Strategic Innovation

Liisa Vaelikangas is Professor of Innovation Management at Aalto University and Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki. She is on the board of various private and public organizations, including the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation and Robin Hood Minor Asset Management. She has been affiliated with Stanford University, London Business School, Keio University in Japan, and IMD in Switzerland, and worked for Strategos, a strategic management consultancy, and SRI International in Silicon Valley. Her research on innovation, strategy, and resilience has been published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Wall Street Journal, among other leading journals, and presented to various executive audiences. She is the author of The Resilient Organization, How Adaptive Cultures Thrive Even When Strategy Fails (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Liisa lives in Finland and California.



Michael Gibbert's first encounter with strategic novelty and outliers was as an apprentice to a professional chef in a two- Michelin-star kitchen in Wiesbaden, Germany, in a (failed) attempt to get the third star. Intrigued by the theoretical underpinnings of novelty and outliers, he turned to the academe of business management, reading for a Masters at Stellenbosch, South Africa, and a PhD at St. Gallen University, Switzerland. After several research and teaching stints at INSEAD, Yale, and Bocconi, he joined the faculty at the Universita della Svizzera italiana, in Lugano, Switzerland, where he is a professor of marketing. The author of several books and influential articles, his quest for strategic novelty happily received more accolades on the academic (compared to the culinary) front. He lives, cooks, and teaches in southern Switzerland.



Lakshmi B. Nair is a PhD student at Universita della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland. She explores the methodological sophistication of research, with a predominant focus on qualitative methodology. Her work so far encompasses studies on rigor, transparency, and impact of research methodology. Before embracing the academic way of life, she was a banker (HDFC Bank Ltd.), an MBA (First Class, Mahatma Gandhi University), and a BSW (Rank Holder at Kerala state level, Mahatma Gandhi University). When she is not following outliers, she follows her other passions: cooking, reading, dancing, traveling, and talking (not necessarily in that order).



Markus Paukku is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Based in San Francisco, Markus studies novel organizational and business models in emerging markets and nascent industries. Currently he is investigating the reimagination of higher education through digital technology and online learning. Markus received his PhD from the Aalto University School of Business and has degrees from McGill University and the Helsinki School of Economics. His research has been published in International Business Review and is regularly presented at international academic conferences such as the Strategic Management Society.



Ines Peixoto is a doctoral candidate at Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland. Along with looking into the strategies of outliers, Ines has a keen research interest in how nascent markets emerge and evolve, in particular the role of ambiguity and uncertainty in market rules and the transformative potential of innovative strategies. Currently, she is examining the European biofuels market, having presented her work in international conferences and seminars, including Strategic Management Society (SMS) and Society for the Advancement of Soc