Portrait of Rosanna Garcia

Rosanna Garcia, PhD

Paul R. Beswick Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship

The Business School, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

About

Rosanna Garcia is a senior academic leader and institution-builder whose thirty-year career spans research universities in the United States and Europe, with a consistent focus on building programs, advancing equity, and bridging the university to industry and community. She holds the Paul R. Beswick Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she founded and directs the i3-Lab — WPI's entrepreneurship incubator — and has built a university-wide ecosystem linking students, faculty, alumni, and the Worcester community around innovation and new venture creation.

Her record of academic leadership includes endowed chair appointments at three major research universities — WPI, the University of Denver, and North Carolina State University — where she created signature interdisciplinary programs, led faculty initiatives in women's entrepreneurship and benefit corporation scholarship, and developed curriculum linking STEM research to real-world impact. Her scholarly work centers on equity and inclusion in entrepreneurship, public benefit corporations, consumer adoption of innovation, and social enterprise in resource-constrained environments. She brings both deep disciplinary expertise and cross-sector experience: author of the textbook Creating and Marketing New Products and Services, co-founder of the legal-tech company Vijilent, Inc., a named inventor on two U.S. patents, and an angel investor focused on women and racialized minority STEM founders.

Research Interests

Academic Appointments

Apr 2024 – present
Founder and Faculty Director, i3-Lab
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Oversees the i3-Lab incubator, supporting student and community startups while advancing diversity and equity in STEM and entrepreneurship
  • Leads programming including AMP! (Advisors, Mentors & Partners), I-Corps, and GOAT Tank pitch competition
  • Mentors students, alumni, and Worcester community members from under-represented backgrounds with an open-door policy across all constituencies
  • Faculty advisor, Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization (WPI chapter)
  • [Add: total startups supported, e.g., "Supported X student and community ventures since founding"]
  • [Add: funding or investment raised by i3-Lab companies, e.g., "$Xm raised by portfolio companies"]
  • [Add: any grants secured to support i3-Lab programming, e.g., NSF I-Corps Site award]
Jul 2021 – present
Paul R. Beswick Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship
The Business School, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Advises PhD students in Business Administration – Entrepreneurship
  • [Add: number of PhD students advised to completion]
  • [Add: any externally funded research grants secured at WPI — agency, title, amount]
Jan 2018 – Jun 2021
Walter Koch Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship
Daniels College of Business, University of Denver
  • Developed curriculum and student-focused programs to launch technologies emerging from student ideas and faculty research, especially in STEM
Aug 2014 – Dec 2017
Associate Professor of Marketing & Innovation
Poole College of Management, North Carolina State University
  • Chancellor's Faculty of Excellence in Innovation & Design
  • Faculty director of a business sustainability collaborative linking students, faculty, and industry
  • Co-founded B Clinic for students interested in benefit corporations
  • Co-founded the Association of Women Entrepreneurs at NC State
Sep 2002 – Aug 2014
Associate Professor of Marketing; McCarthy Family Research Fellow
Northeastern University, Boston
  • Faculty advisor to Jola Venture, a student-led initiative connecting farmers in Cameroon with innovations from U.S. universities

Visiting Positions

2018
Visiting Professor, School of Business and Economics, University of Münster, Germany
Visiting Professor, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

Education

PhD
Marketing — Eli Broad Graduate School, Michigan State University
MBA
Marketing and Finance — University of Rochester
BS
Chemical Engineering — University of California, Santa Barbara
BA
Business Economics — University of California, Santa Barbara

Grants & External Funding

[Years]
[Grant title]
[Funding agency, e.g., NSF, NIH, Kauffman Foundation, SBA]
[Role: PI / Co-PI · Award amount: $000,000]
[Years]
[Grant title]
[Funding agency]
[Role: PI / Co-PI · Award amount: $000,000]

Entrepreneurship & Industry

Jan 2023 – present
Angel Investor — Wire Angel Investors
Supporting women and racialized minority STEM startups in their missions to have a positive impact on the world.
Jan 2015 – present
CEO & Co-founder — Vijilent, Inc.
Intelligent online people search and social media discovery for the legal industry. Participant in a legal-tech accelerator.
Sep 2019 – Jun 2021
Treasurer, Board of Directors — B Academics
Co-founder (2017) of a network advancing benefit corporation scholarship.
Jan 2013 – Oct 2015
Partner — Better Data Group
Expert in predictive analytics.
Inventor — named on two U.S. patents related to voice mail technologies

