Business Journal, 23(3): 236-256

Myint, Y.M., Vyakarnam, S. and New, M.J. (2005) "The effect of social capital in new venture creation: the Cambridge high-technology cluster." Strategic Change, 14(3): 165-177 (DOI: 10.1002/jsc.718)

Lawrence, A., Clark, L., Labuzetta, J.N., Sahakian, B. and Vyakarnam, S. (2008) "The innovative brain." Nature, 456: 168-169 (DOI: 10.1038/456168a)

Mills, J., Barakat, S. and Vyakarnam, S. (2010) "The impact of e-learning strategies for entrepreneurship education." In: Looking to the future: economic and social regeneration through entrepreneurial activity: Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference (33rd), 2-4 November 2010, London, UK.

Barakat, S., McLennan, R., Ihasz, O., Winfield, S. and Vyakarnam, S. (2010) "Same programme, different students: same or different self-efficacy effects?" In: Looking to the future: economic and social regeneration through entrepreneurial activity: Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference (33rd), 2-4 November 2010, London, UK.

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