Shai is Director for the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (CfEL) part of Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. He started his working career in small companies, leaving to complete his MBA and PhD at Cranfield School of Management, where he stayed on the faculty for ten years, before taking up a Chair in Enterprise at Nottingham Business School. Over the last 8 years, Shai has been closely involved in building the curriculum for a practitioner-led approach to education in entrepreneurship at the University of Cambridge. He was instrumental in setting up student exchange programme between Judge Business School and Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, with input from Microsoft Research. Shai has published five books and several papers on entrepreneurship. His current research includes work on social capital, opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial learning, e.g. "Entrepreneurs - Born or Made" with Professor Barbara Sahakian at the Department of Psychiatry (See 'The Innovative Brain' article published in Nature, November 2008). He co-authored a World Economic Forum report published in 2009 entitled 'Educating the Next Wave of Entrepreneurs' with specific responsibility for the chapter on Social Inclusion. He currently holds the Otto Monsted Guest Professorship at Aarhus School of Business in Entrepreneurship, Denmark. He is Senior Member at both Darwin College and Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge, UK. Shai has combined academic and business interests having co-founded several businesses including Transitions, Accelerator India and Tristart. Over the years, he has acted as consultant, coach and mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs working with over 400 businesses.
Shai is presently on the Boards of Enterprise Educators UK and of the UK India Business Council. He is also a Chartered Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).