Senior Assistant Professor, Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Ashesi University
Dr. Gordon Kwesi Adomdza, is a Senior Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Ashesi University, and a Visiting Professor at CEIBS Africa, Ghana. As recently as last year, Dr. Adomdza was an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, at Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA. Dr. Adomdza graduated from University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada with a Ph.D in Management of Technology MASc in Management Science and MA in Applied Economics. He is also a graduate of University of Ghana with a BA Hons in Economics.
At Ashesi, Dr. Adomdza teaches courses that use design-thinking in the development of innovative new idea concepts and business models across the freshman cohorts. He is also the Lead for the Ashesi Design Lab, which wants to be the thought leader for design thinking in Africa. Further, is also the organizer of the Design Thinking Ghana Meetup Group.
He developed his design-thinking curriculum in collaboration with Continuum Innovation, inventors of the award winning Swiffer.
He also uses design thinking to help startups apply the Lean Start-up methodology in starting their businesses. He was the faculty advisor to Northeastern University’s Entrepreneurs Club for 7 years, http://www.neu.edu/entrepreneurs/, one of the most visible entrepreneurship clubs in the USA. And he is now leaning on that experience to help Ashesi students build the student-led Ashesi Venture Accelerator.
In his spare time, Dr. Adomdza runs The Startup Traction Project, which helps entrepreneurs and businesses develop experiments to help them test their ideas faster and more cheaply before they spend significant amount of money.
Dr. Adomdza’s research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurial opportunity discovery and validation, as well as the ideation stage of the new product development process. He has published papers in leading journals exploring the nexus between the entrepreneur and an opportunity through lens of the discovery and exploitation process for new ideas. He also has a developing interest in sustainable and hybrid business models for social innovations.