Vasilis Theoharakis

Vasilis Theoharakis is Professor of Strategic Marketing and Director of the Centre of Strategic Marketing & Sales at the Cranfield School of Management. He is a partner and member of the management team of the PJ Tech Catalyst fund, a venture capital fund that invests in seed stage technology start-up companies. As a board member of NYC based Pollfish representing PJ Tech, he oversaw the sale of the company to Prodege, a California based unicorn. He led the creation of the advisory board at Innoetics, a global innovator in text to speech software, which managed the successful acquisition of the company by Samsung. Among other ventures, he co-founded and was chairman of a successful nanotechnology company that he grew to reach exports in 25 countries and exited when a PE fund invested in the firm. Vasilis has spent several years in Silicon Valley at senior level marketing and business development positions with high-tech start-ups and companies such as 3Com. He started his career as a research engineer at IBM’s prestigious T.J. Watson Research Center where he won the Research Division’s Award. He holds a B.Eng. (honours) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and an M.B.A. (with distinction) from New York University, and a Ph.D. in Marketing and Strategic Management from the University of Warwick. He has taught at the Warwick Business School, European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin, City University Bayes School of Business, University of Sheffield, University of California - Berkeley, ALBA, Aston University, University of Cyprus and Golden Gate University. Vasilis’ academic research focuses on strategic marketing, new product development and entrepreneurship. He has published in leading academic marketing and innovation journals such as the International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Global Strategy Journal, British Journal of Management, Marketing Letters, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, International Marketing Review and Computers in Human Behavior. He has been among the most downloaded authors worldwide on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Vasilis has extensive experience consulting national and international firms and is actively involved in executive education and has taught in executive programmes for companies such as HSBC, ASDA, Shell, Vodafone, Glaxo SmithKline, Philip Morris, Novo Nordisk, Bank of Piraeus and Eurobank.