Boyd Cohen

Education

Cohen obtained his undergraduate degree in Organizational Behavior from Miami University in 1993. He completed his master's degree in Human Resources from the University of South Carolina. His final semester was spent at the Copenhagen Business School. After working for three years with Accenture in the U.S., Cohen began his PhD studies in strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado (Boulder). Since then he has been a faculty member, researcher, consultant and entrepreneur around the globe including academic positions with Instituto de Empresa, INCAE Business School, Simon Fraser University, and more recently with the Universidad del Desarrollo.

Academic career

After obtaining his PhD at the University of Colorado, Cohen’s first academic position was at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. Later he went to the University of Victoria in Canada from 2002-2006. While there he also was a visiting professor at INCAE. He later joined Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada and also served as an adjunct at the University of British Columbia. In 2012 he joined the Universidad de San Andres in Argentina where he served as the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship before joining the Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago Chile.

Experience

Cohen has been involved in several sustainable startups since the early 2000s. After obtaining his LEED Accredited Professional status in Canada he worked as an independent sustainable building and neighborhood consultant followed by early involvement in the startup of Recollective, a green building consultancy based in Vancouver. He then co-founded Visible Strategies, a smart city software as a service solution focused on assisting cities transparently track and communicate their sustainability progress against long-term measurable objectives. Some of Visible Strategies clients including Live Earth; Beaverton, Oregon; Marin County, California and Albuquerque, New Mexico. He then founded a mobile app company, 3rdWhale which focused on developing smartphone apps for green consumers. Later he co-founded CO2IMPACT which developed energy efficiency and carbon reduction projects in Colombia and other developing countries.

Research and publications

Cohen has spent much of his professional life researching sustainability, entrepreneurship and smart cities. Aside from publications in the Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Management Journal, and Business Strategy and the Environment, Cohen has also focused on reaching practitioner audiences.

Climate Capitalism was published in 2011 and helped Boyd become more globally known for his work. He began writing for Triple Pundit, Fast Company, the Huffington Post, and UBM Future Cities.

Cohen's "smart cities wheel", first introduced in Fast Company, has become one of the most cited models for smart cities. Since 2011, he has published annual rankings of smart cities around the globe using the wheel and several indicators.

In 2014, Cohen joined forces with Esteve Almirall from ESADE in Barcelona, and Henry Chesbrough to launch a special issue of the California Management Review focused on cities, open innovation and the collaborative economy.

Keynote speeches

Cohen is a frequent speaker on the topic of sustainability and smart cities, and has been featured as keynote speaker at: