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Dr. Robert N. Everhart, associate professor of management, is the new director of the Ahlers International Business Center.
Since its founding in 1994, the Ahlers Center for International Business, one of Knauss Business School’s centers of excellence, has carried the mission of developing the global competitiveness of its students, faculty, and community partners.
But today, new leaders are reimagining the future and making major changes to the way companies compete internationally.
Dr. Robert N. Everhart, associate professor of business administration, is director of the new Ahlers Center. His enthusiasm for this is evident as he enrolled in USD’s Knauss School of Business in September.
“This center has the most potential energy of any center in the USD,” Everhart said. “We are located in the heart of San Diego’s international region, uniquely connected to Asia and Latin America, and a supportive government that wants to make this a major center for learning how to compete in global markets. There is.”
Mr. Eberhart’s extensive experience makes him perfectly suited for the new role, he says, particularly in his main research area of how entrepreneurship shapes society. This specialization made international business his specialty, but the entrepreneurial spirit was ingrained in him long before he entered academia.
From businessman to Ph.D.
Everhart’s path to USD is paved with what he calls a “very unusual background.” He postponed his degree for years in exchange for working with his wife, now 41, and starting a family. He was in his 53rd year when he attended Stanford University to earn a doctorate in management science. “He gets his Ph.D. 25 years earlier than most people.”
However, this decision set him on the path to becoming a successful entrepreneur. The Michigan native began his career in the semiconductor industry and eventually moved to Silicon Valley, the center of his electronics and hardware companies.
That business experience took him to Japan, where he served as president of Plantronics Corporation in Tokyo. From there, his entrepreneurial spirit blossomed, and he founded WineInStyle KK to distribute and then sell California wine to Japan, Taiwan, and other Asian markets. He started working for the venture capital firm that bought the company, but unexpectedly, his passion, which had been dormant for years, was suddenly rekindled.
“As soon as I had the freedom to do what I wanted, I told my wife that when I was in research, what I loved was research,” Everhart says.
So, after an incredibly successful career as a founder, CEO, and venture capitalist, I returned to study for my PhD. “I think I’m built to be in a library. I love the smell,” he says.
Soon after, he “fell in love” with becoming a professor and had the opportunity to teach at universities such as Stanford University, Santa Clara University, and UCLA. Now, he wants to contribute his years of entrepreneurial experience and his steady research to USD.
adopt a different mindset
“My particular research focuses on how the phenomenon of entrepreneurship reshapes the way we perceive and evaluate social outcomes,” Everhart says. “This challenges the way a lot of people think.”
This research is what Eberhart called “reversing the arrow.” Instead of viewing entrepreneurship as an accepted phenomenon and studying it, we study how it currently impacts other parts of society.
Eberhart cited the example of coal miners in the 1890s, who had to prepare their own materials, which he said was “a terrible way to organize work.” To tell. Despite various reforms established to protect workers from such working conditions, companies like Uber have returned to this model, he said. “A hundred years ago, we decided it was a horrible thing and thought we needed to legislate to stop it. Now we see it as a destructive thing that needs to be encouraged. We frame it as something innovative.”
Everhart brings a new perspective to international entrepreneurship and leads a new perspective on international business. He explains that the older view of this concept was fundamentally focused on imports and exports, with cultural differences at the root of education. But the world has changed. “I am bringing new institutional theory, my intellectual research, to the Ahlers Center. This is international business through a new and different academic paradigm.”
Accelerating the effectiveness of the Ahlers Center
At its core, the Ahlers Center provides international experiential learning for students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, which Everhart believes is an important part of a student’s USD experience. “But the only thing we have to do is elevate the center to a new paradigm of cultural learning.”
“My ultimate goal is for the Ahlers Center to be a major center for international business learning and research, certainly well-known in California, but hopefully nationally,” Everhart says. “I think the proper part of an undergraduate education is to give a broad liberal arts education to become a full citizen of society.” I want people to say it’s a choice.”
Over the next three years, Eberhart plans to establish new departments and bring in distinguished scholars who he believes will attract future graduate students. He also works to publish new institutional theories in journals. Finally, he wants to connect international business research with the surrounding business community and build stronger connections.
Where business and pleasure meet
“I have a love for USD. It’s a great place; I just love the people. I thoroughly enjoy it,” Everhart says. But the new job required a lifestyle change.
He moved from his home in Palo Alto, California to San Diego and now splits his time between the two locations. He is happy with his new home in America’s finest city – the boat he has purchased – and has appropriately named it “Study Break.” For him, living there is “the coolest thing.”
“It’s kind of like a vacation,” he says. “I wake up in the morning, make my coffee, and listen to the seagulls.”
— Katie Payne
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