Raul O. Chao
Oliver Wight Associate Professor of Business Administration
Office
FOB 151Phone
Academic Area
Areas of Expertise
Education: B.S., Johns Hopkins University; MBA, M.S., University of Miami; Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
Raul Chao is the Oliver Wight Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business, where he teaches operations management, innovation and new product development courses. His research and teaching is focused on helping managers design more innovative organizations. He has helped many entrepreneurial ventures and established companies manage their innovation and new product development processes, and he currently serves as an adviser or board member for numerous early-stage ventures. He is a leader in novel curriculum design, having developed a number of cross-disciplinary experiential courses at the University of Virginia focused on product development and technology commercialization. Much of Chao's research and teaching is based on fieldwork and case studies conducted at companies such as 3M, Microsoft, Whirlpool and Lockheed Martin, among others. Recent research projects include work on entrepreneurial ecosystems, innovation and design contests, and R&D portfolio management. His work has been published in leading academic journals including Production and Operations Management, Operations Research, and Management Science.
Prior to joining the Darden faculty, Chao worked as a management consultant serving U.S. and Latin American organizations in a wide range of industries, including pharmaceutical, biomedical, health care, financial services, hospitality and media. He earned his B.S. in chemical engineering from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in operations management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Raul Chao's Ideas to Action Posts
How Not to Kill Your Innovation: Avoiding 3 Pitfalls of New Product Development
Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Selected Publications
Chao, R. and Lopez-Gottardi, C. (2015) " How America's Education Model Kills Creativity and Entrepreneurship", Forbes, March 19, 2015. This article has received the highest readership among all Darden contributions to Forbes.
Chao, R.(2012) " Lockheed Martin's Innovation Via Strategic Buckets," The Washington Post, 21 July 2012.
Chao, R.(2012) " The Ins and Outs of Open Innovation," Forbes, 7 May 2012. Reprinted with permission on crowdsourcing.org and Darden Business Publishing. Named one of the "top ten" articles on open innovation for 2012 by Open Innovation Community.
Chao, R.(2012) " To Scale Up a Start-Up Business, Focus on Internal Operations," The Washington Post, 12 March 2012.
Chao, R.(2011) " Why Grassroots Innovation Hasn't Worked at Microsoft," The Washington Post, 15 May 2011.
Kavadias, S. and Chao, R.(2008) "Resource Allocation and NPD Portfolio Management," in Handbook of New Product Development Management, C. Loch and S. Kavadias (eds.), Elsevier Press, Oxford UK, p. 135-163.
Chao, R. and Kavadias, S. (2004) "Strategic NPD Portfolio Management in Complex Environments," inOperations Management as a Change Agent, L. Van Wassenhove, A. De Meyer, et al. (eds.), INSEAD Press, Fontainebleau France, p. 701-710.
Basole, R. and Chao, R.(2004) "Location-Based Mobile Decision Support Systems and Their Effect on User Performance," Proceedings of the Tenth Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), N. Romano et al. (eds.), Association for Information Systems (AIS) Publishers, New York, p. 2870-2874.
Bendoly, E. and Chao, R.(2016), " How Excessive Stage Time Reduction in NPD Negatively Effects Market Value", Production and Operations Management, Vol. 25, No. 5, p. 812-832.
Oyama, K., Learmonth, G., and Chao, R.(2015), " Applying Complexity Science to New Product Development: Modeling Considerations and Implications", Journal of Engineering Technology Management. Vol. 35, No. 1, p. 1-24.
Chao, Raul, Kenneth C. Lichtendahl, Jr. and Yael Grushka-Cockayne. " Incentives in a Stage-Gate Process", Production and Operations Management, August 2014, Vol 23, No 8, p 1286.
Hutchison-Krupat, Jeremy and Raul Chao. " Tolerance for Failure and Incentives for Collaborative Innovation", Production and Operations Management, August 2014, Vol 23, No 8, 1265-1285.
Chao, Raul and S. Kavadias. " R&D Intensity and the New Product Development Portfolio", IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Vol. 60, No. 4, p. 664. 2013.
Lichtendahl, K., Chao, R. and Bodily, S. (2012), " Habit Formation from Correlation Aversion " ,Operations Research, Vol. 60, No. 3, p. 625-637.
Chao, R., Kavadias, S. and Gaimon, C. (2009)," Revenue Driven Resource Allocation: Funding Authority, Incentives, and NPD Portfolio Management", Management Science, Vol. 55, No. 9, p 1556-1569 .
Chao, R. and Kavadias, S. (2008), " A Theoretical Framework for Managing the NPD Portfolio: When and How to Use Strategic Buckets," Management Science, Vol. 54, No. 5, p. 907-921.
Working Papers
Basole, R., Park, H. and Chao, R. (2016), "Visualization of Strategic Positioning in Global Entrepreneurial Ecosystems", Georgia Institute of Technology Working Paper, invited to Revise and Resubmit at IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.
Stouras, K. and Hutchison-Krupat, J. and Chao, R. (2016) "Motivating Participation and Effort in Innovation Contests", Darden School of Business Working Paper, under review at Management Science.
Basole, R., Park, H. and Chao, R. (2016), "How Strategic Positioning Drives Funding in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems", Georgia Institute of Technology Working Paper, Under Review at Management Science.
Liu, X. and Chao, R. (2016). "How Corporate Social Responsibility Influences Innovation", Darden School of Business Working Paper, under review at Management Science.
Lenox, M. and Chao, R. (2016), "Toward a Unified Model of Innovation and Competitive Dynamics", Darden School of Business Working Paper.
Chao, R. and Loutskina, E. (2015), "Financial Distress and Risky Innovation", Darden School of Business Working Paper.
Chao, R. and Erat, S. (2014), "Competition and Effort in Contests with Evaluation Uncertainty", Darden School of Business Working Paper.
Oyama, K., Learmonth, G., and Chao, R. (2013), "Modeling Co-evolutionary Dynamics in New Product Development," UVA Systems Engineering Working Paper.
Case Studies
Advancing knowledge through research that shapes business, Darden professors are recognized thought leaders in their fields. They are not only master case method teachers, they also author many of the cases used in Darden classrooms and around the world.
Raul O. Chao's cases are available in the Darden Business Publishing website.