ISOI Activities
Distinguished Speaker Series
Intended to be different from a traditional research paper seminar, the ISOI Distinguished Speaker Series focuses on opinion, viewpoints, and debate about our research field(s), and also to make a connection to practice. Since 2021, ISOI has invited leading academic speakers and those with experience leading organizations to participate in the Distinguished Speaker Series on the Past, Present, and Future of Strategic Organizations.
Upcoming Speakers
The Illinois Strategic Organizations Initiative (ISOI) is delighted to invite colleagues to our ISOI Distinguished Speaker Series seminar featuring Professor Joan Enric Ricart of the Strategic Management Department at IESE Business School, University of Navarra. He is a Fellow of the SMS and EURAM, and he holds the Carl Schroeder Chair of Strategic Management.
The title of his presentation is “A Stakeholder Governance Framework: The Case for Public-Private Partnerships.” New types of PPPs are emerging to tackle grand challenges; following UNECE, we label them “PPPs for SDGs,” characterize them, and identify the governance mechanisms to address governance challenges (cooperation, coordination, and co-option) in such PPPs that define our stakeholder governance framework.
The seminar and informal chat will take place on Zoom this Friday, October 3, from 12:00-1:45 pm.
If you are interested in attending the ISOI Distinguished Speaker Series, please email isoi@business.illinois.edu to request the Zoom link.
About the speaker
Joan E. Ricart is a Professor in the Strategic Management Department. He is a Fellow of the SMS and EURAM, and holds the Carl Schroeder Chair of Strategic Management at IESE Business School. He is also Vice-President of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management. He was the founding President of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and President of the Strategic Management Society (SMS). He was the Academic Director of the EIASM and a Member of the Research Committee of the EFMD.
He has published several books and articles in leading journals such as Strategic Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Journal of International Business Studies, Econometric and Quarterly Journal of Economics. He is Co-Academic Director of IESE Cities in Motion and Academic Director of the UN Center of Excellence of PPP for Cities. His current work focuses on cities, business models and offshoring.
Previous Speakers
Andy Hoffman
Holcim (US), Inc. Professor of Sustainable Enterprise
University of Michigan
Rebecca Henderson
John and Natty McArthur University Professor
Harvard University
Paula Jarzabkowski
Professor of Strategic Management
University of Queensland & University of London
Jerry Davis
Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration
University of Michigan
Fiona Kun Yao
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Davis Smith
CEO and Founder, Cotopaxi
J. Eric Smith
Former President
Swiss Re Americas
Venkat Venkatakrishnan
Director of Research
Discovery Partners Institute
ISOI Research Paper Award
This award is presented annually to a published journal article or book that embodies and furthers the mission of ISOI, which is to address unmet demand by academic communities and corporations for transdisciplinary research in strategic organizational design and management.
To be eligible for the ISOI Research Award, the journal article or book must have been authored or co-authored by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty member and published within the last five years.
View Past Winners
2024: Arkadiy Sakhartov, Associate Professor of Business Administration
“Corporate Diversification and Risk: Portfolio Effects and Resource Redeployability,” published in Strategy Science. Read Paper
2023: Sonali Shah, Associate Professor of Business Administration
"Jewels in the Crown: Exploring the motivations and team building processes of employee entrepreneurs," coauthored with Rajshree Agarwal (Maryland) and Raj Echambadi (Northeastern) and published in Strategic Management Journal. Read Paper
2022: Fiona Kun Yao, Assistant Professor of Business Administration
"Do Individual Employees' Learning Goal Orientation and Civic Virtue Matter? A Micro‐Foundations Perspective on Firm Absorptive Capacity," coauthored with Song Chang (Hong Kong Baptist University) and published in Strategic Management Journal. Read Paper
2021: Gopesh Anand, Professor of Business Administration
"Sustainable process improvements: Evidence from intervention‐based research," coauthored with Aravind Chandrasekaran (Ohio State) and Luv Sharma (South Carolina) and published in Journal of Operations Management. Read Paper
2025 Research Paper Winner
Olga Khessina, Associate Professor of Business Administration
“Bottled Up or Poured Out: How Product Name Emotions Affect Appeal and Authenticity in the Market for Craft Beer,” published in Strategy Science, co-authored with J. Cameron Verhaal and Stanislav Dobrev.
Olga Khessina’s paper exemplifies ISOI’s mission of transdisciplinary research by bridging the literatures in organization theory, strategy, marketing, and social psychology to explain why product strategies effective in mass markets do not work in oppositional craft industries as well as to reveal unexpected strategies that do work.