Gina O'Connor

Gina O’Connor is a Professor of Innovation Management at Babson College’s Entrepreneurship division, joined in 2019 after 29 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management. Her research focuses on breakthrough innovation capabilities in large mature companies, with a particular emphasis on organizational design and talent management for innovation functions.

Dr. O’Connor holds a PhD in Marketing and Corporate Strategy from NYU, an MBA from Saint Louis University, and a BA in Business from Saint Louis University. She has published extensively in journals like Journal of Product Innovation Management, Organization Science, and Harvard Business Review, where she argues that innovation requires more than R&D spending—it necessitates a distinct organizational function with dedicated people, processes, and metrics.

Her work on breakthrough innovation has been recognized through the Crawford Fellow award (2018) and multiple best paper awards. Gina co-authored Grabbing Lightning: Building a Capability for Breakthrough Innovation, named a top business book by Strategy+Business. She speaks frequently at global conferences including ISPIM Berlin, Academy of Management, and Innov8rs events.

Scientific awards include: Elsevier BV Top Scholars (2021), MIT Sloan Management Review’s 'Twelve Essential Insights of the Decade' (2017), and multiple teaching awards from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She advocates for professionalizing innovation as a distinct career path and consults for US and European companies on strategic innovation systems.