Innovating for a Sustainable Future

About GIIL

The Global Innovation for Impact Lab (GIIL), launched in 2017 at Stanford PACS, is an evolution of several decades of international research on social innovation and societal development. GIIL develops insights that help organizations make better strategic and operational decisions about innovation, scaling, and system change. GIIL works in partnership with foundations, governments, multilateral agencies, and organizations in the social and private sectors. Our research enables decision-makers to grow their ambitions and capabilities for addressing social problems and transforming social systems effectively. GIIL aligns rigor, realism, and usefulness, and leverages insights from existing knowledge across disciplines, as well as novel insights from engaging deeply with organizations and social problems in the field. GIIL also contributes to the scholarly knowledge base on effective organizations and educates the next generation of committed leaders.

Transformative insights for impactful change.

Stanford University

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Team

We collaborate with leading Scholars, PhD Students, and Decision Makers globally.

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.

Johanna Mair

Johanna Mair is Co-Founder of the Global Innovation for Impact Lab (GIIL) and Director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute, where she leads work on how organizations and institutions address complex societal challenges through social innovation. A leading voice in the field, she has shaped international debates on social innovation, collective action, and systems change through her long-standing editorial leadership at Stanford Social Innovation Review, her award-winning research, and her teaching in executive and graduate education programs. As a trusted advisor to philanthropic organizations, social innovators, and public institutions, she works at the intersection of research, education, and practice to build evidence, develop capabilities, and support strategies that enhance the societal impact of organizations and cross-sector initiatives

Co-Founder

Director

Get in Touch with Us

Reach out for inquiries about our research, educational, and advisory services.