Penn State Startup Week 2026

As an Ethnomethodologist, Dr. Betsy Campbell studies the practices of teams at the forefront of technological innovation and new venture creation. Campbell is a Fulbright Specialist in AI entrepreneurship and the recipient of two Academy of Management awards for entrepreneurship. Earlier in her career, Campbell founded high-tech companies, helped create a business unit within an established company (acquired by Lucent for $1.5B), and launched a 501(c)(3) (Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs) which she grew to over 5,000 members worldwide before leaving to get her PhD. She also was the co-director for the MIT Community Innovation Lab. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, RSM Foundation, and Anchor Point Foundation. Campbell has published two books with Routledge – Practice Theory in Action: Empirical Studies of Interaction in Innovation and Entrepreneurship and The Innovator's Discussion: The Conversational Skills of Entrepreneurial Teams-- as well as a growing collection of chapters and articles. She is a member of the Explorers Club, the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab, and the Alan Turing Institute's AI and Arts group. Recently, she was an invited participant in the Smithsonian Apollo Dialogues Workshop associated with the 50th anniversaries of the NASA moon landings.