Confirmed key-note speakers for the conference include Professor Julian Birkinshaw (London Business School), Professor Edward Zajac (Kellogg School of Management), Professor Richard Burton (Fuqua School of Business, Duke University)

Julian Birkinshaw is Deputy Dean (Programmes) and Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School. He is also a Research Director of the Management Lab and a Senior Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research. He was elected in March 2008 as Fellow of the Academy of International Business.

His latest book, “Giant Steps in Management”, co-authored with Dr. Michael Mol, presents a thought provoking selection of the 50 most important management innovations of the last 150 years and describes the impact they have on management today.

Edward Zajac is currently the Director of the Center for Strategic Alliance Research at the Kellogg School of Management. He has a Ph.D. in organization and strategy from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Zajac’s research, teaching, and consulting focuses on strategic management issues. His award-winning research on strategic alliances, corporate governance, and strategic adaptation has been published widely in major academic journals, such as the Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, American Sociological Review, and Management Science. Professor Zajac is Co-Editor of the Strategic Management Journal, and an editorial board member of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management. He has chaired the International Strategic Management Society Conference and the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management.

Richard Burton is Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, where he is also Director of the Hartman Fund. Furthermore, he is Professor of Management at the European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) and he is an Honorary Professor at the University of Southern Denmark as well as Adjunct Professor at the University of Aarhus.

Professor Burton’s research focuses on the choice of organizational design and strategy: the development and study of organizational structures and processes to achieve efficient coordinated planning and control, and implementation of organizational strategy for performance. His current research projects include research on the use of computational models in organization theory as well as empirical studies using the Danish database for small and medium sized companies.