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headphone 37:50 minutes | December 9, 2025

#33 Sustainability & Innovation

How Sustainability Fuels New Business Models with Ivanka Visnjic
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About the Speaker

Dr. Ivanka Visnjic is Full Professor of Innovation at Esade Business School. She has served as Head
of Esade’s Department of Operations, Innovation, and Data Sciences and Director of the Institute
for Innovation and Knowledge Management. Beyond academia, she is a Non-Executive Director at
Wiser Technology, an IT services firm, and previously worked at McKinsey & Company. She has also
held visiting appointments at UC Berkeley, London Business School, and the University of
Cambridge, where she helped launch the Cambridge Service Alliance.

Her research centers on helping established companies navigate innovation and business model
transformation—especially as they shift to services, sustainability, digital technologies and AI. She
has published extensively in leading journals and outlets including Harvard Business Review, MIT
Sloan Management Review, Organization Science, and the Journal of Operations Management.
Dr. Visnjic actively collaborates with multinational corporations—including Atlas Copco, the LEGO
Group, Enel, IBM, Holcim, Suzano, and FC Barcelona—through research, advisory work, and
executive education. Beyond research, she is a sought-after keynote speaker at international
conferences, a regular contributor to executive education programs worldwide, and an advisor to
corporations on strategic innovation initiatives.

Her contributions have been recognized with distinctions including the IBM Faculty Award, Thomas
P. Hustad Best Paper Award, and Poets & Quants’ “Top 40 Under 40 MBA Professors.” In 2024, she
was shortlisted for the Panmure House Prize for research impact.

She currently leads several grant-funded projects at the intersection of innovation, emerging
technologies and sustainability, while supervising doctoral research in this area.

Additional inspirations from Ivanka Visnjic

Link to Harvard Business Review/MIT Sloan Management Review Articles:

The Legacy Company’s Guide to Innovation
Sustainability as a Business-Model Transformation
Integrate Sustainability and Innovation to Find New Opportunities

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