Elisa
Villani

Elisa Villani is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Bologna. She teaches “Organizational Behavior” at the Master’s Degree in Management Engineering and “Qualitative Research Methods” at the Doctorate in Management. She was co-director of a Custom Program at Bologna Business School. Elisa received her PhD in General Management in 2013. She was a Research Fellow at the Free University of Bolzano from 2014 to 2018 and a Visting Scholar at Imperial College Business School from 2017 to 2022. Elisa’s scientific production is focused on knowledge transfer, innovation processes and entrepreneurship. Elisa is particularly interested in university-business collaborations and knowledge transfer processes, with a focus on both individual and organizational dynamics supporting innovation processes. On these topics Elisa has published in leading international journals such as Organization Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Research, Technovation, Strategic Organization, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and Journal of Technology Transfer. Elisa is Associate Editor of the Journal of Business Research and sits on the Editorial Board of the European Management Journal. Elisa is the European coordinator of an Erasmus+ project on soft skills for knowledge transfer, co-founded by the European Commission. She coordinates a team of six institutions from Italy, Finland, the Netherlands and Poland.