Sean Ammirati

Biography

Sean Ammirati is Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. In addition to teaching, he is also the Co-Founder and Director of the Carnegie Mellon Corporate... Startup Lab (CSL). The CSL is a Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship initiative that has conducted research and developed tools to help companies better adapt and integrate entrepreneurial best practices into their own innovation processes. The frameworks and tools have helped innovators become more successful entrepreneurs and helped leaders better encourage entrepreneurship and manage their innovation portfolios.

The CSL also developed a unique project course on corporate entrepreneurship, in which diverse teams of graduate students partner with large companies to test and develop real startup ideas brought by the corporations.

In addition to his work at CMU, Sean is also joined Birchmere Ventures as a Partner in 2012. Birchmere focuses on seed-stage SaaS and marketplace startup investments. The firm is headquartered in Pittsburgh with a second office in San Francisco.

Prior to joining Birchmere, Sean spent 12 years founding, building, and selling businesses in the software and media industries. He was Chief Operating Officer of ReadWriteWeb acquired by the private-equity rollup SAY Media to strengthen its technology channel. Prior to that, Sean was the co-founder and CEO of mSpoke, which was LinkedIn's first acquisition. His first startup was Peak Strategy, which was acquired by Morgan Stanley.

He recently completed his first book The Science of Growth, which was released by St Martin's Press in April 2016 and was subsequently translated and published in Korean and Mandarin.

Finally, Sean is also the host of one of the most popular podcasts on corporate innovation – Agile Giants which you can find on your favorite podcasting platform.

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Areas of Expertise (6)

Early Stage Startups

Mobile Devices

Venture Capital

Corporate Entrepreneurship

Generative AI

Agile Methodologies

Media Appearances (5)

AI and the R&D revolution

Financial Times  online

2024-11-27

Mindset is an important factor in innovation. Sean Ammirati, professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, says an entrepreneurial culture inside the R&D function helps companies to innovate — even the large ones. Teams with such a mindset are more likely to come up with transformational rather than incremental product developments.  Ammirati, who has founded several machine-learning start-ups, says many companies do not make the necessary investment in adjacent and transformational innovation. He cited a 2012 paper by Harvard Business Review, which stated: “Companies that allocated 70 per cent of innovation activity to core initiatives, 20 per cent to adjacent ones and 10 per cent to transformational ones outperformed their peers.”

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How A.I. Can Help Start Small Businesses

The New York Times  online

2024-08-19

Sean Ammirati has been teaching a class on entrepreneurship for more than a decade. A professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Mr. Ammirati has groups of mostly graduate students start businesses from scratch over the course of the spring semester. Some of the start-ups that his 49 students created this year were classic examples of the form: a dating app for couples in long-distance relationships, a personalized fitness app. But Mr. Ammirati also noticed something unusual. “I have a pretty good sense how fast the progress that students should make in a semester should be,” he said. “In 14 years, I’ve never seen students make the kind of progress that they made this year.”

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How Pittsburgh can build on a legacy of leadership in corporate innovation

Technical.ly  online

2023-07-11

A leading figure in bridging the regional corporate and startup communities is Sean Ammirati, who is cofounder and director of the Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab, a venture capitalist, and repeat startup founder. Ammirati believes there are two main ways that local companies can work with regional startups: • Outside-in approach — Partnering with a local startup to develop a new product or service. This can be a great way for companies to get access to new technology and ideas, and to shorten the time it takes to bring new products to market. • Inside-out approach — Launching an internal accelerator or innovation program. This can help companies to foster innovation within their own organization, and to attract and retain top talent. “Some of it is certainly that companies — not just in Pittsburgh — are realizing more and more that the pace of change is accelerating faster than ever,” Ammirati said. “The truth that was always true is that the things that made the most successful companies relevant will not always keep them relevant. … The half-life of large companies is already shortening.”

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Why Big Companies Rival Startups in Entrepreneurship Opportunities

Acceleration Economy  online

2023-04-13

In this CIO Summit interview, Tony Uphoff speaks with Sean Ammirati, Carnegie Mellon Professor, Chair of the Corporate Entrepreneurship Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. The two discuss surprising trends from 2022, Ammirati’s work at Carnegie Mellon and at the Corporate Entrepreneurship Lab, and what his students are most excited about.

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Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum discusses how corporations can make internal innovations

Pittsburgh Inno | Business Journals  online

2022-11-18

Startup founders can take their pitch to the next VC should they be rejected by the first one they reach out to; corporations don't have such luxury, noted Sean Ammirati, director of the Corporate Startup Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.

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Media

Publications (1) Photos (4) Videos (4)

Publications:

Photos:

Videos:

Social

Industry Expertise (2)

Corporate Leadership

Computer Software

Education (2)

Carnegie Mellon University: Research Fellow, Computer Science & Organizational Behavior 2004

Grove City College: B.S., Computer Information Systems 2002

Affiliations (1)

• Birchmere Ventures : Partner

Links (3)

• Carnegie Mellon University Scholar Profile
• Agile Giants: Lessons from Corporate Innovators
• Personal Website

Event Appearances (2)

Generative AI

April 2024 | IMPACT AI  

Hype vs Reality: Generative AI by Sean Ammirati

November 2023 | CSL Corporate Startup Lab