Formal Education

Ph.D. University of Vienna

M.Sc. University of Vienna

M.B.A. University of Chicago

Christian is a Distinguished Fellow and Director of the Global Innovation for Impact Lab at the Stanford University Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Previously, he was the Director of Social Innovation Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School Social Innovation for Change Initiative and Academic Visitor at the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship, served as the Leo Tindemans Chair for Business Model Innovation at KU Leuven, and was the Director of the IESE Platform for Strategy and Sustainability and faculty at the Strategic Management Department at IESE Business School.

Christian's research on innovative business models in the context of deep poverty was recognized by the Strategic Management Society (Best Paper Award for Practice Implications, 2007) and won the 2008 Gold Price of the IFC-FT research competition on private sector development. Together with Johanna Mair, he published the book "Innovation and Scaling for Impact" by Stanford University Publishing for which he was awarded the 2017 Terry McAdam book prize for "the most inspirational and useful new book contributing to nonprofit management", the 2018 ONE award for best book 2015-2017 by the Academy of Management, and the 2019 Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Book Prize by ARNOVA and Independent Sector. In 2019, Christian was awarded Outstanding Social Innovation Thought Leader by the World Economic Forum's Schwab Foundation.

In the 1980s and early 90s, Christian was Associate Professor for Molecular Biology and Cancer Research at the University of Vienna. He also held several management positions in the private industry. In the mid 1990s, he served as Senior Adviser to the Executive Chairman of UNSCOM and led several missions as part of the disarmament of Iraq's biological weapons program. Christian is widely published in peer-reviewed journals in the natural- and social-sciences as well as in various practice- and news-oriented formats.