Charles Williams

I am a strategy scholar at Bocconi University with an interest in how people, structure, and experience affect the evolution and adaptation of firms. I have studied how firms adapt their knowledge while expanding abroad, how executive movement through firms affects the likelihood of entering and exiting markets, and how entrepreneurial firms face the challenges of growth. My research has been published in Management Science and Strategic Management Journal, and I have served on the editorial boards of Strategic Management Journal and Organization Science. In 2020 one of my papers was awarded the Glueck Best Paper Award from the STR Diision of the Academy of Management. I teach strategy and entrepreneurship at Bocconi and previously taught at University of Illinois and Duke University. Before earning my PhD at the University of Michigan I worked in journalism and market research.

How do new and established firms grow and thrive?; How does prior experience shape firms’ adaptive capabilities?; How do organizational structure, people, and systems influence adaptation and innovation?; How do executives and founders shape strategic and structural change?