Anthony Warren Named Director Of Farrell Center For Entrepreneurship

Dr. Anthony C. Warren is joining Penn State's Smeal College of Business as the Director of the Farrell Center for Entrepreneurship and as the Farrell Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship.

Warren will guide the teaching and practice of entrepreneurship as well as relationships with the entrepreneurship and venture capital communities, and direct the advancement of research in that area at Smeal College. He will assume his new responsibilities on May 1, 2001.

"We are thrilled that Dr. Warren is joining Smeal College. Tony is a world-class entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and teacher. With his wide-range of entrepreneurial, managerial and teaching skills, Tony will establish the Center as a magnet for entrepreneurs and students of entrepreneurship, at a particularly exciting time in the evolution of the entrepreneurial model," says Judy Olian, Dean of Smeal College.

Pittsburgh businessman Michael J. Farrell, president and CEO of Farrell & Co., and his wife, Christine, have committed a total of $4 million to endow the Farrell Center and Chair of Entrepreneurship. Michael earned a bachelor's degree in accounting and management information systems from Penn State in 1971. The endowment created by the Farrells' gift will support graduate and faculty research, in addition to the operations of the Center.

"I am excited by this opportunity, which I sense comes at a time of important evolution at both Smeal College and Penn State," states Warren. "In the new convergent economy, entrepreneurship does not only apply to forming, financing and growing a new company, but impacts on how agility and external relationships are managed by established firms.

"A deep understanding of how risk-takers become highly effective in both small and large organizations will enhance the value of Smeal College graduates, whether they join a start-up or a Fortune 100 Corporation. Entrepreneurship at Penn State will also act as an economic driver both within the local community and throughout Pennsylvania."

Last year, Warren formed Strategic Technologies LLC, a boutique investment bank located in Princeton, NJ for technology rich companies seeking to sell part or all of their assets. In 1987, he started TMF LP, a unique venture firm making investments in "seed-stage" firms receiving equity for structuring corporate partnering contracts. In addition, he is also a Venture Partner with Adams Capital Management, a nationwide early stage venture capital firm headquartered in Pittsburgh with over $700 million under management.

Warren received a B.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. After post-doctoral work at the Universities of Toronto and Illinois, he returned to Europe to undertake research on electrical power generation before joining an embryonic consulting firm, PA Technology, in Cambridge, UK. Over a period of 17 years, Warren grew the international divisions of PA to revenues of over $50 million. During this period, he consulted with many of the world's largest corporations on such topics as managing creativity and accelerating product development cycles.

He taught physics at the University of Toronto, and contributed to MBA courses at Columbia and New York University as well as the outreach programs at Penn State, Rutgers University, University of Maryland, and SUNY. He is a regular speaker on entrepreneurship at conferences sponsored by the Federal Small Business Administration and has advised various state agencies as well as overseas governments on funding mechanisms for stimulating innovation.

Warren has published extensively in the scientific, technical and business media, and is often quoted on a range of topics that concern the impact of technology on society.

Penn State's Smeal College of Business is a pre-eminent learning community, shaping business practice for tomorrow's converging economies. With 6,400 undergraduates, Smeal College has the third largest undergraduate business program in the country. In addition to the nationally ranked undergraduate program, Smeal College is home to internationally ranked MBA and Executive Education Programs. Smeal College's seven academic departments, as well as its ten research centers and institutes, present programs and studies in leading-edge areas such as converging economies, supply chain management, e-business, and entrepreneurship along with the traditional areas of marketing, management, finance, real estate, accounting and information systems.