Stefanos Zenios

Stefanos Zenios is the Investment Group of Santa Barbara Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology. He is also the faculty director of Stanford GSB’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. An innovative teacher and researcher, Zenios is the main architect of Startup Garage, a popular GSB course that each year helps hundreds of Stanford GSB students and executives learn and apply the innovation processes that are at the center of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. He also oversees the Stanford GSB Venture Studio: a vibrant learning facility for Stanford graduate students across all disciplines who want to learn about designing and creating sustainable, high-impact ventures by testing what they are learning in the classroom. He previously designed and co-taught Biodesign Innovation, a project-based course on designing and launching new medical devices, and is one of the senior authors of a textbook with the same name.

His research interests fall in two broad categories: innovation, and health care. He examines how innovation can be described as a process with discrete steps and specific outcomes, and how the process varies with the industry sector, customer segment, technology, and source of innovation (startup vs large organization). He also pioneered the application of data and advanced modeling to improve health care delivery and treatment decisions and is the recipient of numerous best paper awards in his field of Operations Research. In the intersection between health care and innovation, he examines what attributes of health care startups are associated with successful exits (either financial, generating returns for the investors, or clinical, securing FDA approval). He also currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Operations Research, the seminal academic journal in his field.