Author Information

EDWARD E. WILLIAMS, Ph.D.
Jones Graduate School of Management
Rice University 

EDWARD E. WILLIAMS, B.S.E., Ph.D., is the Henry Gardiner Symonds Professor of Management and Director of the Entrepreneurship Program in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University.  He is also a member of the Board of Directors of several companies including two that are publicly-held:  Service Corporation International (NYSE), a Fortune 500 corporation which is the largest funeral home/cemetery company in the world, and EQUUS II Incorporated (NYSE), a closed-end investment company specializing in leveraged buyouts.  At Rice, he teaches classes on entrepreneurship, venture creation, venture capital investing, business valuations, leveraged buyouts, and acquisitions of existing concerns.  He has also started, bought, and/or sold several hundred companies.

Trained as an academic economist, Williams was Assistant Professor of Economics at Rutgers University from 1968 to 1970 and Associate Professor of Finance at McGill University in Montreal from 1970 to 1973.  He came to Rice as Professor of Administrative Science in 1978.  Williams received his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a B.S. in Economics (cum laude) from the Wharton School in 1966.  He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968.  At Pennsylvania, he was recipient of the Benjamin Franklin and Jesse Jones scholarships.  At Texas, he was awarded the Texas Savings and Loan fellowship.  His dissertation on the savings and loan industry was published as a monograph in 1968.

Professor Williams has written extensively for both scholarly and professional journals.  His publications include over forty articles, seven books, and numerous other works.  He has been a Resident Foreign Expert and Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Institute of Mechanical Engineering in Shanghai, China; and he has delivered papers at various professional and academic seminars in England, France, Canada, China, and throughout the United States.  His books include:  Business Planning: 25 Keys to a Sound Business Plan, The New York Times Pocket MBA Series, Lebhar-Friedman Books, 1999 (with J. R. Thompson and H. A. Napier), Entrepreneurship and Productivity, University Press of America, 1998 (with J. R. Thompson), The Economics of Production and Productivity:  A Modeling Approach, Capital Book Company, 1996 (with J. R. Thompson); Business Planning for the Entrepreneur, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983 (with S. E. Manzo); Investment Analysis, Prentice-Hall, 1974 (with M. C. Findlay); An Integrated Analysis for Managerial Finance, Prentice-Hall, 1970 (with M. C. Findlay); and Prospects for the Savings and Loan Industry, Texas Savings and Loan League, 1968.  In 1979 and again in 1985, Williams (with M. C. Findlay) was awarded the Frank Paish Prize for the best paper in finance published that year by the editors of the Journal of Business Finance and Accounting.  He and Professor Findlay are the only scholars who have won the Paish Prize on two separate occasions.

 Professor Williams has had the highest teacher evaluation of any faculty member at Rice University.  On seven separate occasions, he has been the recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award, being voted by the alumni of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School as the most effective teacher in the school. Williams was named by Business Week as the Number Two Entrepreneurship Professor in the United States, and he rates four stars (the top ranking) from Business Week as a member of the Jones School Faculty.  Dr. Williams is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in Finance and Industry, and Who’s Who in the South and Southwest.

H. ALBERT NAPIER, Ph.D.
Jones Graduate School of Management
Rice University

             H. ALBERT NAPIER, Ph.D. is a Professor of Management in the Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University where he teaches graduate level entrepreneurship, e-business, and information technology courses. He is the Director of the Center on the Management of Information Technology (COMIT).

             Dr. Napier started and owned a computer consulting and training company for 22 years. He serves on the Board of Directors of Hometown Favorites (www.hometownfavorites.com), a privately held mail order and Internet retailer of hard-to-find regional specialty foods. He is also an owner and on the management team for Books for Managers (www.booksformanagers.com ), and OperationsInfo (www.operationsinfo.com).

            Dr. Napier is a co-author of Business Planning: 25 Keys to a Successful Business Plan with E. E. Williams and J. R. Thompson. He is the co-author of Creating a Winning E-Business with P. J. Judd, O. Rivers and S. Wagner. Dr. Napier is also as a co-author of more than 60 books with P. J. Judd on software applications. His books are used as the textbooks for courses in hundreds of universities, colleges, and corporations.

            He is the author of more than 20 articles related to information technology, human-computer interface, and applications of computer‑based decision processes in business. His papers have appeared in such journals as Information Resources Management Journal, Human-Computer Interaction, Information and Management, Communications of the ACM, Interface, International Journal of Human Computer Interaction, Management Science, Operations Research, Journal of Education Computing Research, and Special Libraries.

            Dr. Napier’s current research interests include entrepreneurship, strategy for e-business and human-computer interface.

In addition to his activities at Rice, Dr. Napier is associated with Napier & Judd, Inc. The company provides information technology consulting and computer training services. The company, which initiated operations in 1981, has provided consulting services in IT strategy, planning, and systems development to more than 200 organizations and trained more than 100,000 participants on personal computer software applications. Some of the industries served by Napier & Judd, Inc. include energy, health, education, finance, banking, distribution, and accounting.

             Dr. Napier holds a B.A. degree in Mathematics and Economics, an M.B.A. degree, and a Ph.D. degree in Business Administration, all from the University of Texas at Austin.

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