Per L. Bylund grew up in eastern Sweden’s beautiful archipelago, some 20 miles northeast of the capital Stockholm. He is currently enjoying his new professional career, as a professor of entrepreneurship, following previous experiences as systems developer and business consultant, elected politician, and entrepreneur.
Bylund earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration (civilekonom) in 1998, majoring in corporate finance and accounting, and a master’s degree in business informatics in 1999, both at the Jönköping International Business School. He then pursued a career in IT and business consulting in Stockholm and Malmö working primarily with web systems development and business process automation and as CIO for companies Datastrategi, Mogul.com, WOCHB, Guide Konsult, and Nordengren Ett. Bylund is certified as Microsoft Certified Professional (four expert areas).
In 1998, Bylund was elected for the municipal council in his native Österåkers kommun, where he also served as a member of two municipal boards. He held numerous positions with several political organizations for a full decade until he turned his back on party politics in 2000.
While pursuing his career in IT, Bylund studied political science at Stockholm University. He later moved to Lund and earned a master’s degree in political theory at Lund University in 2005.
Throughout 2004, Bylund lived in Taipei in the Republic of China (Taiwan) where he studied mandarin Chinese.
In 2007, he moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate in applied economics at the University of Missouri. Graduating in 2012, he spent the 2012-2013 year as an adjunct professor teaching entrepreneurship in the Management Department of Trulaske College of Business at “Mizzou.” He moved to Waco, TX for a research professorship in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship in the Hankamer School of Business and the Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise at Baylor University in 2013.
He is currently associate professor of entrepreneurship and Johnny D. Pope Chair in the School of Entrepreneurship in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University, where he has worked since 2015.
Bylund has experience founding several startups between 1993 and 2006, none of which became a successful business. Failure is a great teacher, however, and the real value of these experiences is realized in his research and teaching.
He currently lives in Tulsa, OK with his wife Susanne.