Francesco Chirico (from Taranto, Puglia, Italy) is a Professor of Strategy and Family Business at Macquarie Business School. He is the co-Founder and co-Director of the Macquarie University Innovation, Strategy and Entrepreneurship (ISE) Research Centre at MQBS and the Australasian Family Enterprise Research Network (AFERN). Previously, he served the roles of Head of Discipline in Business Administration and co-Director of the Center for Family Enterprise and Ownership (CeFEO) at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS, Sweden). Before joining JIBS, he worked at Texas A&M University and Rice University n the US. Founder and owner of ‘Francesco Chirico Consulting AB’.

He is in the top 2% of the most-cited scientists in the world (Baas et al., 2025; Ioannidis et al., 2020) and is ranked among the leading scientists in business and management by Research.com. In 2020, Prof. Chirico was ranked #1 in Australia and in the Top 10 (8th place) worldwide among “The most influential and productive authors in the Family Firm research field in the last decade” (Aparicio et al., 2021). More recently, he was recognized in the Family Business Research Index as one of the top-performing family business scholars, ranked #1 in Australia, and #4 worldwide out of 4,906 researchers. Also, he was ranked #1 in Australia & Europe and in the Top 10 (6th place) worldwide among “The most prominent researchers in entrepreneurial orientation” (Andrade-Valbuena et al., 2019).

Francesco Chirico's teaching and research focus on the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship with a special focus on family firms. His research work explores resource management processes and acquisition and divestiture strategies that affect the realization of competitive advantage, innovation and value creation in organizations. Francesco Chirico's research has been published in international journals including, among others, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies, Research Policy, Journal of Management Studies, Entrepreneurship, Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Organization Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Small Business Economics, and Family Business Review. He serves on the editorial review board of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and Family Business Review, and Guest Editor in Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Venturing, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Organization Studies, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Business Ethics and Family Business Review.