"The circulation of ideas, talent and technologies:
global networks of innovation"

Jay Mitra is the Founding Professor of Business Enterprise and Innovation, Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship Research at the University of Essex, and Head of the School of Entrepreneurship and Business, at the University of Essex, UK. He is also the Director of the Scientific Committee on Entrepreneurship for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and its LEED (Local Economic and Employment) Programme, in Paris, France, and in Trento, Italy. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the School of Management at Fudan University in China and The Centre for China Public Sector Economy Research at Jilin University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the UK. Jay Mitra also leads the International Entrepreneurship Forum, a unique forum of researchers, policy makers and business practitioners concerned with entrepreneurship, innovation and regional development.

Educated in India and the UK, Professor Mitra trained in the private sector in the UK, worked as a Principal Officer for local government also in the UK, specialising in economic and business development, and taught at 3 other universities before joining the University of Essex. He also set up 2 businesses in London. He has written and published widely on the subject of entrepreneurship, innovation and economic development and makes keynote presentations at leading academic and policy conferences around the world. He draws his inspiration from music, the cinema, the theatre, literature, cricket, the tension and beauty of ordinary lives, changing landscapes, and the diversity of people, thought and action.