Piera MorlacchiResearch
I am interested in understanding how novelty that solves societal problems comes into being at the cross-roads of work, technology, organization and policy, and the role played by individual and collective processes of innovating, designing, and entrepreneuring in these dynamics.
My research approach is interdisciplinary, multi-level, longitudinal, and based on mixed methods that include ethnography, archival and historical methods, network and relational analysis, and computational methods.
Research interests:
Work, Technology and Organization; Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Design; Health Technologies, Healthcare and Medicine; Complex Adaptive Social Systems, Networks and Interactions; Artefacts, Tools, Techniques and Technologies (e.g. visuals, visualization and visual methods); Social/Societal Problems, Public Policy and Governance.
Areas of research and projects
I) Health technologies and the organization of health systems and healthcare, with a focus on interdisciplinary practices related to the development, commercialization and use (e.g. acceptance, access and affordability) of medical devices and to biomedical ventures in developed and developing countries. E.g. studies of:
- high-tech cardiac devices for the treatment of heart failure (left ventricle assist devices or LVADs and artificial hearts) and other cardiovascular diseases (stents, heart valves, pacemakers and defibrillators) in high-resource settings
- medical commodities (auto-disable syringes) and devices (prosthetics) in low-resource settings
- food allergy field
II) New venture creation and growth, and evolution of entrepreneurial fields and ecosystems.
- biomedical ventures, technology-based social ventures and fields
- startup accelerators and digital ventures
- evaluation of a public entrepreneurship policy programme financing early stage innovative ventures
III) Dynamics of academic and industrial fields.
- science, technology, and innovation policy field
- emergence and evolution of the medical device industry
Doctoral supervision
I welcome hearing from potential doctoral students with an interest in studying health entrepreneurship, digital entrepreneurship and organization, digital health, regional entrepreneurial ecosystems and clusters, and entrepreneurship policy. I have supervised three doctoral projects to completion:
- Victoria Blessing (2015). User innovation of medical technologies in a developing country setting. The case of lower limb prostheses in Malawi.
- Kalinca Copello (2016). Thinking and speaking for ourselves. The development of shack dwellers' political voice in the age of ICT.
-Kieron Swift (2017). The discoursive construction of ICT4D policy in Trinidad and Tobago.
I am currently supervising the following doctoral project:
- Sarah Yeulet. Health innovation in pharmacy. The case of medicine use review services in the UK.