Biography

Francesco Grillo graduated cum laude in Economics at LUISS University (Rome), before getting an MBA from Boston University as a Fulbright Scholar. He also holds a Ph.D. in Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Francesco is Professor at Bocconi University where he teaches at the Master of Transformative Sustainability (jointly held with the Politecnico Milan) and Visiting Fellow at The European University Institute. He is also Affiliate Professor at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa and teacher at the summer school of University of International Business Economics in Beijing. He has been Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and at St. Antony's College (University of Oxford).

He is advisor on urban policies to Italy’s Minister of Infrastructure and he has been advisor to Italy’s Minister of Education, Universities and Research. Grillo has been associate of the management consulting firm McKinsey and he is now Managing Director of Vision and Value, which evaluates public policies of major institutions (including the European Commission) and advises multinationals on how digital technologies are changing the nature of industries. He is also columnist for Il Messaggero, Corriere della Sera, Linkiesta, and The Guardian, and a regular guest on La7, SkyTG24 and RaiNews24.

Moreover, Grillo is also Director of the think tank Vision. Together with Vision he leads two annual international conferences, one in Siena on the future of Europe; and the Dolomite conference on global governance of climate change– which act as problem solving platform gathering policy makers, academics, journalist and entrepreneurs from different countries and background. He is author of peer reviewed articles and policy papers: the latest is on a proposal to use electronic voting as an instrument which enables transnational constituencies at the election of the European Parliament. His latest books (2019) are “Democracy and Growth in the 21st century: the diverging cases of China and Italy” edited by Springer Nature and “Lezioni Cinesi” edited by Solferino RCS.