Mattias Nordqvist

Mattias Nordqvist, PhD., is the inaugural holder of the SEB Chair in Entrepreneurship and Family Business. He is a Full Professor in Business Administration at the House of Innovation (HOI), Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). Mattias teaching, research and outreach activities concentrate on entrepreneurship, strategic renewal and governance in private companies, in particular, family businesses. He focuses on both start-ups/new ventures and established companies. Mattias is the Founding Director of the Center for Family Enterprise, which is a Nordic center of excellence supported by SEB and five prominent Nordic business families.

Mattias was ranked among the top 25 most cited and published researchers within the social sciences in Sweden by the leading weekly news magazine Fokus. He has been listed as one of the world’s leading researchers and academics within the family business field in several international rankings. In 2022, he was listed as one of the top 10 academic family business influencers at a global level by the trade magazine Family Capital.

Current research projects focus on what drives and hinders entrepreneurship and innovation in family enterprises, effective ownership and governance, long-term orientation and sustainability as well as the formation, organization and role of family offices and family investment companies.

Mattias teaches at master, executive and PhD levels. In addition to his teaching and outreach activities, Mattias regularly contributes to international conferences and he is widely published in leading journals within the discipline of management, including the fields of entrepreneurship and family business. For instance, his research appears in journals like Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Small Business Economics, Journal of Product Innovation Management, British Accounting Review, Long Range Planning, Human Resource Management Review, Family Business Review, Corporate Governance: An International Review and several others. He is the founding co-editor of Journal of Family Business Strategy and currently serves as a co-editor of Family Business Review and serves on several editorial boards. He has also co-edited several books, including the Sage Handbook of Family Business.

Mattias has received several awards for his research, and multiple grants and donations for his research and teaching projects. He often appears as an expert in media in relation to his core topics.

Mattias loves to combine his academic work with a strong engagement with practice. He serves as a board member and consults with several leading business families in the Nordic countries in areas such as analysis of strategic and entrepreneurial capabilities, next generation involvement and generational succession, creation of effective governance systems as well as the formation and organization of family offices. Beyond the Nordics, Mattias has extensive international experience from working with entrepreneurs and business families. In particular, he has lived and worked extensively in Southern Europe, North America, Latin America and Africa. In 2010, for instance, he initiated and launched, in collaboration with Sida, a major capacity building program in higher education in Ethiopia and Rwanda. A program that is still operative.