Waverly Deutsch was awarded the 2004 USASBE Innovative Teaching Pedagogy for the YourCo simulation game, which allows students to develop and run a mock business through all phases of operation. She created this game to parallel the Building a New Venture course and to add experiential learning to the process, leveraging techniques from statistics and the game Dungeons and Dragons. She also won the Innovative Method of Teaching Entrepreneurship Award from the U.S. Association for Small Business. Deutsch has also been a full-time coach for the annual New Venture Challenge business plan competition since 2002. In conjunction with the University of Chicago’s Collegiate Scholars Program, Deutsch pioneered and teaches an intensive summer seminar entitled Elements of Entrepreneurship in which promising high school students from the Chicago Public School Systems turn an idea into a business plan in two weeks.
Deutsch’s research focuses on the execution issues entrepreneurs face as they grow their businesses, especially marketing, sales, operations and team building. She is collaborating with Professor Craig Wortmann on the Entrepreneurial Execution Project (www.entrepX.com) – research, blog postings, articles and tools to help entrepreneurs understand what to do through the five lifecycle stages of their company’s development. They are in the process of writing their first book together on entrepreneurial selling.
In addition to teaching, her self-proclaimed "first love," Deutsch is an active angel investor and advisor to start ups in the Chicago area including Cygany, Adeptia, ProOnGo, and Future Simple and serves on the board of directors for InContext Solutions, a leading 3D virtual store market research company. She also works with the not-for-profit venture I.C.Stars helping young inner city adults prepare for careers in the high tech sector. She was the founder of WaveWords Consulting, offering strategic consulting for startups on business plans, funding strategy, technology architecture, marketing, and customer service. In her year as managing director of NetFuel Ventures, an internet incubator, Deutsch helped raise seed capital and launch three technology companies before the firm merged with ARCH Development Partners. As executive vice president of marketing and strategy for internet exchange company fob.com, she increased their media visibility by 500 percent. She spent seven years with Forrester Research, helping to grow the company from a 20-person boutique market research firm to a publicly traded, global brand with a market cap of over $600 million and offices worldwide.
Deutsch earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985. She received a master's degree in 1989 and a PhD in theater history in 1992 from Tufts University.
She enjoys golf, reading, travel, and dogs.
