Shyam Jha, MBA - Principal Consultant

Tucson, AZ

Shyam leverages three decades of international corporate, entrepreneurial, and executive education experience to help entrepreneurs and enterprise clients develop compelling business models and plans. He focuses on mobile apps, e-commerce, enterprise software, consumer electronics, and other high-technology venture areas.

Shyam gained international business experience at Fortune 100 companies such as Schlumberger, Hewlett-Packard, and Nortel. Starting as Field Sales Engineer at Schlumberger, he rose progressively in marketing and business development area to lead business development and strategic planning activity at Nortel’s $5 billion Carrier Packet Solutions Business Unit. Later, he was the first Vice President of Marketing at Corvis, an optical networking startup funded by Kleiner-Perkins, New Enterprise Associates and Cisco, where he played a key role in its $1.1 billion IPO.

Shyam gained his first experience in "intrapreneurship" at HP, where he created a ruggedized version of HP Vectra PCs for use in offshore drilling platforms. He led the product marketing team at HP for development of the world’s first Palmtop PC – the HP 95 LX – that combined Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet with personal organizer functions. Later, as director of product management at Bay Networks (acquired by Nortel), he led the development of industry’s first high-capacity edge routers sold to ISPs such as AOL and Earthlink.

Shyam has worked as a Venture Partner at Mercator Capital, an early stage fund based in Virginia. He is also a limited partner in a technology-focused venture fund in Silicon Valley. He has mentored many entrepreneurs as an angel investor and board member over the past decade.

Shyam has taught executive MBA courses on innovation and corporate strategy, as well as undergraduate courses in operations and engineering management at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management and College of Engineering. He has three “Professor of the Year” awards. He was an Entrepreneurship Scholar at the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Arizona, where he mentored student entrepreneurs.

Shyam is a frequent speaker on innovation and strategy. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and has made television appearances in France. He has written an online text on operations management for McGraw-Hill Connect Series, and has published an Amazon Kindle book on Strategic Planning.

Shyam earned his MBA from Oregon State University, and holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

View Shyam's articles.