Speaker > Biography

James D. Thompson

Associate Director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs;
Director of Societal Wealth Program
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

James Thompson is co-founder and director of the Wharton Societal Wealth Program (WSWP). The basic thesis of the WSWP is that many societal problems, if viewed through an entrepreneurial lens, create opportunity for someone to launch a business that simultaneously attends to the social need and makes a profit. Current projects fall within healthcare, education, technology commercialization, agriculture, animal nutrition, and consumer goods manufacturing.

He teaches innovation, corporate growth and dynamic strategy in Wharton Executive Education programs. Prior to joining the academic world he was divisional Director of a public South African company. James holds a BCom from the University of South Africa and an MBA from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. He concluded a research fellowship in the commercialization of technology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a PhD candidate in the management of technology at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland working on field research in the application of WSWP programs.