Rick Colbourne

Associate Professor (Sprott School of Business); Project Lead (Towards Carleton@100)

Rick Colbourne is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship in Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business and serves as Project Lead for Towards Carleton@100. His work focuses on advancing innovation and entrepreneurship across business, education and community systems, with a particular interest in how organizations learn, adapt and implement change. Colbourne’s doctoral research at the University of Cambridge examined organizational learning across multinational organizations, exploring how strategy and adaptation develop from operational to executive levels. This research continues to inform his applied work, where he studies how entrepreneurs and organizations put innovation into practice through tools such as artificial intelligence and building adaptive systems that connect people, ventures and markets. 

Prior to joining academia, Colbourne co-led global digital transformation projects at Accenture within the creative industries, working on rights management platforms, digital content systems and commercialization strategies. He later served as executive director of the Learning Strategies Group at Simon Fraser University, where he designed executive education programs for public and private sector organizations.  

As Chair of the Towards Carleton@100 strategic visioning process, Colbourne brings expertise in innovation, organizational transformation and systems thinking to support long-term institutional visioning and strategic planning.