Jon Eckhardt

Jon Eckhardt holds appointments at the Wisconsin School of Business and the interdisciplinary Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID). Prior to becoming a professor, his experiences included analyzing fixed-income securities at Legg Mason Capital Management and Legg Mason Funds Advisor (now Franklin Templeton), and economic consulting. Eckhardt's technical positions included working as a system administrator supporting a lab of Digital Vax machines running 4.2BSD UNIX and providing sales support for UREP, a program that allowed UNIX machines to communicate on IBM's BITNET.

Expertise
Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Data Analysis, Finance, Leadership

Highlights

• co-founder, Entrepreneurship Science Lab combining data science with world-class entrepreneurs to improve university-driven entrepreneurship


• co-founder of gener8tor, one of the top business accelerators in the United States with 1,263 companies supported, over 10,000 jobs created, and over $2 billion in follow-on funding


• Editor in Chief, Entrepreneurship & Innovation Exchange


• Academic Director, Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship, 2012-2019, restarted center, enrollment grew to almost 2,000 students annually.


• Kauffman Faculty Fellow for Research


• Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation Distinguished Professorship (2016, renewed 2020) for excellence in entrepreneurship

Funders (selected)
Over $4 million in funding since 2010 from generous supporters, including the National Science Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, American Family Insurance, and individual donors.

Awards (selected)

• Best Reviewer, Academy of Management Perspectives (2022, 2023, 2024)


• Erwin A. Gaumnitz Distinguished Faculty Award for Service (2022)


• Erwin Gaumnitz Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award (2020)


• Schulze Award for Outstanding Theory and Research Publications


• Wisconsin Naming Gift Distinguished Service Award (2014)


• Madison Magazine M-List Who's Who in Entrepreneurship and Technology (2013)


• Mabel W. Chipman Oustanding Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010)

Publications
Google scholar page (Link)
EIX Publications (Link) and the EIX Homepage (Link)

Lab Page
For more information, see Prof. Eckhardt's lab page at eslab.wisc.edu.

National Service
Three years of active duty in the United States Army Close