Julie Battilana is a Professor of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School and the Alan L. Gleitsman Professor of Social Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. She currently teaches the second-year Power and Influence course and in previous years has taught the first-year Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD) course in the MBA program. She also teaches in the doctoral program and in executive education offerings.

Professor Battilana’s research examines the process by which organizations or individuals initiate and implement changes that diverge from the taken-for-granted norms in a field of activity. Such divergent changes are particularly challenging to implement because they require not only breaking with existing norms, but also convincing others to rally behind the change. Professor Battilana’s research aims to elucidate what it takes to initiate divergent change, and how to succeed in its implementation. To do so, she has developed two streams of research that address divergent change at different levels of analysis. The first focuses on understanding the conditions that enable individuals to initiate and implement divergent change withintheir organizations. The second examines how organizations themselves can diverge from deeply-seated organizational forms, which, as they become taken-for-granted over time, prescribe the structures and management systems that organizations in a given sector ought to adopt. Studies in this stream reveal the role of hybrid organizing in this process—defined as the activities, structures, processes and meanings by which organizations make sense of and combine multiple organizational forms. Professor Battilana’s research focuses on a specific instance of hybrid organizing by examining social enterprises that diverge from the established organizational forms of both typical corporations and typical not-for-profits by combining aspects of both at their core. Her work aims to understand how these hybrids can sustainably combine aspects of corporations and not-for-profits at their core and how they can achieve high levels of both social and commercial performance. 

She has articles published or forthcoming in the Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Business Ethics, Leadership Quarterly, Management Science, Organization, Organization Science, Organization Studies, Research in Organizational Behavior and Strategic Organization. Her research has been featured in publications like BusinessWeek, the Huffington Post, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She is also a regular contributor to the French newspaper Le Monde.

A native of France, Professor Battilana earned a B.A. in sociology and economics, an M.A. in political sociology and an M.Sc. in organizational sociology and public policy from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan. She also holds a degree from HEC Business School, and a joint Ph.D. in organizational behavior from INSEAD and in management and economics from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan.

Andrew Charman, PhD, is a Director of the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, a specialist research, advisory and policy engagement organisation. He trained as a sociologist and development economist, studying at the University of Cape Town and Cambridge University. Andrew has worked across the Southern African region on addressing development challenges in a broad range of contexts, both rural and urban. His current work focuses on influencing public policy towards the township economy and informal micro-enterprises. This work seeks to shift government policy away from the emphasis on controlling micro-enterprises/restricting activities towards a more enabling policy framework to foster formalisation through promoting development strategies that build upon organic growth and utilise local resources and human capabilities. A central aspect of this agenda is to argue for the reduction in regulatory barriers and the need to address structural impediments, notably land for commercial activities.

In seeking to better understand the informal economy, Andrew has used a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods, including methods to enhance stakeholder participation (participatory visual methods and action research), social-spatial analysis of the business environment and architecture, a path-breaking small area business census approach, and the use of mappings and diagrams. Under his direction, the Foundation has overseen a process of policy engagement using exhibition events which have been conducted in a number of townships. The exhibition approach has sought to facilitate an interaction amongst stakeholders (policy shapers, politicians, academics and informal economy actors) through visual knowledge and experiential learning. Andrew has published research on a range of topics relating to the township economy in South Africa, including competition in the grocery retail sector, the economics and politics of liquor trading, enterprise change in space and time, and street trader dynamics.

Professor Alex Nicholls MBA is the first tenured professor in social entrepreneurship appointed at the University of Oxford and was the first staff member of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in 2004. His research interests range across several key areas within social entrepreneurship and social innovation, including: the nexus of relationships between accounting, accountability, and governance; public and social policy contexts; social investment; and Fair Trade.

To date Nicholls has published more than eighty papers, working papers, book chapters and articles and six books. Most appear in a wide range of peer reviewed journals and books, including five papers in Financial Times Top 30 journals (with two others under review and resubmit). His 2009 paper on social investment won the Best Paper Award (Entrepreneurship) at the British Academy of Management. In 2010, Nicholls edited a Special Edition of Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice on social entrepreneurship – the first time a top tier management journal had recognized the topic in this way. He is the General Editor of the Skoll Working Papers series and the Editor of the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship.

Nicholls is also the co-author of a major research book on Fair Trade (with Charlotte Opal, Sage, 2005) and the editor of a collection of key papers on social entrepreneurship (Oxford University Press, 2006, 2008). Both represent the best-selling and most cited academic books on their subjects in the world. In 2011, Nicholls published a co-edited volume on social innovation – the first scholarly book on the subject. In 2015, he will publish a co-edited volume on social finance (again this is the first academic collection on the subject) and a monograph on the politics of social entrepreneurship and innovation globally.

Nicholls has held lectureships at a wide variety of academic institutions including: University of Toronto, Canada; Leeds Metropolitan University; University of Surrey; Aston Business School and the University of Oxford. He has been a Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science and a Member of the Institute of Learning and Teaching. Nicholls also sat on the regional social enterprise expert group for the South East of England and is a member of the Advisory Group for the ESRC Social Enterprise Capacity Building Cluster. He is an Honorary Fellow at the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Impact, University of New South Wales. Prior to returning to academic life, Nicholls held senior management positions at the John Lewis Partnership, the largest mutual retailer in Europe. He also currently sits of the Board of several social enterprises.

Leif is a social entrepreneur and social ecologist with a range of research and personal interests pertaining to people and the environment, informal economy culture and business practice. Leif completed his PhD in 2013 with the University of Queensland, studying Cape Town’s informal economy of natural resources and traditional medicines. Leif has worked throughout southern and eastern Africa and Asia-Pacific before jointly founding SLF in 2010. Outside of the office Leif busies himself with crisis management of his two small children, surfing, cricket, hiking and commuting. Leif has lived in South Africa for fourteen years.

PhD (UQ); MSc (cum laude); B.App.Sci (Hons)

Professor Tyler Wry studies the formation, functioning, and social impact of hybrid ventures, with a particular focus on social enterprises. Taking a broad, cross-national view, this work considers how forces in the external environment affect the ability of social enterprises to acquire resources, balance intensive outreach with financial sustainability, and positively affect society. Tyler’s work has been published in outlets such as the Academy of Management Annals, the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Business Venturing, and Organization Science. In his spare time, Tyler is a tired dad who enjoys running, racquet sports, and fleeting moments of quiet.

Sophie is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Northeastern University in Boston, where she teaches social entrepreneurship and microfinance at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Sophie joined Northeastern in 2012 after two years spent as a visiting scholar at New York University Stern School of Business. She holds a doctorate in Economic and Management Sciences from Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), where she also received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Business Engineering.

Sophie’s research is situated at the intersection of social entrepreneurship, strategy and governance with a focus on understanding how the joint pursuit of social and commercial goals is managed and sustained in social enterprises and how social entrepreneurship initiatives translate into societal-level outcomes. Her research has been published in leading academic journals such as Academy of Management Review, California Management Review, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Ethics, and Journal of Small Business Management. She has edited several books on the topic. Sophie has taught and presented research at numerous institutions across Europe and the United States.

Sophie is an active participant in the two most important management and entrepreneurship conferences, the Academy of Management and the Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference, for which she regularly reviews papers, serves as discussant, chair, or PDW organizer. Sophie is a member of the editorial review board of the Journal of Business Venturing, and also regularly reviews manuscripts for leading management and entrepreneurship journals (e.g., Administrative Science Quarterly, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Strategic Management Journal).

Since 2011, Sophie has served as the co-Director of The Annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference, with Dr. Jill Kickul.