Prof. Elaine Chen (Tufts University) USA

Elaine Chen Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship Founder and Managing Director, ConceptSpring. Elaine is a startup veteran and corporate innovation and entrepreneurship consultant who has brought numerous hardware and software products to market. As Founder and Managing Director of ConceptSpring, Elaine works with executives and leaders of entrepreneurial teams in established businesses to help them craft new innovation processes, and to set up and run new ventures with the speed and agility of a startup. Clients span diverse industries, including healthcare IT, industrial automation, robotics, consumer electronics, retail innovation, FinTech and more. She is the author of the book, “Bringing a Hardware Product to Market: Navigating the Wild Ride from Concept to Mass Production”. As the VP of engineering and product management at several startups, including Rethink Robotics, Zeo, Zeemote, and SensAble Technologies, Elaine has built, grown, and nurtured several technical organizations from the ground up. She is a co-inventor on 22 patents to date, and has managed IP portfolio strategies for numerous organizations. Elaine has been working with students at MIT since early 2011. She has served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Professional Advisor and Senior Lecturer at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and the MIT Sloan School of Management. She designs, develops, and teaches courses and programs in entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship, coaches students on a one-on-one basis, and develops systems and processes to scale up the support to entrepreneurial students. She built the Trust Center’s First Time Founder Knowledge Base from the ground up. She also serves on the Board of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge. In June 2016, Elaine received the Monosson Prize for Entrepreneurship Mentoring from MIT in recognition of her contributions to foster entrepreneurship education at MIT. In 2017, she was selected by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and the Lemelson Foundation to serve as one of eight Invention Ambassadors for 2017-2018 to inspire, inform and influence thought leaders and global community about innovation and invention. Elaine is a thought leader and speaker who has been featured in Xconomy, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Forbes and Fortune. Her most recent speaking engagements include a speech on finding and following one’s passion at the American Academic for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), moderating a startup panel at a TechCrunch Robotics event, and delivering a keynote address for an international conference on tourism innovation in Lisbon, Portugal. Elaine holds a BS and an MS in mechanical engineering from MIT.