[Italy]
Professor (Bocconi, M.I.T.), former President of the European Academy of Management, Editor-in-Chief (Organization & Environment), Academic Director (GOLDEN for Sustainability).
Board member and former Chairman and President, CEL International.
Professor Zollo is the Dean’s Chaired Professor in Strategy and Sustainability at the Management and Technology Department of Bocconi University and Editor-In-Chief of Organization & Environment. He has also been visiting professor at the Sloan School of Management of the M.I.T. in the Management Science group since 2012. A former President of the European Academy of Management, he was the first Italian citizen inducted as a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society.
His research aims to understand how business organizations learn to grow and adapt to environmental turbulence, and how managers can guide these evolutionary processes through the combined use of strategic growth initiatives and organizational change, innovation and learning processes. It focuses on the management of complex strategic initiatives, from M&A and partnerships to sustainability-oriented innovation and organizational change efforts. He currently directs the Global Organizational Learning and Development Network (GOLDEN) for Sustainability (www.goldenforsustainability.com) and a second program on the neuro-scientific foundations of innovation and sustainability decisions. Both lines of research involved the active engagement of large corporations in the design and execution of field experiments focused on innovation- or sustainability-oriented organizational change challenges. Both lines of research involved the active engagement of large corporations in the design and execution of field experiments focused on innovation- and sustainability-oriented organizational change challenges. In addition, his work involved international institutions like the EU, the UN, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.
He is the author of over 50 publications, cited about 15,000 times in scientific articles. The managerial insights from his research were featured on the Harvard Business Review, the McKinsey Quarterly, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, whereas the academic output is published on some of the most respected journals, such as AMJ, AMR, SMJ, Org. Science, JMS, ICC, Org. St., AMP, GSJ, Frontiers of Neuroscience and Research Policy.
A past editor of the European Management Review, he served for a decade on the Executive Committee of the Academy of Business in Society, which he helped establish in 2002. For the Strategic Management Society he chaired the Innovation and Knowledge, as well as the Behavioral Strategy interest groups, and was a founder and chair of the Stakeholder Strategy interest group. A past member of the Executive and Research Committees of the strategy division of the Academy of Management, he also served as associate editor or editorial board member of a dozen leading academic journals in strategy and organization studies.
He joined Bocconi University in 2007 after having served for 10 years on the faculty of INSEAD in the strategy department. He holds a Ph.D. degree in management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a laurea degree in monetary economics from Bocconi University. Before starting his academic career, he was a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co. and investment banker at Merrill Lynch.