Ronald K. Mitchell, CPA, Ph.D., is a professor of entrepreneurship and JA Bagley Regents Chair in Management in the Rawls College of Business. Mitchell is a TTU Integrated Scholar recognized for practical excellence in research, teaching and service and a recipient of the President's Academic Achievement and Barnie E. Rushing Faculty Distinguished Research Awards. Stanford University ranks Mitchell among the top 2% of global researchers. In 2007, he led the Possibilities Project, which helped shape research commercialization in the TTU System. In 2025 Professor Mitchell Received the “Dedication to Entrepreneurship Award” from the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management; and he also was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Management.

Prior to TTU, Mitchell received several distinguished research and teaching awards, including the Distinguished Educator Award, and he led the entrepreneurship program team that won the AOM Entrepreneurship Division Innovation in Pedagogy Award and the USASBE Model Undergraduate ENT Program Award. He is a leader in developing cognition-based applications for entrepreneurship teaching and served as a leader in the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management, an organization currently with 3,700+ entrepreneurship professors. In his role, he champions excellence in entrepreneurship research and teaching.

Professor Mitchell's research includes work in technology commercialization, entrepreneurial cognition, entrepreneurship and stakeholder theory and international entrepreneurship. He won the 1995 Heizer Award for his dissertation on entrepreneurial expertise and has published in the top journals in his field. He was a visiting professor of public policy and strategy at Peking University from 1999-2002. From June 2000 through May 2005, he held the Francis G. Winspear Chair in Public Policy and Business at the University of Victoria and currently holds the position of Distinguished Winspear Visiting Scholar. Mitchell specializes in technology commercialization, entrepreneurial cognition, global entrepreneurship, business ethics, command to market system transition, and stakeholder theory and strategy; and he researches, consults and lectures worldwide.