Rui Coutinho

He is a Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and currently serves as Executive Director of NOVA SBE's Innovation Ecosystem. Throughout his career he has worked across all quadrants of the triple helix: business, the public sector, and the scientific and technological system. He was the founder of Porto Design Factory, at Politécnico do Porto, where he managed more than 100 innovation projects with some of the largest companies in the world, also involving universities such as Stanford, Aalto, St. Gallen and S. Paulo. He has been part of several innovation ecosystems, namely the Design Factory Global Network and the Stanford University Global Alliance for Redesign. He was executive director of Porto Business School (Universidade do Porto), where he also founded and directed the Center for Business Innovation and served as director of the Postgraduate degree in Business Innovation. He has provided innovation consulting services to several national and international companies. He was also part of the founding team of the ScaleUp Porto initiative and works as a mentor, entrepreneur and consultant in various entrepreneurship ecosystems and with several startups. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Grow by José de Mello and of the Berkeley Innovation Forum.