Profile

Ian "Mac" MacMillan

Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Bio

Ian MacMillan’s most recent book The Social Entrepreneur’s Playbook focuses on how to create social enterprises that generate profits while reducing social stress for target beneficiary populations.

Ian C. MacMillan (Mac) is the Academic Director of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Center and Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Entrepreneurial Management. He also taught at Columbia University, Northwestern University and NYU. He received his BSc (Chemical Engineering) . from the University of Witwatersrand, and his Master’s and Doctorate in Management from the University of South Africa.

Prior to joining the academic world, Mac was a chemical engineer, and gained experience in gold and uranium mines, chemical and explosives factories, oil refineries, soap and food manufacturers, and the South African Atomic Energy Board. He has been a director of companies in the travel, import/export and pharmaceutical businesses in the USA, South Africa, Canada, Hong Kong, and Japan. Mac has extensive consulting experience, having worked with such companies as Merck, Microsoft, Air Products, DuPont, General Electric, GTE, IBM, Citibank, Chubb & Son, American Re-Insurance, Texas Instruments, Novell, Westcon, Fluor Daniel, Seagate Technologies, Matsushita/Panasonic (Japan), Olympus (Japan), L.G.Chem (Korea), KPMG (UK) and Commercial Union General Insurance (UK).

Mac has published articles and books on new ventures, innovation organizational politics and strategy formulation. His articles have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, The Sloan Management Review, The Journal of Business Venturing, and others. He is co-author of the best-selling books Corporate Venturing, The Entrepreneurial Mindset, which focuses on how managers and entrepreneurs can create a continuous stream of growth opportunities for their firms, MarketBusters, which focuses on strategies firms can use to dramatically change their existing businesses, Unlocking Opportunities for Growth, which provides guidelines for selecting, valuing and pursuing highly uncertain but high potential growth opportunities, and Discovery Driven Growth which focuses on how to use incremental, game-changing and radical innovation to grow the value of the company. His most recent book “The Social Entrepreneur’s Playbook” focuses on how to create Social enterprises that generate profits while reducing social stress for target beneficiary populations.