Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Roles and Responsibilities
Piera Morlacchi is a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh Business School.
Background
Piera studies the multiple intersections of technology, entrepreneurship, innovation, organization, and public policy and their implications for creating transformative change and desirable futures. Her primary focus is on the interplay of imagination, temporality, and power in new ways of living, working, and organizing. She has started the Imagination Lab (ILab) to explore through different projects and events the relation between imagination, futures thinking and interdisciplinarity.
Drawing on entrepreneurship and innovation studies, organization studies, pragmatist sociology and philosophy, and science and technology studies, Piera combines theoretical work with ethnography, archival and visual methods to conduct interdisciplinary, longitudinal and processual research. She has explored several forms of entrepreneurship and innovation such as technology- and innovation-driven start-ups, scale-ups and corporate ventures in the biomedical, digital, and humanoid robotics fields. In the last ten years, she has studied the transformation of regional ecosystems driven by digital entrepreneurship and innovation, with a focus on the role of accelerators, financial support programmes and other policy initiatives in early-stage starting up in Italy and Spain. Moreover, she maintains a keen research interest in understanding the co-evolution of health technology, practices, and organization in medical devices and the health-tech industry; and policymaking and policy research in the areas of science, technology and innovation (STI), entrepreneurship and public health. Piera has published her work in several leading journals including Organization Studies, Gender Work & Organization, and Research Policy.
Before joining the University of Edinburgh, Piera was a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Organization Studies at the University of Sussex Business School, where she held appointments in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) and the Management Department. She holds bachelor and master degrees in Management and Industrial Engineering, with a specialization in complex systems modelling and artificial intelligence, from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Bath (UK). In addition to full-time positions currently at the University of Edinburgh and before at the universities of Sussex, Bath and Milano, she has held several visiting fellowships and professorships at other institutions in Europe and in the US, including the University of Southern Denmark, University of Trento, University of St. Andrews, Stanford University, Santa Fe Institute, and Columbia University.
Selected Publications
Morlacchi P. (2021). The Performative Power of Frictions and New Possibilities: Studying power, performativity and process with Follett’s pragmatism. Organization Studies, 42(12), 1863-1883.
Morlacchi P. & Nelson R. R. (2011). How Medical Practice Evolves: Learning to treat failing hearts with an implantable device. Research Policy, 40(4), 511-525.
Morlacchi P. & Martin B. (2009). Emerging Challenges for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Research: A reflexive overview. Research Policy, 38(4), 571-582.
Research Interests
- Imagination and desirable futures
- Entrepreneurship and innovation in social robotics
- Digital starting up and entrepreneurial ecosystems
- Policymaking in a complex and uncertain world
- Process research and theorizing
- Pragmatist sociology and philosophy
- Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research