Faculty & Research
Shikhar Ghosh

Shikhar Ghosh

MBA Class of 1961 Professor of Management Practice of Business Administration

MBA Class of 1961 Professor of Management Practice of Business Administration

Entrepreneurial Management
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Shikhar Ghosh
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(617) 384-5430
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Shikhar Ghosh is a Professor of Management Practice in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. He currently teaches and is the course head for Founders' Journey in the elective curriculum and is also the Faculty Co-Chair of the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. He formerly taught and served as co-course head of The Entrepreneurial Manager, required for all 900 1st-year MBAs.

Shikhar has been a successful entrepreneur for the last 20 years. He has been the founder and CEO or Chairman of eight technology-based entrepreneurial companies and was the past Chairman of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MTLC) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) - two leading entrepreneurial organizations. He was selected by Business Week as one of the best Entrepreneurs in the US, by Forbes as one of the ‘Masters of the Internet Universe’ and by Fortune as the CEO of one of the 10 most innovative companies in the US. Companies he founded were selected as both the ‘hottest’ and ‘coolest’ emerging companies by business publications.

Shikhar joined the Boston Consulting Group after getting his MBA from HBS in 1980. At BCG he focused on organization and innovation in large organizations. He was elected a worldwide partner of the firm in 1987. Shikhar left BCG in 1988 to become CEO of Appex, an early-stage venture backed company that built the inter-carrier infrastructure for the US mobile phone industry. Appex provided centralized services that enabled independent mobile carriers to operate as a single seamless network. Appex’s services included call forwarding across carriers, fraud prevention services, billing and customer service. Appex was bought by EDS in 1990. By the time Shikhar left in 1993, Appex’s revenues exceeded $100 million with an order backlog of over $1 billion. It was selected by Business week as the fastest growing private company in the US.

Shikhar founded Open Market in 1993. Open Market was one of the pioneering companies in the commercialization of the Internet. It built the first commercial infrastructure for enabling secure commerce on the Internet and provided the software and services that enabled companies like Time Warner and AT&T to offer their services on the Internet. Open Market was one of the first Internet companies to go public. It was selected by numerous business publications as one of the companies that helped to make the Internet what it is today.

Since leaving Open Market Shikhar has been the founder, CEO or Chairman of several companies in the wireless, payment, Internet marketing, and on-line retailing industries. He has worked in all facets of the entrepreneurial process – starting companies with technical teams, providing and raising capital with venture capitalists, buying and selling companies, or taking them public and closing down unsuccessful companies. He has been a keynote speaker in numerous conferences on innovation, entrepreneurship, digital media and on the future of the Internet.

Cases and Teaching Materials
Research Summary
Overview
I am focused on exploring the human side of developing early stage entrepreneurial ventures. These enterprises are characterized by the pursuit of opportunity, shortage of resources to pursue their goals and uncertainty at every step of the journey. Some of the questions that I explore are - How should founding teams be structured? What are the tensions that develop as these teams face complex challenges and develop into larger organizations? - How do the challenges faced by founders change as their organizations grow? What is the correct balance between informal and formal systems and processes as the organization outgrows the ability of the founding team to actively direct operations? What are the typical transition points as the organization becomes more complex? - How do entrepreneurs face the challenges of success and failure? What metrics so they use to measure their progress and make choices around the critical exit decisions - should I continue or stop the venture, should i sell or stay in the venture? - How well do most commonly used frameworks and approaches for managing large stable organizations address the needs of small, rapidly growing organizations that face uncertainty in all facets of their operations?
Keywords: Scale; Exit; Founders' Agreements; Success Measures; Entrepreneurial Risk; Founding Teams; Entrepreneurship; Failure; Europe; Middle East; Asia
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