Bridging Worlds: How One Business Professor Is Redefining What Universities Do
When a physicist transitions to studying theology while simultaneously advising technology startups, something unusual is happening. That something is Stoyan Tanev’s career, which reveals what business schools can do when they refuse to stay confined within traditional boundaries.
Stoyan sits at the intersection of several worlds. As an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Sprott, he teaches innovation management. But he also uses algorithms to analyze web data and generate insights for Canadian technology-based companies, consults with government research labs on photonics breakthroughs, and organizes community workshops on quantum technology adoption. He does this because he sees a gap that universities are uniquely positioned to fill, and he is determined to fill it.
The question of what business schools should do beyond teaching business is increasingly urgent. Stoyan’s answer is that universities should be platforms where emerging technologies become visible and legible to broader audiences. They should connect people across the technology and business domains who otherwise would not meet. They should help communities understand what is actually happening in their own innovation ecosystems, as opposed to what the hype machine claims is happening.
Consider his recent work analyzing a photonics breakthrough at the National Research Council in Ottawa. The research traces how the discovery of subwavelength grating photonic metamaterials has moved from invention to innovation. The path did not run through dedicated funding or formal mechanisms, but through the researcher’s persistence and ingenuity and co-creative relationships. What makes this work valuable is not just the academic insight. It is that he used it to tell a story about the uniqueness of Ottawa’s innovation community and how universities can contribute to it.
“Many people blur invention and innovation together,” Stoyan explains. “But innovation happens when an invention gets adopted. Otherwise, you just have patents and papers that become valuable in theory but nowhere else.” Understanding this distinction changes how universities should think about their role. They are not just engines of knowledge production. They are connectors, enablers, amplifiers, and translators.
This becomes clear when Stoyan discusses the Technology Innovation Management (TIM) program, which he joined in 2006 under Tony Bailletti, the program’s founder and director. The TIM program was positioned as a gateway to the professional community. It welcomed professionals, created and operated the Lead-to-Win accelerator, and embedded itself in partnerships with industry and government. It was designed to face outward. “The value of a program is not just what it does in education and research,” Stoyan says. “It is the engagement with the community, the partnerships, the opportunities provided to students, the relevance and timeliness of the conversations it opens up and engages in.”
That philosophy shapes how Sprott is approaching quantum technology. Stoyan embraced Tony’s idea and began designing and organizing workshops and seminars on quantum technologies for professionals interested in exploring emerging opportunities but finding it difficult to figure out the advances in this highly complex field. Engineers and physicists working in quantum tend to speak primarily with each other but realize that adoption requires the commitment of innovation management and business professionals. At the same time, business and innovation decision-makers struggle to distinguish signal from noise. The professional communities trying to build today’s quantum business ecosystems need participation platforms to connect these groups.
What emerged from these workshops surprised Stoyan. Quantum experts from Ottawa, Sherbrooke and Waterloo, from academia, business and government, reacted enthusiastically and engaged eagerly. They valued access to an audience they could not normally reach. Business practitioners realized they needed to understand what domain experts actually meant by their terms.
“Reality is based on how we speak about it,” Stoyan observes. “If we cannot speak about something clearly, we cannot share it. We cannot build on it.”
This insight runs through his research on value propositions. Startups routinely struggle to articulate what they actually do or why it matters. They use inflated language (disruption, breakthrough, innovation) without precision. Stoyan uses text analytics to help companies see how their competitors articulate value, how their language compares, and where they might find clearer ground to make a difference. It is applied research work rooted in a deeper conviction that innovation is fundamentally a conversational skill.
Business schools possess expertise, resources, and credibility that few other institutions can match. They employ people trained to think about business models, market dynamics, and adoption. They sit between disciplines. They attract professional audiences. Yet many confine themselves to degree programs and research publications. Stoyan argues that this undershoots their actual potential.
The quantum initiative exemplifies what becomes possible when a business school exercises that broader responsibility. Sprott is emerging as a leading business school voice in the conversation on quantum technology adoption. Carleton is considering a professional certificate in quantum science and technology for industry professionals, while planning larger convenings that will bring together companies, universities, and government agencies to explore partnerships. Stoyan initiated the Quantum Technology Business Seminar and works on developing frameworks for assessing the disruptive potential of Canadian quantum startups. These are not primarily educational offerings in the traditional sense. They are ecosystem-building work.
That is the kind of relationship universities need to cultivate, not just with faculty but with their surrounding communities. Business schools are not special because they teach management theory. They are special if they use their platforms to help their communities understand what is actually emerging and what might be possible. Stoyan is demonstrating what that looks like.