Currituck 2030

Keeping Our Economy Strong

About the Author

Edward Cornet, PhD, grew up 45 minutes from the Jersey shore and the beach was always the family’s number one vacation choice. He and his family love the sun, sand and surf. In 1992 their dream came true when they were able to buy an oceanfront lot and build a summer home in Corolla. They rented for a few years to offset some of the costs of ownership, but have spent months at the beach every year before moving to Corolla full time in 2010.

The author has a PhD in Physics and has spent his working career building, managing and advising successful high-tech businesses. In 2003 he retired as a managing partner and member of the Board of Directors of the international management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. From 2003 to 2010 he served as a Professor in the Kenan-Flagler Business School of UNC Chapel Hill. There he led the management consulting concentration guiding his MBA students to advise more than 40 NC small businesses on strategic competitive strategies.

This series of papers and presentations grew out of research done by the author as a member of the Currituck County Economic Development Advisory Board and the Currituck County Land Use Plan Steering Group.

Dr. Edward Cornet consults for clients in the aerospace and electronics industries providing strategic consulting and senior management training in strategic decision-making and large program profit management with special emphasis on the management of risk.

Dr. Cornet retired as a Professor in the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He led the Management Consulting academic concentration program for MBA students. He joined the faculty in 2002 after serving for 15 years as a managing partner in Booz | Allen | Hamilton one of the world’s largest global management and technology consulting Firms. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Booz Allen and other companies.

Most of his career with Booz Allen has been program execution and consulting with senior business executives and investment groups in the aerospace, communications and electronics industry. His specialty areas are program management, risk management, technology investment strategy and infrastructure development programs. Before Booz Allen he was a business unit vice president in a company providing defense and communications program management, systems engineering and integration services for NASA, Energy and Defense Department clients.

Dr. Cornet has led major consulting projects in the US and Europe covering the full spectrum of strategic transformation services including new product strategies, market entry strategies, alliance strategies, post-merger integration implementations, major corporate reorganizations, systems implementations and infrastructure investment strategies. He has led due diligence projects for financial investments and acquisitions in the multi-billion dollar range, including for major international communications service providers such as Sprint, Verizon, Telecom Italia, Intelsat and Eutelsat. He is experienced in counseling senior executives and addressing international Boards of Directors. He has served as a member of several managing Boards of international corporations.

He has significant experience advising government and business executives on management of and investment in major communications and defense systems and/ or service companies. Programs include the international space station, the space shuttle, several strategic defense systems, automated light rail systems, commercial wireless systems as well as many of the current generation of commercial communications and broadcast satellites and control centers.

While on the faculty at UNC Dr. Cornet developed and led the STAR program where teams of MBA students trained by him as consultants helped many small to medium sized North Carolina businesses solve their business problems. The students and their faculty advisors worked directly with senior management solving problems ranging from marketing, sales, systems, operations, finance and competitive strategies.