John (Jack) R. Thorne (MSIA 1952)

Jack Thorne was a key founder of the entrepreneurship program at the Tepper School of Business and served as the David T. and Lindsay J. Morgenthaler Emeritus Professor of Entrepreneurship until his 2005 retirement.

In addition, Thorne was the founding director of the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship and instrumental in its launching; assisted local entrepreneurs as founder and chairman of The Enterprise Corp of Pittsburgh (eventually merged into Innovation Works); and was general partner of the Pittsburgh Seed Fund.

After an undergraduate and master’s degree in engineering, the Pittsburgh native earned a masters degree in industrial administration with the first graduating class at the Tepper School. He then spent 20 years in Los Angeles, ultimately establishing his own computer hardware company, Scionics.

Thorne returned to Pittsburgh in 1972 as a professor of entrepreneurship at the request of then-dean Richard Cyert, making the Tepper School one of the first schools in the world to offer entrepreneurship education.

During his years in Pittsburgh, Thorne assisted hundreds of entrepreneurs in forming companies, founded several organizations to help fund startups in the Pittsburgh region, and served on numerous company boards. In 1990, Thorne was honored with the Carnegie Mellon Alumni Association’s 1990 Achievement (Merit) Award.

His academic and professional honors included being named Entrepreneur of the Year from Inc. magazine (1989), the Tepper School’s George Leland Bach Teaching Award (1981), and Special Award for Sustained Teaching Excellence in the MBA Program (2003).