Dr Francesco Grillo
Former Visiting Associate
Dr Francesco Grillo
Former Visiting Associate
Francesco is a Philosophiae Doctor at The London School of Economics with a dissertation thesis on the effectiveness of public investments in R&D. He was awarded a Laurea in Economia with Magna cum laude from LUISS University in Rome and an MBA with High Honors from Boston University, MA where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar. He has written a number of peer reviewed articles on regional innovation strategies and smart specialization, distributed information systems and monitoring of public policies, use of technologies as a tool to transform public services, methodologies for universities evaluation and rankings.
He is managing director of Vision and Value, the management consulting firm, advising strategies for major institutions (including the European Commission and Italian Ministry of Economy) and multinationals. He is currently advisor of the Italian Ministry of Labour on employment policies, and of the European Commission on regional innovation strategies and the next generation of structural funds programmes which are meant to spend approximately 300 Billion Euro on research, digital technologies, entrepreneurship and energy savings.
He is also Director of the think tank Vision, where he lead managed a number of projects on the impact of the Internet on Society, social innovation, the future of universities and on smart cities. He is author of Il Ritorno della Rete, 2001, ed. Fazi, on the impact of ICT on health care systems, La Macchina che cambiò il Mondo, 2002, ed. Fazi, on the impact of ICT on the car and the transportation system, and Il Sonno della Ragione, 2003, ed. Marsilio on the crisis of rationality.
Previously at Bank of Tokyo – London as a Head of Italian Desk, he has been Associate with McKinsey. The “McKinsey Mind” introduces Francesco as a success case of application of McKinsey problem solving methodologies to public sector and political questions. He has been interviewed by international media like The Economist and the BBC. He is currently columnist on Il Mattino, Il Messaggero and The Guardian.
Internet studies, clusters, innovation, R&D, smart specialization, e-government, regional policies, Europe 2020.