Lotfi Belkhir

I am a physicist by training turned successively into an engineer, manager, then business man, and eventually an academic and scholar. In my current role, my teaching and research revolve around innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability. The three are closely linked as I strongly believe that it is the entrepreneurs who will be able, through innovation, to create superior sustainable products and services that will disrupt the current unsustainable businesses. Our Master's degree in Entrepreneurship at McMaster University teaches our budding entrepreneurs on how to deeply embed sustainability into their nascent enterprise project as a source of disruptive and competitive edge. In my past life, I have worked at Xerox in various roles of research scientist, product development manager and business development executive. I then left Xerox to start my own company in Silicon Valley, Kirtas Technologies. Kirtas developed the world's first and fasted automatic book scanner and was ranked by Inc. 500 Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America two years in a row. The Company also received in 2013 one of the most coveted innovation awards in the world; the Popular Science Best of What's New Award (the BoWN Award).