Kostas Grigoriou is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Daniels School of Business and the Director of the Springer Business Initiative at the College of Engineering. He earned his PhD in Strategy, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship from Georgia Tech.
Kostas has extensive experience building and funding new ventures. His mission is to develop the next-gen of Purdue founders, full-stack problem solvers, and hybrid "tech+business" leaders. He does this by giving students immersive, hands-on experience in every stage of building a new venture to help students think, learn, and ACT as innovators, designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs. His students earn experience in what it means to address complex challenges, solve problems, create value, and drive meaningful economic impact.
Kostas is an expert at human-centric business design and building high-performing teams. Before joining Purdue, Kostas was a founder, strategy consultant, and venture studio leader. At High Alpha, he led business design teams building B2B software companies. At High Alpha Innovation, he refined and applied the venture studio playbook for de-risking and accelerating new ventures, partnering with corporations, universities, governments, and VC funds across industrial, supply chain, healthcare, CPG, finance, and agriculture. He also led the AI venture studio at Forum Ventures and built a digital health venture studio at The Sanguine Lab. Earlier, at McKinsey & Company, he led digital transformation engagements for Fortune 500 companies.
At Purdue:
Kostas designed and launched Venture X - a practical course sequence in new venture creation (modeled after the proven venture studio playbook) for serious builders, founders, and innovators at Purdue. A founder cohort that together builds up their venture concepts into ventures coupled with funding for product and customer development. It starts with discovering and validating a meaningful problem worth solving, continues with building a solution to it, and concludes with crafting the most sensible commercial path for the new venture. Outcomes include a product, real market traction (e.g., users, pilots, customers, etc.), and for the top performers - funding such as a YC or a16z acceptance.
Kostas is the Director of the Springer Business Initiative at the College of Engineering. It is a partnership between the Daniels School of Business and the College of Engineering to prepare engineering students for leadership roles through hands-on experiences. The initiative includes development of the Springer Engineering Business Experience Certificate (coming in 2027) - a 10-hour journey for Engineering/CS students to earn experience in applied business judgment and prepare for roles in technical leadership, venture, or consulting. Also includes ENGR 30301 - the Engineering Executive Forum, which gives students a rare opportunity to engage directly with C-suite engineering alumni and gain firsthand insight into leadership, strategy and real-world decision-making. The initiative frequently organizes and sponsors experiences at the intersection of business and engineering for students such as case challenges with corporate partners, case competitions, venture competitions, etc.
Kostas leads the Burton D Morgan Business Concept Competition - a 10-week active learning experience, open to all Purdue students, designed to guide aspiring founders/builders go from passion about a problem space to developing a new venture concept. The Competition culminates in a Final Event where the standout concept teams present to panel of early-stage investors and expert and earn $100K in Prizes. The easiest and most popular on-ramp to venture on campus with ~600 students building up their concepts in Fall 26.
You will often find Kostas working closely with Purdue founders at the HIVE - Purdue's new hub for student builders.
He leads the Integrated Business & Engineering (IBE) Capstone program - coaching IBE senior student teams as they address complex challenges posed by corporate partners and engage in integrative problem-solving to create value for partners. Eager to work with our elite IBE students and see what they can do in your most important, relevant, STEM-infused business+technical challenges or opportunities? Reach out!
He is the primary advisor for buildpurdue - a club building THE community of student builders at Purdue. He is also the academic advisor for Purdue Launch - an elite student club focused on helping startups and founders through consulting while offering real-world experiences and a strong network to their student members. Are you a founder, small team, organization, or institute with an opportunity to create something new but faced with more questions than answers? Bring your problem to Purdue Launch. Kostas works closely with a number of venture-related clubs where Purdue builders gather such as Purdue Hackers and Boiler Blockchain.
He is also an Honors College Scholarly Fellow engaging with Honors College students - especially ones in the Copper House - to inspire and capitalize on existing research interest in new venture creation and the power of new venture building as the driver of value creation and progress.
