Co-Founder
Christian Seelos
Christian is a co-founder of the Global Innovation for Impact Lab (GIIL). He has been leading GIIL’s development at Stanford University for more than 10 years. His past roles include Director of Social Innovation Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School, Academic Visitor at Oxford University’s Skoll Center, Leo Tindemans Chair for Business Model Innovation at KU Leuven, and Director of IESE’s Platform for Strategy and Sustainability.
His research accolades include awards from the Strategic Management Society, the IFC and FT, the Academy of Management, the 2017 Terry McAdam Book Prize, the 2018 ONE Award for Best Book, and the 2019 Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Book Prize. In 2019, Christian received the Outstanding Social Innovation Thought Leader honor from the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation.
During the 1980s and early 90s, he was an Associate Professor of Molecular Biology and Cancer Research at the University of Vienna. In the mid-1990s, he served as Senior Advisor to the Executive Chairman of UNSCOM and received the Gold Medal for Peace for co-leading disarmament efforts related to Iraq’s biological weapons program. Christian has numerous publications in peer-reviewed and practice-focused journals across the natural and social sciences.
Research Areas
Social Innovation
Understanding how novel solutions to social problems emerge, take root, and create lasting change within complex systems.
Scaling for Impact
Examining the strategic and operational decisions that enable organizations to grow their impact without losing effectiveness.
Organizational Effectiveness
Studying how organizations build the internal capabilities needed to sustain innovation and deliver on their social missions.
System Change
Investigating how interventions can shift entire social systems toward more equitable and sustainable outcomes.
Publications & Research
Christian has numerous publications in peer-reviewed and practice-focused journals across the natural and social sciences. Explore the full body of research.