Dr. Sheryl Winston Smith is Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. Her research elucidates the nexus of strategic management, entrepreneurship and innovation. Currently, her focus is on the relationship between entrepreneurial strategy and financing in new firms and subsequent performance; the role of corporate venture in innovation and competitive strategy; and the significance of intellectual property and prior knowledge in firm performance.

She is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for research on new firm performance. She served on the Program Committee of the 2011 Industry Studies Conference and was Chair of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Track. She received the Kauffman Foundation Best Paper Prize at the Strategic Management Society Annual Meeting in Rome, 2010 and the Kauffman Foundation Promising Paper Award in 2011. Prior to coming to the Fox School of Business, she pursued postdoctoral work at the Sloan School of Management, MIT and at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. She also was awarded a Rotary Foundation Fellowship to study innovation in the Czech Republic. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and her B.S. from Yale University.

At the Fox School of Business she is on the Advisory Board of Mid-Atlantic Diamond Ventures, a year-round venture forum and entrepreneurship-advisory program. Prior to her PhD work, she served as a research analyst for the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment.