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 innovate and grow responsibly to maximize their impact?

5,778+ citations across the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of Business Venturing.

Responsible entrepreneurship

How high-growth ventures, unicorns included, pursue scale without surrendering responsibility. The "Taming Unicorns" agenda.

Hybrid organisations & mission drift

Why organisations drift from their missions, and the anchors that hold them: certification, identity, and governance.

Entrepreneurial cognition & identity

Founders as people: feedback, authenticity, compassion, and the identity work behind the pivot, and its limits.

AI and Knowledge Work

How artificial intelligence restructures entrepreneurship, research, and the governance decisions facing boards.

Selected publications

All publications →

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
  1. The governance problem you cannot define
  2. Strategic simulation of AI futures
  3. Corporate governance meets AI
  4. The OpenAI governance simulation
  5. Accountability, regulation, and comparative governance
  6. Audit completion and programme synthesis

Programme & enrolment at Cambridge Judge →

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.

About this tool →

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.

About this tool →

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.

Matthew Grimes standing outdoors on campus

  • AI governance in the boardroom

    What directors must understand, ask, and decide about AI, from oversight structures to the 90-day plan.

  • Taming unicorns: responsible growth

    How high-velocity ventures pursue scale without surrendering mission, governance, or legitimacy.

  • The pivot, and its limits

    What two decades of research on founder feedback, identity, and reinvention says about when to change course.

  • Scholarship and knowledge work in the age of AI

    From scarcity to abundance: how AI restructures research, expertise, and the institutions built on both.

Contact

Working on something that needs to grow and stay true?

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Matthew Grimes