Three Business Professors and the Innovators They Inspired

The Professor: Chuck Matthews
University of Cincinnati

Chuck Matthews bases his teachings not just on academic research, but also on his real-life experiences: As a teenager, he helped his family build up one of the most efficient auto salvage yards in Cincinnati.

"My father, brother and I built our business from the ground up," Matthews says. "A lot of the lessons I teach today are well founded in the fundamentals of strategic management, but they also have the flavor of the practical associated with what it takes to apply a lot of that."

He took a part-time gig teaching business at University of Cincinnati in 1982, a position Matthews was told would be temporary. He has been at the school ever since, today focusing on entrepreneurship classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He founded UC's Center for Entrepreneurship Education and Research in 1997.

Matthews, who has taught more than 5,000 students, strongly believes that entrepreneurial fundamentals apply to all business environments--startup ventures, nonprofits and corporations.

"Student entrepreneurs are exceptional at translating thought processes to action," he says. "I challenge them on all fronts to make it work, and I think they really value that challenge on how to translate their education and convert it to action."

The Student: Ahmed Shuja
Founder and CTO, Progressive Cooling Solutions

While pursuing his doctorate in electrical engineering at University of Cincinnati in 2005, Ahmed Shuja worked on projects for NASA to create technology for cooling satellites. His work sparked an idea for a mechanism that would cool electronics in a similar way.

Lacking any business experience, he sought advice from the university's business school and was referred to professor Matthews, the school's go-to man for all things entrepreneurial. Shuja enrolled in Matthews' business plan class, and in 2006 Shuja's plan landed more than $1.5 million in investment from the Siemens Technology-to-Business Center--along with a long leash to create something out of his technology.

Matthews helped Shuja develop parts of his plan, connected him with some of his smartest business students to act as teammates during business plan competitions and provided a sounding board for ideas. "Dr. Matthews was very giving of his time," Shuja says.

Progressive Cooling Solutions is now applying the cooling properties of its technology to LED lighting solutions. By the end of the year, Shuja says, the company will be recast with a new name, offered publicly and will begin rolling out affordable LED products to market.

The Student: Dan Cremons
Associate, Alpine Investors

At the age of 24, when many of his contemporaries are still figuring out how to move out of their parents' homes, Dan Cremons is already making a name for himself in the San Francisco investing scene. He has been at Alpine Investors, a small-cap equity firm, since graduating from UC's entrepreneurship program in 2009.

Cremons spends most of his time on strategic planning for Alpine-backed companies and says the entrepreneurial principles he learned at UC are germane to the issues he addresses daily.

"The entrepreneurship background has been hugely valuable in my ability to do my job here," he says. "We're interfacing on a daily basis with small-business owners, and the entrepreneurship background equipped me to listen to and evaluate those stories and ultimately understand whether or not they've got a good business."

Though Cremons never took one of Matthews' classes, the professor was always willing to listen to Cremons and his peers when they came to him for advice about business ideas.

"He spent time teaching, mentoring and giving ideas--but not giving us the answers," Cremons says. "At that point in the development cycle, that was hugely valuable."

The Student: Dan Shelly
Director of business development, Meridian Life Science

Matthews calls Dan Shelly one of his brightest former pupils--even if Shelly's business concept never got off the ground.

Shelly worked with Matthews to develop a life-sciences business plan, which won numerous competitions in 2002. Already a Ph.D.-holding scientist in physiology, Shelly based the idea for his former company, Physiomics Systems LLC, on his knowledge of animal clinical trials and ideas he had for improving the efficiency of the trials. After the competitions, he managed to raise early rounds of seed money, but a new marriage and shifting life priorities made it difficult for him to tolerate the risk of running a startup that would require millions to even have a chance of getting off the ground.

"I genuinely believe his idea for Physiomics was just ahead of its time," Matthews says. "Down the road, I think we'll see the industry evolve toward this, but he was just too far ahead of the curve."

But Shelly's ideas for Physiomics and the communications skills honed through his entrepreneurship education made him a valuable target for Meridian Life Science, which brought him on to help it better relate with their small-business customers and to instill an entrepreneurial spirit into the business.

"Meridian hired me to do a job that technically I had no qualifications for from the standpoint of scientific background--my science was in a different area," Shelly says. "Had it not been for that exposure through Physiomics and the ability to convey science the way I did, I wouldn't be where I am today. They liked my ability to convey ideas clearly and concisely--a skill that I was able to hone and refine working with Chuck."

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This article was originally published in the October 2010 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Gurus and Grads.