Assistant Professor of Management Rory McDonald joins the McCombs School from the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

Originally from southern Florida, McDonald has a bachelor’s and a master’s in civil engineering from the University of Southern Florida, as well as an MBA, a master’s in sociology and a doctorate in organization, strategy and entrepreneurship from Stanford University. 

McDonald’s father was a high school math and science teacher, and, growing up, McDonald admired his father and respected his career. As a Ph.D. student, McDonald knew that, unlike most of his classmates, he didn’t want to become a consultant.  He wanted to teach like his father. He settled on business, "because it has one foot in practicality and another in ideas,”

McDonald researches how firms compete effectively in new markets and how entrepreneurial firms are functioning as new markets and business models emerge.

“At Stanford, it was impossible not to notice Silicon Valley,” McDonald says. “What I found was that theories are very geared towards established markets and what I was seeing was very different.”

McDonald teaches General Management and Strategy and works to bring his research into the classroom, focusing on big companies such as Wal-Mart and Apple, and then looking at new-market firms such as Netflix and Facebook. He hopes to teach students how to compete effectively in new markets, understand why old theories don’t apply, and why the theories need to be modified to fit new markets.

“The students [at McCombs] are extremely hardworking, smart, and engaged," McDonald says. "They’ve met and exceeded all of my expectations.”