Patell is The Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management, Emeritus at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Patell earned bachelor’s and master’s of science degrees in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a PhD in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught at Stanford since 1975, and he was a Ford Foundation Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Chicago from 1981 to 1982.

Patell served as Stanford GSB’s associate dean for academic affairs from 1985 through 1991, and was director of the Stanford MBA Program from 1986 through 1988. He was the founding director of the Stanford-ITESM Strategic Executive Program in Mexico, and served as codirector of the Product Realization Network at Stanford, a cooperative research and educational program involving the business school and the engineering school, together with industrial partners. Before entering the dean’s office, Patell’s research centered on empirical investigations of the effects of corporate disclosures on the stock and option markets. More recently, he has conducted research and taught courses on product and service design, manufacturing, technology, and operations management, including new courses on Computer Modeling, Total Quality Management, Manufacturing Performance Measurement, and Business Process Design. In 1998 he received the MBA Distinguished Teaching Award, and in 2007 he was awarded both the Robert T. Davis Faculty Award for Lifetime Achievement at Stanford GSB and the Miriam Aaron Roland Award for Volunteer Service at Stanford University.

Patell is one of the seven founding core faculty of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Within the d.School, Patell coteaches Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability with David Beach. In this course, student teams collaboratively design product prototypes, distribution systems, and business plans for entrepreneurial ventures that address poverty in developing countries. In 2011, Patell and his colleague Stefanos Zenios launched a new project-based course on the Design of Medical Services.

Patell also is a founding faculty director of Stanford Seed, which launched its first Innovation Center in West Africa in 2013.

Patell is a director of D-Rev, a non-profit technology incubator whose mission is to improve the health and incomes of people living on less than four dollars per day. He has served as a director of Reliant Building Products, Inc., Grove Worldwide, and the Center for the Quality of Management-West; and as an advisor to the Corporate Design Foundation and to Vykor, Inc. He was a founding director of Ignite Innovations and the Management Institute for Environment and Business.