Elisa
Villani

Elisa Villani is Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Bologna. She teaches ‘Organizational Behavior’ at the School of Engineering at postgraduate level and ‘Qualitative Research Methods’ at the PhD level. She has been co-Director for Custom Program at BBS (Bologna Business School).
Elisa received her PhD in General Management in 2013. She was Assistant Professor at the Free University of Bolzano from 2014 to 2018 and Visting Scholar at Imperial College Business School from 2017 to 2022.
Most of Elisa’s scientific production is about knowledge transfer, innovation processes and entrepreneurial activities. She is particularly interested in university-industry collaborations and knowledge transfer processes, with a specific focus on the role of intermediary organizations, as well as on organizational and individual-level aspects fostering innovation outputs.
On these topics she has publications on leading international journals such as Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Research, Strategic Organization, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Technology Transfer.
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 composed by six partners coming from Finland, The Netherlands, Poland, and Italy.
Elisa loves practicing sport and she is the proud mother of a four-years old baby boy.