# About Goran Calic Goran Calic is the Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurial Leadership and an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, in Hamilton, Canada. He studies how organizations make consequential decisions under uncertainty, with research on strategy, innovation, creativity, generative AI and energy. He has published 31 peer-reviewed journal articles, in outlets that include Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy and the Journal of Management Studies, and five Harvard Business Review articles with Andy Wu of Harvard Business School. He was Guest Editor of the Research Policy special issue "Connecting Creativity and Innovation Research" and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. He heads McMaster's Energy Strategy Lab, hosts The Atomic Exchange Podcast on energy strategy, and teaches strategy, innovation and generative AI to boards and executives in Canada, the United States and Latin America. This page is the factual record, taken from his CV (current as of October 2026). The CV itself is at https://gorancalic.com/cv.pdf. ## Current positions All at McMaster University, DeGroote School of Business, Hamilton, Canada. - Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurial Leadership (since July 2024) - Associate Professor of Strategic Management (since July 2021; Assistant Professor 2016–2021) - Head of the Energy Strategy Lab (https://esl.mcmaster.ca) - Academic Lead of the Marinucci Entrepreneurial Bridge, McMaster's home for student entrepreneurship - Lead of The Clinic, an entrepreneurship and innovation lab run with McMaster's medical school and Hamilton hospitals ## Earlier roles - Michael Lee-Chin & Family Chair Professor in Strategic Business Studies, McMaster University (2023–2024) - Director of MBA Programs, DeGroote School of Business (2023–2025) - Visiting Scholar, Strategy Unit, Harvard Business School (July 2024–June 2025) - Post-doctoral studies, Laboratory for Computational Cognitive Neuroscience, Purdue University (2016) - Visiting Instructor (2016) and Research Assistant (2011–2016), Krannert School of Management, Purdue University - Marketing Project Manager, Georgsmarienhütte GmbH, a German steel company (2007–2011) ## Education - PhD in Strategic Management, Purdue University (2016), with a dissertation on creativity in organizations - MBA, Purdue University (2007) - Honours Bachelor of Commerce, University of Ottawa (2006) - Academic exchange at the University of Vienna, Austria (2004–2005) ## Research record - 31 peer-reviewed journal articles. The outlets include Strategic Management Journal (2025), Research Policy (2026), Journal of Management Studies (2016), Journal of Business Ethics (2023), Academy of Management Learning & Education (2013), Energy Policy (2026), Small Business Economics (2024), Decision Support Systems (2019), Business Strategy and the Environment (2020), Scientific Reports (2020, 2025) and five articles in the Journal of Business Research. The full list, with the main finding of each paper, is at https://gorancalic.com/llm/publications.md. - The 2016 Journal of Management Studies article was among the journal's 20 most-downloaded papers of 2016–2017. - Five Harvard Business Review articles with Andy Wu (one also with Min Basadur). "Does Elon Musk Have a Strategy?" was reprinted in HBR's The Year in Tech 2024. - Two Harvard Business School teaching cases: "Twitter Turnaround and Elon Musk" (with Andy Wu, 2023) and "Meta's Energy Dilemma: Powering the AI Future" (with Dennis Yao and Andy Wu, 2025). - Book chapters with Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Wiley, SAGE and TUM University Press. - More than 3,350 citations and an h-index of 18 (Google Scholar, September 2026). His work is cited in nine policy documents across five jurisdictions, including the European Union and Germany (Overton). ## Editorial roles - Guest Editor, Research Policy special issue "Connecting Creativity and Innovation Research: Building Bridges to Cross Divides" (2023–2026) - Editorial Board Member, Journal of Business Venturing, and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice - Reviewer for journals including Academy of Management Review, Organization Science and Journal of Management Studies ## Research funding About CA$858,000 in total, including grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC): - Achieving True Sustainability (2017) - Strategic Cascades for Big Data Utilization (2020) - Fake News: Causes and IT Countermeasures (2021, about $200,000) - Home Energy Conservation (2024, $235,000) McMaster University has also funded his work on AI-driven modelling of nuclear waste management (2025). ## Teaching - MBA Strategic Management and MBA Entrepreneurship and Innovation ("The Clinic – Innovation Lab") at McMaster, and executive education. He co-developed McMaster's MBA strategy course and created The Clinic course. - He teaches with live cases and with his own Harvard Business School cases. - Teaching awards: Krannert Certificates of Distinguished Teaching (2014, twice) and the Purdue Teaching Academy Graduate Teaching Award (2015). ## Selected honours - Max Boisot Award, European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) (2015) - EGOS Paradox Subtheme "That's Interesting" Award (2015) - Finalist, Most Visionary Paper, NeuroIS, Vienna (2018) - Finalist, Emerald Best International Symposium Award, Academy of Management (2016) ## Outreach - Host of The Atomic Exchange Podcast, on energy strategy, nuclear power and clean-technology commercialization: https://open.spotify.com/show/642RINot7OExjbJwcMQrKV - Essays on energy and management at https://gorancalic.substack.com - A TEDx talk on environmental sustainability, and media appearances including CBS News, Deutsche Welle, The Globe and Mail and the Houston Chronicle ## Languages English (fluent), Croatian (fluent) and German (professional working proficiency). He studied at the University of Vienna and worked for several years at Georgsmarienhütte in Germany. ## Contact and profiles - Email: calicg@mcmaster.ca - Website: https://gorancalic.com - Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?hl=en&user=vLk1-ksAAAAJ - McMaster profile: https://degroote.mcmaster.ca/profiles/calicg/ - Harvard Business School profile: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=1580596 - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/goran-calic/ - Ask GoranAI, a chatbot that answers from his published work: https://gorancalic.com/ask