James E. Schrager studies the use of strategy by executives and venture capital partners. Drawn to this research by a fascination with extreme success and a desire to better understand how it happens--or not, Schrager pushes his students to discover how to better judge potential new venture investments and growth opportunities for existing businesses by using the unique power of strategy. His work is powered by the application of Herbert A. Simon’s concept of Bounded Rationality to strategy.

He has published multiple articles in the Wall Street Journal, CEO Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune, among others. He is frequently quoted in the press and has appeared on NBC, ABC, PBS, and other networks as an expert commentator on business strategy. He was editor of the Journal of Private Equity (published by Institutional Investor) for fifteen years. In 2013, he co-authored a paper on the emerging field of Behavioral Strategy for the Journal of Strategy and Management. He is involved in a series of case-based experiments, conducted with Booth MBA students, which provide data for certain facets of Behavioral Strategy.

Clinical Prof. Schrager is an active advisor to boards and CEOs on matters of strategy. His clients range from some of the largest companies in the US to professional service firms to start-ups, in high- mid- and no-technology businesses. His previous assignments include a series of corporate turnarounds for the Pritzker family interests, through their Chicago-based industrial conglomerate, The Marmon Group. As executive vice president of San Francisco--based Getz Brothers Co, he was responsible for the successful execution of the Getz- Japan initial public offering in Tokyo, the first private US company accepted to go public in Japan.

He has worked extensively on the commercial aspects of advanced cardiovascular devices with the surgeon who performed the first heart-transplant in the USA, Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz. He is currently a board member on a start-up founded by one of the most cited researchers in Malaria vaccines, Dr. Stephen Hoffman, whose company is partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
He has three times received the Emory Williams Award for Excellence in Teaching, was twice selected to deliver the Convocation Address, and won the Faculty Excellence teaching award in 2017. He was named one of the top twelve teachers in entrepreneurship in the United States by BusinessWeek Magazine.

Schrager earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Oakland University, an MBA from the University of Colorado, a JD from the Depaul University College of Law, and a PhD from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in organization behavior and policy. He previously was a certified public accountant in the state of Illinois.

Karl T. Muth has held senior positions at a variety of companies, including as CEO of a venture-backed blockchain fintech startup, CEO of a search engine technology lab, and representing a Fortune 250 investor on the Board of Directors of a venture-backed AI/ML startup. Over the past two decades, he's taken a particular interest in firms in regulated industries' (banking, insurance) adoption of technology. Muth's advisory work has ranged from compliance concerns and negotiations with regulators to acquisition negotiations to working on two multi-billion-dollar restructuring efforts in regulated industries (one in banking, one in insurance).

Muth also has first-hand experience examining how ventures can fail catastrophically, having co-written a case study on a failed energy startup (later published in The Journal of Private Equity), having served as a key 702 expert witness in a trial involving billion-dollar fraud allegations against a startup founder, and having led multiparty creditor negotiations under FDIC supervision when a once-promising financial institution went in ninety days from being a solvent venture to being a failed bank delisted from the NASDAQ. He sits on the Board of Directors of Venture for America.

Muth's work investing in and coaching early-stage entrepreneurs includes serving as a CEO mentor within Peter Thiel's organization, working directly with CEOs and CFOs of all U.S.-based startups in the Microsoft Ventures portfolio, and advising the principal decision-makers at a Fortune 250 captive venture fund; his personal investments include 80+ venture bets and several well-known exits, with a focus on regulated industries and B2B/B2B2C/B2G firms. Muth also controls entities which are, in turn, LPs in several well-regarded venture funds.

Muth is often cited during the debate and devising of markets regulation; his writings are cited in over a dozen recent SEC rulemaking documents. He's been cited by the Secretary of the SEC, a Commissioner of the SEC, and in SEC Final Rules. Much of Muth's research and writing focuses on the effects of regulation on investors and markets.

His recent published research deals with regulation of trades in U.S. equities markets, the unintended effects of American insider trading rules (particularly the 10b5-1 safe harbor framework), and the implementation of Dodd-Frank’s CEO pay ratio disclosure requirement where his comments were cited by a Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Other published research in recent years examines questions beyond the securities markets, including research on the effects of commodity price controls and the advantages and disadvantages of mutual company structures.

Muth is deeply interested in technology and maintains his technical skills. He invented multiple innovations in large-scale multimedia library search, ranking, and content recommendation tasks (see U.S. Pats. 9,262,526, 9,594,809; further patents pending); his research in this area is cited in research documents and patent applications from IBM, Microsoft, MIT, ??????????, and Yahoo!. Muth holds a variety of technical certifications, over a dozen of which are developer certifications. He taught the first Ethereum contract seminar (“Enforced by Code: Ethereum Contracts”) ever taught at Northwestern’s law school (2016, 2017, 2018) and spoke on technical blockchain topics to audiences at the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve (Boston, Atlanta), FinCEN, FINRA, MIT, Oxford, the SEC, and in Davos during the World Economic Forum.

Muth studied international law in the Netherlands (undergraduate-level studies) prior to earning graduate degrees in law and business the United States, the latter from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He earned M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from the London School of Economics where he studied decision frameworks used by commodity-producing firms faced with commodity price uncertainty. Prior to teaching at Booth, Muth taught at Northwestern for a decade, where he created and taught the Innovation Management curriculum; during his last half dozen years at Northwestern, he also taught a popular startup-focused course at Northwestern's Pritzker School of Law.

An avid traveler, he's visited more than fifty countries (including visiting two of these on the days they became countries). Among other adventures, Muth kayaked solo across the Île-des-Saintes strait (from the Dominican coast to Vieux-Fort on Guadeloupe) and drove from Djibouti to Cape Town.

Adam Bowen, an alumni of The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, is a Managing Director in Grant Thornton’s Growth Advisory practice. He has over 25 years of experience in strategy and consulting with a wide range of consumer and corporate brands. His work has spanned categories and industries including but not limited to PE/VC, chemicals, industrial & consumer manufacturing, renewable energy & grid 2.0, decarbonized / EV electrified automotive & transport, med tech & life sciences, business services, food & beverage, accommodations & lodging, travel & tourism, payments & fintech.
 
He’s led a wide range of client engagements, from growth strategies, commercial diligence, and sales transformation efforts to brand revitalization, NPD / innovation strategies, and digital marketing transformations for a range of global industry leaders. His work lives at the intersection of commerce and culture, developing corporate growth strategies that unlocked new revenue streams from rapidly emerging customer segments across APAC/LATAM/EMEA/Americas regions and turned DEI/ESG laggards into global decarbonized leaders.