Todd A. Finkle

Biography

Dr. Todd A. Finkle became the inaugural Pigott Professor of Entrepreneurship at Gonzaga University in 2010 and has been an entrepreneur, author, consultant and speaker. Dr. Finkle’s academic experience includes teaching entrepreneurship & strategy for 20+ years at 4 different universities. He has consulted with hundreds of start-ups, governments from all over the world, small businesses, Fortune 500 corporations and built two entrepreneurship programs. One became a nationally ranked program where he was the Director of the Entrepreneurship Center. His industry experience includes growing up in a family business, working for a variety of small businesses and a Fortune 500 Corporation. He has been an entrepreneur of four businesses and co-founded a non-profit with six other universities that provided free entrepreneurship education for students. This venture won a national teaching award. He has published and/or presented over 190+ articles and grants on entrepreneurship. Warren Buffett invited Dr. Finkle to visit him twice. The first time Finkle wrote an in-depth case study on Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway over two years and received a letter from Buffett within 10 days. The second time, with Dr. Paul Buller, they assigned a project to entrepreneurship students to create new products, which eventually led Buffett to invite Gonzaga University to visit him. This visit led to an article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. As a result of these activities 47 students were able to spend a day with arguably the smartest business mind in the world, Warren Buffett, where they learned lessons about life and business. Other honors include: runner-up for the most innovative entrepreneurship educator in the world by the Academy of Management & a MOOT CORP® Fellow through the IC² Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

Research Interest

Trends in the field of entrepreneurship and Product Portfolio Analysis