Ricardo Dos Santos

San Diego

Ricardo dos Santos is a leading expert on entrepreneurship and innovation, having amassed more than 20 years experience driving internal ventures at major corporations and founding and leading early stage startups.

In 2012, Ricardo brought that experience and his vast knowledge of the Lean Startup methodology he learned directly under its creator, Steve Blank to Biological Dynamics, a molecular diagnostics startup focused on oncology. Serving as Biological Dynamics’ chief business officer, Ricardo has helped the company search for a scalable business model while successfully securing multiple rounds of funding.

Before joining the executive team at Biological Dynamics, Ricardo helped set the standard for successful corporate entrepreneurship as the senior director of business development at Qualcomm.

While there in 2006, he created Venture Fest, an internal accelerator that turned out dozens of successful business ventures, capturing the attention of leading Fortune 500 companies in the process. The program graduated thousands of volunteer participants worldwide, and pioneered numerous new growth areas for Qualcomm. The effort garnered Ricardo companywide leadership recognition in 2009.

Ricardo started his career as a Lean Industrial Engineer at a Ford/Volkswagen joint venture in Portugal, Auto-Europa. He then devoted several years to working in the mobile industry, founding professional services practices for startup companies Mobilocity and Wireless Knowledge.

A former management consultant for The Boston Consulting Group, Ricardo has published numerous articles on corporate innovation. He is a lecturer at San Diego State University, teaching courses on Entrepreneurship and Innovation and he is also a part-time speaker and advisor on Lean Innovation to Fortune 500 companies.

Ricardo holds a BS & MS degrees in systems & industrial engineering from Louisiana State University, as well as an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Ricardo lives in America's finest city, San Diego, with his wife Vanessa and two children, Raquel and Sebastian.

  • Work
    • Biological Dynamics
  • Education
    • MIT Sloan School of Management
    • Louisiana State University