Innovation is a deeply personal and human process.
Founders as people: feedback, authenticity, compassion, and the identity work behind the pivot, and its limits.
Cambridge · Entrepreneurship · AI Governance
Innovation, anchored.
I study and build the things that keep fast-moving ventures true to their mission. Professor of Entrepreneurship & Sustainable Futures at Cambridge Judge Business School; Deputy Editor of the Academy of Management Journal.
- Cambridge Judge Business School
- Academy of Management Journal
- Cambridge Judge Entrepreneurship Centre
Research
Twenty years on one question: how do ventures increase their impact?
6,085+ citations across the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of Business Venturing.
As innovation scales, it can drift. Some of that is loss. Some of it is serendipity.
Why organisations drift from their missions, and the anchors that hold them: certification, identity, and governance.
Ensuring that venture growth results in positive impact requires care.
How high-growth ventures, unicorns included, pursue scale without surrendering responsibility. The "Taming Unicorns" agenda.
AI is now reshaping the practice of innovation and venturing.
How artificial intelligence restructures entrepreneurship, research, and the governance decisions facing boards.
Scroll to turn the plate
- Entrepreneurial cognition & identity
- Hybrid organisations & mission drift
- Responsible entrepreneurship
- AI and Knowledge Work
Selected publications
- The limits of pivoting
- Taming unicorns: Toward a new normal of responsible entrepreneurship
- From scarcity to abundance: Scholars and scholarship in an age of generative artificial intelligence
- Anchors aweigh: The sources, variety, and challenges of mission drift
- The pivot: How founders respond to feedback through idea and identity work
- Venturing for others with heart and head: How compassion encourages social entrepreneurship
AI Governance
Not whether to adopt AI, but how to govern it.
AI is the fastest-moving governance problem organisations have faced. As Academic Programme Director, I lead Cambridge's executive programme preparing directors and CXOs to oversee it with confidence.
Designed with faculty from five University of Cambridge departments, the programme turns AI uncertainty into accountable board-level decisions, ending in a concrete 90-day oversight plan.
Cambridge Executive Education
AI Governance for Boards and CXOs
Three days, face-to-face in Cambridge
15–17 July 202630 November – 2 December 2026
- The governance problem you cannot define
- Strategic simulation of AI futures
- Corporate governance meets AI
- The OpenAI governance simulation
- Accountability, regulation, and comparative governance
- Audit completion and programme synthesis
Tools
The research doesn't stay on the page.
I build AI tools that put two decades of findings to work for scholars developing ideas and founders protecting missions. Built, shipped, and used.
Live
Scholarly Ideas
Research puzzles, not literature gaps.
A research puzzle development tool that helps academics develop rigorous research questions grounded in real empirical anomalies.
Live
Research Canvas
Structured manuscript feedback, before the reviewers see it.
An AI-powered management research feedback tool that gives scholars structured, developmental feedback on working manuscripts across eight evaluation areas, including theoretical motivation, literature positioning, research design, findings, and constraints.
Live
Social Impact Venture Advisor
Design social impact ventures from technology and the SDGs.
A venture creation tool for social entrepreneurs.
Speaking & Advisory
Where the work meets the room.
Matthew speaks to boards, executive teams, and conferences on AI governance and responsible innovation, and advises organisations navigating both.
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AI governance in the boardroom
What directors must understand, ask, and decide about AI, from oversight structures to the 90-day plan.
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Taming unicorns: responsible growth
How high-velocity ventures pursue scale without surrendering mission, governance, or legitimacy.
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The pivot, and its limits
What two decades of research on founder feedback, identity, and reinvention says about when to change course.
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Scholarship and knowledge work in the age of AI
From scarcity to abundance: how AI restructures research, expertise, and the institutions built on both.
