James Patell’s research and teaching interests center on business process and product design, operations management, manufacturing, and cost accounting. A popular and demanding teacher, Patell has authored numerous articles in the field of accounting. During his tenure as associate dean for academic affairs in the GSB, he redesigned and revitalized the Public Management Program, which focuses on government, nonprofit organizations, and public service. Patell is a founding faculty member of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d-School), where he teaches courses on Design for Extreme Affordability and Design for Service Innovation.

James Patell is the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. Professor Patell earned Bachelor and Master 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 1981-1982.

Professor Patell served as the Business School’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1985 through 1991, and was Director of Stanford's 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, Professor 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 in the Graduate School of Business and the Miriam Aaron Roland Award for Volunteer Service at Stanford University.

Professor Patell is one of the seven founding core faculty of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d-School). Within the d-School, Professor Patell co-teaches Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability with Professor 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, Professor Patell and his colleague Professor Stefanos Zenios launched a new project-based course on the Design of Medical Services.

Professor 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 $4 per day. He has served as a Director of Reliant Building Products, Inc., of Grove Worldwide, and of 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 of the Management Institute for Environment and Business.