Robert Wolcott is Co-Founder & Executive Director of the
KIN and a Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and formerly a visiting professor at the Keio Business School (Japan). Wolcott won
Teacher of the Year from Kellogg’s EMBA program in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Wolcott is also a managing partner with Clareo, a growth strategy consultancy serving senior executives at global corporations such as Exelon, Castrol, Johnson Controls, Owens Corning and others.
He serves on the global digital advisory board for ZF, a 40 billion USD German automotive supplier, and an advisory board member of H-Farm, the leading technology ecosystem in Italy. He has served on the advisory boards of Nordic Innovation for the Nordic Council, Oslo, Norway; the Kraft Foods Global Technology Council (GTC); and GE’s Innovation Accelerator.
He is a regular contributor for Forbes on the impact of technology on business, society and humanity. His book with Dr. Michael Lippitz,
Grow From Within: Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation (McGraw-Hill, 2010) shares a decade of research and has been published in Chinese and Japanese. Wolcott’s work has appeared in
MIT Sloan Management Review,
strategy+business,
The Harvard Business Review (online),
The Wall Street Journal,
Advertising Age,
Business Week,
The Financial Times (European Edition),
The New York Times and numerous overseas publications. He is a frequent speaker at events worldwide.
In 2003, Wolcott founded the Kellogg Innovation Network, now known simply as
the KIN, a network of leaders dedicated to driving sustainable innovation. The KIN’s annual summit, KIN Global, takes place in late spring and includes leaders from around the world who collaborate around issues of significance for their organizations and for humanity (
www.kinglobal.org). Wolcott is also an active angel investor in enterprises such as crowd funding leader Indiegogo (
www.indiegogo.com), student loan innovator Lumni (
www.lumni.net), legal documentation platform Page Vault (
www.page-vault.com/), transaction security technology firm Magic Cube (
www.magiccube.co), healthcare data and analytics providers SA Ignite (
www.saignite.com) and ClearCare Online (exited to Battery Ventures) and international art show, EXPO Chicago (
www.expochicago.com).
Wolcott received a BA, European and Chinese History; and an MS and Ph.D., Industrial Engineering & Management Science, Northwestern University.