Renato J. Orsato

Renato J. Orsato is Professor of Practice in Sustainability at SDA Bocconi School of Management.

Before joining SDA Bocconi, he was Professor at São Paulo School of Management, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil (2011-2021); Senior Research Fellow (2004-2010), and Visiting Scholar (2011-2021) at the Hoffman Global Institute for Business & Society, INSEAD, France; and Associate Professor at International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University, Sweden (1999-2004). As a researcher and educator, he taught at MBA and Executive Programs at INSEAD and HEC in France, Lund University in Sweden, and University of Technology Sydney, in Australia.

He was awarded a Marie Curie Post-doctoral Fellowship by the European Commission, hosted by INSEAD. He holds a PhD in Management from the University of Technology, Sydney, a Masters (Honors) in Organization Studies, and Bachelor degrees in Civil Engineering (Honors), and Business Administration (Honors) by leading universities in Brazil.

He is the author of Sustainability Strategies: when does it pay to be green? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), finalist in the 2010 ONE division Book Award of the Academy of Management, translated into Arabic, Chinese and Portuguese. He has also written several book chapters, teaching cases, and published in academic journals, such as California Management Review, Organization Studies, Organization & Environment, Journal of Industrial Ecology, Energy Policy, Business Strategy & Environment, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

Before joining the academia, he accumulated substantial management experience by working several years for his family business, as well as a multinational corporation, and the consulting company founded by him. More recently he added expertise in the area of startups, business model innovation and entrepreneurship, with special focus on digital business platforms and sustainability. He is the co-founder and Chairman of greenApes, a B-Corp digital platform that promotes sustainable lifestyles, which received several prizes.

He has been awarded several large research and startup acceleration projects, and was twice nominated Inspiring Researcher by the European Commission. His initial academic work focused on the global automobile industry, with a particular emphasis on low carbon vehicles and transportation systems. His overarching research interest focuses on “when it pays to be green”, with particular emphasis on business model innovations for the development of sustainability strategies, and the impact of business platforms and blockchain technology on sustainability.