Lou Tornatzky
Professor of Industrial Technology
E-mail: ltornatz@calpoly.edu
Phone: (805) 756-2680
Fax: (805) 756-6111
Office: 03-405-A
Staff Profile Download: PDF
Additional Information
Dr. Louis Tornatzky has 40 years of research, management and consulting experience in the area of innovation and technological change. He has led regional and national benchmarking studies supported by the National Science Foundation of university-industry technology transfer and commercialization, and which resulted in a widely cited volume entitled Innovation U: New University Roles in a Knowledge Economy. Working with the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) he led several comparable best practice studies on technology business incubation.
Before coming to Cal Poly he was a Principal with Select University Technologies, a technology business accelerator in Orange County, and previously worked as Director of the Southern Technology Council, alongside governors and corporate leaders in the 15 southern states to foster policy and program innovations promoting a knowledge economy. Dr. Tornatzky was a Center Director and Scientific Fellow at the Industrial Technology Institute of Michigan, working with durable goods manufacturing throughout the Midwest, and led the Innovation Processes Research Group at the National Science Foundation, which supported and conducted studies of technological innovation.
Previous academic appointments included VP for Research at the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at Claremont, where he studied policies and practices contributing to Latino educational performance, and as a Professor of Psychology and Urban Development at Michigan State University, where among other things he led national studies of the adoption of novel health programs.
He has over 100 publications dealing with issues of innovation and technology, ranging in topic from R&D management to the interstate migration of science and engineering graduates. Dr. Tornatzky was born and reared in Cleveland, Ohio.
Education
- Ph.D., Psychology, Stanford University
- B.A., Psychology, Ohio State University
Experience
- Industrial Technology Advisory Board – Orfalea College of Business, Cal Poly
- Packaging Advisory Board – Orfalea College of Business, Cal Poly
- Director – Southern Technology Council
- Senior Scholar/VP Research – Tomas Rivera Policy Institute
- VP Planning/Academic Liason – Select University Technologies
- Various positions in public, private and non-profit sectors, all dealing with problems of change and innovation, and how we can all do better therein.