College of Business: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Raj Echambadi

Professor of Business Administration and
James F. Towey Faculty Fellow

Biographical Sketch

Raj Echambadi is a Professor and James Towey Fellow in the Department of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also serves as an affiliate faculty in the Institute of Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois. Raj's major research interests focus on strategic entrepreneurship, with a focus on innovation and knowledge management. Specifically, he is interested in how firms explore new opportunities (new products, new production processes, or even new organizational forms) and subsequently exploit these innovations for long-run competitive advantage. Raj’s research articles have appeared in some of the best Business journals including Management Science, Marketing Science, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, and other journals. Raj's paper on employee entrepreneurship won the award for the best paper published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2004. He is also a recipient of a major research grant from the Kauffman Foundation to study technology entrepreneurship issues. Raj has taught a wide range of courses in competitive strategy, marketing strategy, strategic innovation, and econometric methods at the undergraduate, MBA, Executive MBA and Ph.D. levels and has won numerous accolades for his teaching accomplishments. Raj has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from India and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1998, he taught at the University of Central Florida before joining Illinois. From 2003 till 2009, Raj served as a director for C3 Research, a strategy consulting firm based in Orlando, Florida. He has served as a strategy consultant for several companies including Country Financial, Florida Hospitals, Horizon Hobby, Toyota, Universal Studios, and Wrigley.