Mike Grandinetti, professor of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Management at Hult International Business School
Mike Grandinetti, professor of entrepreneurship, innovation and management at Hult has chosen to define 'super angel'

FT Lexicon, in association with the FT Business Education section, has relaunched its professor of the week feature. Every week, a business school professor, an expert in his or her field, defines a key term on FT Lexicon, our online economics, business and finance glossary.

Our professor this week

Mike Grandinetti is professor of entrepreneurship, innovation, marketing and management at Hult International Business School, where he has been awarded two global teaching excellence awards. He is also managing director of Southboro Capital Group. He joined Hult in September 2011.

Prof Grandinetti was a C-level executive at five venture capital-backed start-ups, two of which had Nasdaq IPOs.

He teaches corporate venturing at DTU Executive School of Business at the Technical University of Denmark. He also taught at MIT and served as judge in the MIT $100K entrepreneurship competition for 10 years. He has been active in a number of leading global mentor capital programmes, has been keynote speaker at innovation and venture capital events and is active on the TEDx speaker circuit.

Prof Grandinetti worked at McKinsey and currently serves as adviser to businesses, universities and governments on a range of issues.

He earned his MBA from Yale School of Management, where he was named Jess Morrow Johns Memorial Scholar and was the first recipient of the Procter & Gamble Marketing Leadership award.

He has chosen to define the term “super angel”.

Why Prof Grandinetti thinks the term super angel is important

The global “innovation economy” requires risk capital as its fuel source, says Prof Grandinetti. In the wake of the ongoing global financial crisis it is clear that many things have changed, he says. He points to the “poor risk-adjusted returns of the venture capital asset class combined with the commensurate reduction in capital inflows from pension funds and university endowments”, adding that: “The burden of funding the most innovative early stage companies has clearly shifted from institutional venture capitalists to angel investors.” He believes the emerging class of super angels are playing an increasingly vital role in the global innovation economy.

To find out more about super angels, click on the link that takes you to the definition on FT Lexicon.

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