Mark Coopersmith is an educator, author, entrepreneur, and global executive. In his teaching at UC Berkeley and programs around the world, he provides students, business leaders, and teams with insights, inspiration, and know-how to drive innovation and growth in organizations of all sizes, and to launch new ventures and initiatives ranging from Silicon Valley startups to new divisions of global enterprises.
As a Fortune 500 global executive and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, he has spent three decades launching, building, and fixing high-growth organizations ranging from raw startups (his e-commerce venture WebOrder is now owned by Google) to launching new divisions of multinational corporations such as Sony, to reinvigorating existing businesses, all while leading teams from 2 to 2,000 spread across many continents. Coopersmith has also served on boards of directors, advised startups at UC Berkeley’s SkyDeck accelerator, and invested in startups as an angel investor and a partner in several venture funds.
He started teaching at UC Berkeley in 2003. His courses have included the core entrepreneurship class, the experiential Workshop for Startups course where new ventures are launched in real time, and Social Entrepreneurship. He combines his passion and expertise for entrepreneurship and innovation with his real-world experiences in startups, the Fortune 500 executive suite and boardroom, and also original research, insights, tools and frameworks — such as the 7 Stage Failure Value Cycle from his book “The Other ‘F’ Word” co-authored with John Danner — to inspire and focus leaders and teams and to help them attain the positive outcomes they seek.
