The College of Business Administration Brings Xerox Officer to Kent State

KENT, Ohio - Sept. 30, 2014 - PRLog -- Kent State University alumnus Naveen Sharma is coming to speak to the general public and College of Business Administration students, faculty and staff on Thursday, Oct. 16.

Sharma, a former Kent State research assistant professor of computer science, is the featured speaker at the Michael D. Solomon Speaker Series. His topic is, “Creating a Continuous Innovation Culture.”

The event is free and open to the public and will take place at 7 p.m. at the Kent State University Hotel & Conference Center. It will consist of a lecture and a question and answer session followed by a reception.

Sharma is the chief innovation officer for the Xerox ITO Group. His focus is IT service innovations in the retail, consumer products, hospitality and industrial sectors. He also participates in planning for emerging computer paradigms, such as cloud and autonomic systems.

Sharma also directs the Computing and Information Services Lab (CISL) at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in Webster, New York. As director, Sharma oversees a wide range of research including analytics and large scale computing, business process and service computing, HCI, software innovations, ethnography and information technology solutions. He helped establish an offshore software development team and manages several open innovation collaborations with a number of top research universities.

“We are fortunate to have Dr. Naveen Sharma as the Solomon Series Speaker,” said Dr. Sergey Anokhin, interim director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation (CEBI) at the College of Business Administration. “His vast expertise covers a wide array of areas including technology commercialization, innovation offshoring, open innovation collaboration and business process innovation.”

Kent State University Alumnus Michael D. Solomon began his support to the speaker program with its inception in 2005. His goal was to expose students, faculty and the community to successful entrepreneurs. Each semester, the series brings experienced entrepreneurs and educators to campus to share their insights and wisdom.

The Michael D. Solomon Speaker Series is one component of The Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation (CEBI).  The CEBI is a collaborative effort reaching across Kent State’s eight campuses and throughout the business community, supporting academic and outreach programs that foster entrepreneurial activity and economic development in Northeast Ohio.

For more information or to register, visit http://www2.kent.edu/business/ or call Maria Avila at 330-672-9426.