Robert Eberhart, Ph.D.

Robert N. Eberhart (Ph.D. Stanford 2014) is an Associate Professor of Management and Faculty Director of the Ahlers Center of International Business at University of San Diego. He earned his Ph.D. in Management Science from Stanford University and his academic publications span topics such as new theoretical constructs on how institutional change has complex effects on new firms and how entrepreneurship is changing society. His publications have appeared in Organization Science (2107 and 2021), the Strategic Management Journal (2018), Strategy Science (2019), Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2022), and others. He won awards for the Responsible Research in Business and Management (2020), Organizations and Management Division Best Theory Paper (2017), Outstanding Scholar Award at SCU (2017), Best Paper Award at the Western Academy of Management (2016), Best Paper Proceeding of the 2012 Academy of Management, among others. He serves on the editorial board of Organization Science. He is a visiting faculty at Kobe University and at Oxford University where he lectures in space entrepreneurship. He served as the Vice Chairperson of the U.S. Dept. of State and METI’s Japan-US Innovation and Entrepreneurship Council. He has been quoted in the New York Times, NPR’ Marketplace, USA Today, San Jose Mercury News, ABC News, Forbes magazine, the Nikkei Weekly, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

Before his academic career, Dr. Eberhart was a partner at Pacific Rim Partners, a San Francisco based venture capital firm and he was the Founder and CEO of a venture capital funded firm in Tokyo, Japan, WineInStyle KK.  The company distributed California wines to the Japanese and other Asian markets and is a case at Stanford’s GSB.  Prior to founding WineInStyle, Dr. Eberhart was an executive with semiconductor and electronics hardware companies. He is a pilot, avid sport car and boat builder, and an amateur astronomer. He has three grown children and is married to a Palo Alto dentist.