Background

Elisa Alvarez-Garrido is an Assistant Professor in the Sonoco International Business Department at the Darla Moore School of Business. Her research studies the financing of innovation by startups, with an interest in deep-tech and breakthrough innovation. She is an expert on international venture capital and corporate venture capital investments, as well as on the role of institutions (and institutional disruption such as Brexit) on investments. More recently, she is studying new investment approaches for radical acceleration of startup innovation and nurturing breakthroughs by startups. Empirically, her focus has been on life-sciences investments, specifically biotech and clinical diagnostics, startups that carry high risk (and where de-risking is difficult) but that can also have high potential reward, not only financial but also higher quality of life.

Alvarez-Garrido’s work has been published in the journals Nature Biotechnology, Strategic Management Journal, and Strategy Science. Her work has also been recognized by several awards, including the Best Paper in International Management at the Academy of Management, finalist for the Haynes Prize for the Most Promising Scholar at the Academy of International Business, and finalist for the Best Conference Paper at the Strategic Management Society.

She is currently an Editorial Board Member for Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and Global Strategy Journal, and has served as ad-hoc reviewer for Nature, Nature Human Behavior, and the National Science Foundation, among others. She has held numerous leadership positions in the Academy of Management (AoM) and the Strategic Management Society (SMS), including member of the Executive Committee with the Strategic Management group at AoM, with programmatic responsibilities; Representative-at-Large for the Corporate Strategy interest group at SMS, where she co-leads the Corporate Strategy Masterclass virtual series; Representative-at-Large for the Strategy and Entrepreneurship interest group at SMS; and, member of the Research Committee at the Strategic Management group at AoM.

Alvarez-Garrido received her Ph.D. in Management from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a M.S. in Management from The Wharton School, a M.S. in Business Administration and Quantitative Methods from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), and a JD from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (she was member of the Madrid Bar Association). Before joining the University of South Carolina, she was on the faculty at Georgia State University.

Selected Publications (Research)

Alvarez-Garrido, Elisa and Isin Guler. Forthcoming. Internationalization of Venture Capital. In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Private Equity. Douglas Cumming and Benjamin Hammer, eds. Palgrave Macmillan

Alvarez-Garrido, Elisa. 2022. Move-in Ready or Fixer-upper? VC Specialization and Startup Innovation. Strategy Science 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2022.0176

Alvarez-Garrido, Elisa, and Isin Guler. 2018. Status in a Strange Land? Context-Dependent Value of Status in Cross-Border Venture Capital. Strategic Management Journal. 39(7): 1887–1911. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2777

Alvarez-Garrido, Elisa, and Gary Dushnitsky. 2016. Are Entrepreneurial Venture’s Innovation Rates Sensitive to Investor Complementary Assets? Comparing Biotech Startups Backed by Corporate and Independent VCs. Strategic Management Journal, 37(5), 819–834. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2359

Alvarez-Garrido, Elisa, and Gary Dushnitsky. 2013. Publications and Patents in Corporate Venture-Backed Biotech. Nature Biotechnology, 31(June), 495–497. https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2569

Alvarez-Garrido, Elisa, and Gary Dushnitsky. 2012. More Than Words? Is Startup’s Propensity to Publish or Patent Sensitive to Investor Characteristics? Best Paper Proceedings, Academy of Management.

Education

• Ph.D., The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• M.Sc., The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• M.Sc., Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
• JD (equivalent), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
• B.S., Economics, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
• B.S., Business Administration, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain