Richard J. Gentry is the holder of the Founder’s Chair of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Management at the University of Mississippi. Rich earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2006. Rich also holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering (with honors) from the University of Florida. Before abandoning industry, he worked in manufacturing roles for Ford Motor Corporation and Asea Brown Boveri.
Focusing on organizational innovation, corporate governance, and small business, he has published academic research in the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Organization, and Journal of Business Research. In the popular press, his work has twice been highlighted in the Harvard Business Review along with Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. He is active in the Academy of Management and was the 2019 conference chair for the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the largest higher education conference focusing on entrepreneurship education.
Rich is the founding co-director at Ole Miss’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where he has helped to raise money, created a major, developed student competitions and built co-curricular student programs to support the state of Mississippi.
Rich has taught strategy and entrepreneurship all over the world, including Finland, England, Denmark and Nigeria. Students at the UM Online MBA program recognized him as the outstanding professor in 2012 and 2018, and the School of Business has recognized him as outstanding researcher three times.
