Birton Cowden has been named the first research director of the Robin and Doug Shore Entrepreneurship Center housed in Kennesaw State’s Michael J. Coles College of Business.

Cowden is one of the country’s top researchers on corporate entrepreneurship and disruptive business models.

In a news release from KSU, Cowden said, “From an academic standpoint, entrepreneurship is a relatively new area to explore. There is a lot we still don’t know about startups, the people that start startups, organizations trying to be entrepreneurial, and whether universities are effectively teaching the entrepreneurial skill set. I hope to create a bridge where this research has an impact on our students and on the greater Atlanta economy.”

Cowden will oversee research, but he will also teach classes in the Coles College bachelor degree program in entrepreneurship, the first such program in Georgia.

Birton Cowden

According to his LinkedIn page, Cowden received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earned both a Master of Science in Strategic Management and an MBA from Indiana University, and went on to achieve a Ph. D. in Business Administration from St. Louis University. His doctoral dissertation was on international entrepreneurship.

His work experience is varied and includes management positions in human resources at the American Cancer Society, consulting work, and most recently, he was director of new ventures at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts.

The Shore Entrepreneurship Center

The Shore Entrepreneurship Center opened in 2014, and its mission is to train students to apply entrepreneurial thinking to business problems.

It houses an Entrepreneurship Club that allows students to connect with the metro Atlanta business community. According to the center’s website, the club “brings experienced entrepreneurial students together with new or developing entrepreneurs to collaborate on each other’s ideas, build connections, seek counsel, learn from each other’s experiences, and find inspiration from like-minded students pursuing a future in entrepreneurship. The EC Club is open to students of all majors and backgrounds, regardless of where they are in their entrepreneurial journey.”