Keynote Speakers

Professor Mike Wright joined Imperial College Business School as Professor of Entrepreneurship  in September 2011. He is Director of the Centre for Management Buy-out Research, the first centre to be established devoted to the study of private equity and buyouts, which was founded in March 1986 at the Nottingham University Business School. Previously he was Professor of Financial Studies at Nottingham University Business School since 1989.

He has written over 40 books and more than 300 papers in academic and professional journals on management buy-outs, venture capital, habitual entrepreneurs, academic entrepreneurs, and related topics. He served two terms as an editor of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (1994-99), was a joint editor of the Journal of Management Studies until 2009 and is editor elect of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. He is a member of the BVCA Research Advisory Board. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Ghent and was recently ranked #1 worldwide for publications in academic entrepreneurship.

Roberto Zoboli is Full Professor of Economic Policy at Catholic University of Milan, Italy, where he lectures on Economic Policies for Resources and the Environment. His main fields of research are environmental and resource economics, economics of innovation, environmental policy analysis. He worked in private research institutions (Nomisma S.p.A. 1983-1990; the Economic Studies Department of Montedison S.p.A. 1991-1993; Cariplo Foundation for Scientific Research 1994) before joining the Italian National Research Council as Research Director (1995-2007).

At the CNR he has been director of institute in 1999-2001 and he is presently Associate Researcher of IRCrES-CNR (Institute of Research on Sustainable Economic Growth, National Research Council), Milan Unit. He has the scientific responsibility of European and national research projects. He is co-founder of SEEDS. He published several works on the economics of eco-innovation and waste economics in international journals.

Professor Cristiano Antonelli  holds the chair of Political Economy of the University of Torino.  He has the Director of the Department of Economics Cognetti de Martiis, the President of the International Center for Economic Research (ICER) and the Director of BRICK (Bureau of Research on Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge) of the Collegio Carlo Alberto. He is an Advisor to the Ufficio Studi of the Banca d'Italia. He has coordinated and participated to several research projects funded by the European Commission. He is the author of more than 160 journal articles and books, his recent book "Localized technological change: Towards the economics of complexity" (Routledge, London, 2008) synthesizes his recent research.

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