Biography

Pietro Micheli is Professor of Business Performance and Innovation at Warwick Business School. He is currently Head of the Operations Management group, and Lead of the cross-disciplinary Spotlight on the future of Business, Manufacturing & Innovation at the University of Warwick. Previously, he was Director of the Distance Learning MBA programme in 2018-2022 (ranked no. 1 in the world by the Financial Times) and of the Executive MBA (2016-2017). Before joining Warwick, Pietro was Senior Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management and Research Fellow at the Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) Research in London. In 2009-2011 he was appointed by the Italian Parliament as one of five Directors of the Commission for Public Sector Evaluation in Rome. He was awarded a PhD and a Master by Research in Management from Cranfield School of Management, and a Master in Management and Production Engineering from the Politecnico di Milano.

Over the past 20 years, Pietro has worked as a consultant, mentor and facilitator with a very wide range of organizations, including Allianz, AMEC, Aston Martin, Astra Zeneca, BP, British Energy, Centrica, Coca-Cola, DB Schenker, Denso, DS Smith, Emirates Global Aluminium, Emirates Group, Eurobank, Helios Towers, HSBC, Jaguar Land Rover, KLM, KPMG, Molex, Mubadala, Nestlé, Old Mutual, Parexel, Poste Italiane, PwC, Raymond, Royal Dutch Shell, Tadawul, Tahakom, Tata Group, Vopak, Wartsila, United Arab Emirates Government, Council of Europe, UK Cabinet Office, Department of Health, House of Lords and the National Audit Office.

Pietro has lectured in over a dozen European academic institutions and is currently Visiting Professor at Cranfield's Centre for Business Performance and Visiting Fellow at the University of Bologna. At Warwick he has been awarded nine teaching awards over the past four years.

He speaks fluent English, Italian, French and Spanish.

Research Interests

Pietro's research and consulting interests sit at the intersection of strategy, innovation, and operations management. In particular, he has undertaken research in the following areas:
Strategy implementation: Pietro has undertaken research on how organizations design and implement their strategies, and on how they enact strategic change. His research papers have been published in leading academic journals such as the Academy of Management Journal and Long Range Planning. His current projects include how organizations can effect strategic change while managing innovation paradoxes.
Innovation management: Pietro has worked in the areas of design thinking, digital transformation, and agile product and service development. His research has resulted in publications in leading academic journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Product Innovation Management, and Research Policy. His most recent study focuses on the use of design thinking as a means to connect digital innovations to improving people's lives.
Operations management: Pietro has carried out multiple projects on how organizations measure, manage, and improve performance. His papers have been published on several journals, including the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Public Administration Review, and Management Accounting Research. He is currently researching the impact of performance measurement on organisations' capacity to improve and innovate, and the development and review of measurement systems in dynamic environments. From a theoretical point of view, he's working on the development of a theory of measurement across physical and social sciences.
Pietro has been a principal investigator and co-investigator in projects funded by several institutions, including EPSRC, NIHR, Design Council, and several private and public organizations. His research has resulted into the publication of 36 peer-reviewed articles in top peer-reviewed journals (citations as of October 2024: 3,850 on Scopus, h index: 24; 8,650 on Google Scholar, h index: 28), three books, four reports, six case studies, and 27 business articles.