Vito Albino is professor in Innovation and Project Management at the Politecnico di Bari in Italy. At the same university, he is the founder and director of the Knowledge Management Lab, co-founder of the Innovation Management Group, and, at the present, delegate vice-rector for the Industrial Liaison Office.
Vito is now also member of the board of Consiglio di Territorio Sud Continentale, a group of experts set up from the UniCredit S.p.A,, the largest Italian Bank, to sustain the development of the business sector in South Italy, and member of the board of MEDIS, an Italian technology district specialized in mechatronics.
After the master degree in mechanical engineering, Vito has been visiting researcher at the University of Cincinnati from 1986 to 1987 before to start his academic career as researcher at the University of Basilicata in 1988. He became associate professor at the same university and then he moved to the Politecnico di Bari as professor.
Visiting professor at University of South Florida (Tampa), he gave lectures and seminars in many universities in USA and in Europe.
In 2003 he co-founded the European Sustainability Group, a group of organizations, researchers and consultants in Europe who are actively working to create a sustainable world, through creatively learning together, sharing insights and developing practical capacity for sustainability in the organizations they work with.
From the same year he chaired for six years the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Gestionale at the Politecnico di Bari and from 2007 to 2009 he was the president of the Board of the Italian Association of Business Engineering (AiIG).
In 2003 Vito served as a member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Ministry of University and Research for the internationalization of the Italian university system, and two years later as an expert of the European Union in the area Innovative Environment for the project Information Society Network (URBACT Programme).
In 2008 he was the Italian scientific coordinator of the research project “Sustainability Knowledge Integration Mechanisms (SKIMs) and Green Product Strategies in Canada and Italy: A Cross-Cultural Perspective” granted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
In 2010 he has been co-director of the course “Sustainable Strategies and Operations” at the Columbia University and scientific responsible of the project “A review and synthesis of research on the use of alternative energy sources in cement manufacturing”, granted by the Network for Business Sustainability (Canada).
His research fields are related to innovation processes in production chains and industrial clusters with particular interest to environmental aspects.

Nicolas Gorjestani is a former Chief Knowledge & Learning Officer at the World Bank. An economist by training, Mr Gorjestani had held a variety of senior staff and management positions at the World Bank for more than three decades, before retiring in July 2007. A global thought leader on organizational knowledge and learning themes Mr. Gorjestani now devotes his time to advising, lecturing and writing on development strategy, knowledge-based development, organizational knowledge sharing and learning, and leadership development issues. Mr Gorjestani is currently a Senior Adviser/Consultant at the World Bank; an Adjunct Professor in Knowledge Ecology at the Polytechnic University in Hong Kong; and has been Executive Director, Secretariat, Global Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation Partnership. He was one of the pioneers of knowledge sharing, learning and innovation at the World Bank, having designed and managed several cutting edge and award winning programs and approaches to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the way to do business in development. Mr. Gorjestani was also Program Director of the World Bank’s Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program. He has also been a member of the Learning Innovation Laboratory (LILA) at Harvard University, and a member of the New Club of Paris, a think tank focused on issues of the global knowledge economy. Mr. Gorjestani has published extensively on knowledge and development topics and keynoted at major international conferences. The World Bank is five-time MAKE Award winner and six-time winner of AQPC Best Practice Partner Awards.

Robert Grant is Professor of Strategic Management at Bocconi University, Milan.  He was born in Bristol, England, and is a graduate of the London School of Economics and City University. He has held faculty positions at Georgetown University, City University (London), California Polytechnic, University of British Columbia, St. Andrews University (Scotland), and London Business School. He has been a visiting professor at UCLA, UC Irvine, and Insead. He was formerly a staff economist at the British Monopolies and Mergers Commission. He has contributed to the resource-based and knowledge-based views of the firm and to research into corporate strategy, strategic planning processes and organizational capability. He is the author of Contemporary Strategy Analysis (8^th edition, Wiley, 2013), a leading strategic management text.

Charles Landry is an international authority on the use of imagination and creativity in urban change. He helps cities identify and make the most of their resources and to reach their potential by triggering their inventiveness and thinking. His overall aim is to help cities become more prosperous, culturally confident, resilient and self-sustaining, as well as to get onto the global radar screen.
Acting as a critical friend, Charles works closely with decision makers and local leaders. He helps find apt and original solutions to seemingly intractable dilemmas, such as marrying innovation and tradition, balancing wealth creation and social cohesiveness, exploring sustainable approaches to urban change, making the most of diversity, or blending local distinctiveness and a global orientation.
Charles has worked across the world with a large number of cities and been involved in several hundred projects. His writing has been influential and his best-known book is, The Creative City: A toolkit for Urban Innovators; a concept that has become a global movement. His other titles include, The Art of City Making and The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage, the latter co-written with Phil Wood. Charles recently launched a series of short, fully illustrated books: The Sensory Landscape of Cities; The Origins and Futures of the Creative City; The Creative City Index: Measuring the Pulse of the City; Culture & Commerce; The Fragile City & its Risk Nexus.
For further information: www.charleslandry.com

JC Spender – www.jcspender.com
BA MA (Engineering) Oxford UK; PhD (Corp Strategy) Manchester Bus. Sch. UK
Served in experimental submarines before Oxford. After graduation, did reactor design and development work with Rolls-Royce & Associates on the UK nuclear submarine program. Moved to IBM as large account salesman and team leader, and then into strategy consulting.
Next to a career in investment banking – but quit commerce in 1971 to enter the Manchester PhD program. Thesis awarded the US Academy of Management AT Kearney Prize in 1980 and published as Industry Recipes (Blackwell 1989).
Served on the faculties of City University (London), York University (Toronto), UCLA, University of Glasgow, and the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Small Business at Rutgers (New Jersey).
After a year’s sabbatical with the Advanced Technology Program (US Department of Commerce) appointed Dean, School of Management, New York Institute of Technology and then Dean, School of Business and Technology, Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY), New York. Retired April 2003.
Awarded, jointly with Robert Grant, the Strategic Management Society’s 2007 Best SMJ Paper Prize for the 1996 Special Issue on Knowledge.
Currently Svenska Handelsbanken Visiting Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Lund University (Sweden), Visiting Professor ESADE/Universitat Ramon Llull (Spain), Visiting Professor Cranfield School of Management, and Visiting Professor Open University Business School.