Academic Service & Governance

University & Institutional Service

Professional & Community Service

Selected Publications

Book

  1. Garcia, R. (2014). Creating and Marketing New Products and Services. CRC Press.

Journal Articles

  1. Garcia, R., Atkins, R. M. B., Bonillas, E., Brush, C., Gartner, W. B., Welter, F., et al. (2026). How should we study heterogeneity in entrepreneurship? Moving the field to an inclusive approach. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 50(2), 355–397.
  2. Chinwego, C., Garcia, R., Sehar, D. M. A., MacGregor, E., Tate, S., Savage, K., et al. (2025). Sufficiency-driven business models for rare earth recycling: integrating stakeholder collaboration and customer discovery for sustainable innovation. Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 14(1), 20.
  3. Javadi, S., Kordzadeh, N., & Garcia, R. (2025). Negotiating privacy in chatbots: Managing boundaries and user control through a communication privacy management perspective.
  4. Spanjol, J., Noble, C. H., Baer, M., Bogers, M. L. A. M., Bohlmann, J., Bouncken, R. B., Garcia, R., et al. (2024). Fueling innovation management research: Future directions and five forward-looking paths. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 41(5), 893–948.
  5. Garcia, R., & Baack, D. W. (2023). The invisible racialized minority entrepreneur: Using white solipsism to explain the white space. Journal of Business Ethics, 188(3), 397–418.
  6. Garcia, R., Bonillas, E., & Burton, K. (2023). Re-conceptualizing underrepresented racial minority entrepreneurs. Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship, 19(5–6), 447–589.
  7. Pollack, J. M., Garcia, R., Michaelis, T. L., Hanson, S., Carr, J. C., & Sheats, L. (2021). Pursuing B Corp certification: Exploring firms' entrepreneurial orientation and prosocial motivation. Academy of Management Discoveries, 7(2), 294–316.
  8. Garcia, R., Wigger, K., & Rivas Hermann, R. (2019). Challenges of creating and capturing value in open eco-innovation: Evidence from the maritime industry in Denmark. Journal of Cleaner Production, 220, 642–654.
  9. Claudy, M. C., Garcia, R., & O'Driscoll, A. (2015). Consumer resistance to innovation—a behavioral reasoning perspective. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(4), 528–544.
  10. Toubia, O., Goldenberg, J., & Garcia, R. (2014). Improving penetration forecasts using social interactions data. Management Science, 60(12), 3049–3066.
  11. Garcia, R., & Jager, W. (2011). Agent-based modeling of innovation diffusion (special issue editorial). Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(2), 148–151.
  12. Zhang, T., Gensler, S., & Garcia, R. (2011). A study of the diffusion of alternative fuel vehicles: An agent-based modeling approach. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(2), 152–168.
  13. Choi, P., Garcia, R., & Friedrich, C. (2010). The drivers for collective horizontal coopetition: A case study of screwcap initiatives in the international wine industry. International Journal of Strategic Business Alliances, 1(3), 271–290.
  14. Toubia, O., Hauser, J., & Garcia, R. (2007). Probabilistic polyhedral methods for adaptive choice-based conjoint analysis: Theory and application. Marketing Science, 26(5), 596–610.
  15. Garcia, R., Rummel, P., & Hauser, J. (2007). Validating agent-based marketing models through conjoint analysis. Journal of Business Research, 60(8), 848–857.
  16. Garcia, R., Bardhi, F., & Friedrich, C. (2007). Overcoming consumer resistance to innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 48(4), 82–88.
  17. Atkin, T., Nowak, L., & Garcia, R. (2007). Women wine consumers: Information search and retailing implications. International Journal of Wine Business Research, 19(4), 327–339.
  18. Garcia, R., & Kandemir, D. (2006). An illustration of modeling moderating variables in cross-national studies. International Marketing Review, 23(4), 371–389.
  19. Kandemir, D., Calantone, R., & Garcia, R. (2006). An exploration of organizational factors in new product development success. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 21(5), 300–310.
  20. Atkin, T., Garcia, R., & Lockshin, L. (2006). A multinational study of the diffusion of a discontinuous innovation. Australasian Marketing Journal, 14(2), 17–33.
  21. Garcia, R. (2005). Uses of agent-based modeling in innovation/new product development research. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 22(5), 380–398.
  22. Garcia, R., Calantone, R., & Levine, R. (2003). The role of knowledge in resource allocation to exploration versus exploitation in technologically oriented organizations. Decision Sciences, 34(2), 323–349.
  23. Calantone, R., Garcia, R., & Dröge, C. (2003). The effects of environmental turbulence on new product development strategy planning. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 20(2), 90–103.
  24. Garcia, R., & Calantone, R. (2002). A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness terminology: A literature review. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 19(2), 110–132.

Book Chapters & Working Papers

  1. Garcia, R., & Baack, D. W. Entrepreneurial intent is not Black or white: An intersectional perspective. Working paper, SSRN.
  2. Garcia, R. (2022). The language of entrepreneurship: An exploratory gender-coding study. In World Scientific Encyclopedia of Business Sustainability, Ethics and Entrepreneurship.
  3. Garcia, R., & Dacko, S. (2015). Design thinking for sustainability. In Design Thinking: New Product Development Essentials from the PDMA (pp. 381–400).
  4. Garcia, R. Types of innovation. In V. K. Narayanan & G. C. O'Connor (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Technology and Innovation Management. Wiley-Blackwell.

Patents

  1. Peek, D. P., Finnigan, P. F., & Garcia, R. (2001). Method and apparatus to automatically address a voice mail reply to a voice mail message. US Patent 6,292,799.
  2. Garcia, R., & Rummel, P. (1998). Dual signal triggered message waiting notification system for indicating storage of different types of messages awaiting retrieval. US Patent 5,802,166.

Media, Commentary & Speaking