Paul Nary is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is a strategy researcher who is interested in how firms reconfigure their resources, reshape their boundaries, and source capabilities externally. His current work spans two closely related research streams in corporate strategy and technology and innovation management. In the first stream, Paul studies how firms source capabilities by engaging in multiple external corporate development modes, such as alliances, acquisitions, and corporate venture capital investments, while paying special attention to choice and interdependence of these modes. In the second, complementary stream, he investigates the distinct roles of various types of external actors (whether private equity funds, VC investors, or other firms) and their investments, both when it comes to their roles in the markets, as well as their influence on firm-level and transaction-level outcomes. Paul was Strategic Management Society’s SRF Dissertation Scholar and an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota, where he conducted archival research at the Charles Babbage Institute. Most recently, he was a recipient of research proposal funding awards from Wharton Dean’s Research Fund, Mack Institute for Innovation Management, and Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research. Paul currently teaches the Strategy module in the core MBA course: Managing the Emerging Enterprise (MGMT 612), as well as Corporate Development, Mergers and Acquisitions (MGMT 721).
Prior to his academic career, Paul worked for Intel Corporation, where his work spanned corporate venturing, new business development, mergers and acquisitions, and external technology collaborations. Before Intel, he worked for a boutique PE firm, a commercial real estate investment fund, and started two small businesses.
Paul completed his Ph.D. in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He also holds a Master’s degree from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and an M.B.A. and a B.S. in Finance from DePaul University.
Finding the Virtue in Private Equity Firms