UC Berkeley has chosen professor of finance Richard Lyons for the newly-created position of chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer.

Richard Lyons (pictured) has been appointed University of California (UC), Berkeley’s first chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer (CIEO), VentureBeat reported today.
Richard Lyons is currently professor of finance at the university’s Haas School of Business, following a decade-long stint as dean of the department from 2008 to 2018.
He will start as CIEO in January 2020, taking charge for the development and marketing of university innovation and entrepreneurship activities, to the benefit of its spinouts, faculty, staff and students.
In the interim, Lyons will have a transitional role as faculty assistant to the university’s vice-chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship, while he completes his autumn semester of teaching commitments.
UC Berkeley’s appointment of a CIEO fulfils one of the recommendations made in the “Entrepreneurship at Berkeley” paper, which was commissioned by the university’s former vice-chancellor for research to explore ways of improving its innovation ecosystem.
Lyons had a six-year spell at Columbia Business School as assistant and then professor of economic between 1987 and 1993, before moving to the Haas School in 1993 as professor of finance and economics.
During his tenure as dean, Lyons implemented four governing principles to help anchor the Haas School’s culture: questioning the status quo, having confidence without attitude, prioritising students and looking beyond personal interest. He was responsible for securing eight of the school’s ten largest donations in history.
Outside of academia, Lyons headed up leadership development at investment bank Goldman Sachs from 2006 until 2008. He has been a board member at investment firms Matthews Asia Funds and Syntax Funds, in addition to the iShares options program run by asset management unit Barclays Global Investors.
Lyons said: “If together we can improve the transformation of Berkeley’s prodigious intellectual product, across the whole campus, into greater societal benefit, then we will have achieved a great deal.”
Image courtesy of LinkedIn