Letizia Mortara is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, where she convenes the Decision-Making for Emerging Technology group. Letizia’s research focuses on Technological Decision Making with the aim to improve organisational response to fast-changing technological and innovation contexts. Her work aims to propose management tools and approaches that can support the taking of such decisions.

Her research covers Technology intelligence (i.e. the company activity set-up in order to keep abreast with the latest developments in technology), and the adoption of  Open Innovation practices in industry. She is interested in digitalisation phenomena linked to the advent of Digital Fabrication technologies in manufacturing (e.g. 3D Printing) and their implications for business.  

Letizia is also an Associate Editor for the R&D Management journal and a Senior Fellow at Newnham College. 

Letizia has worked within the Centre for Technology Management at the Institute for Manufacturing since 2005. Prior to this, she gained her first degree in Industrial Chemistry at the University of Bologna in Italy. After spending three years working as a process/product manager in the chemical industry, she moved to the UK where she gained her PhD in processing and process scale-up of advanced ceramic materials at Cranfield University.

Publications

Books, Reports and Guides

Communicating Technology Intelligence

This Practice Guide examines some of the barriers to effective Technology Intelligence communication and explores the ways in which intelligence can be better communicated and hence transferred to decision-makers.

Mortara L., Ford, S. (2012) Technology Acquisitions. A guided approach to technology acquisition and protection decisions. University of Cambridge, ISBN: 978-1-902546-39-1.

Mortara, L. (2010). Getting help with open innovation. Cambridge (UK), Institute for Manufacturing - University of Cambridge, 978-1-902546-91-9

Mortara, L., I. Slacik, J.J. Napp, T. H. W. Minshall, (2009) How to implement Open Innovation. Lessons from multinational companies. Report ISBN: 978-1-902546-75-9.

Dissel, M., C. Farrukh, L. Mortara., V. Thorne, Making the Business Case for Technologies: A five step process guide. (2009) Guidebook ISBN 978-1-902546-81-0

Mortara L., Kerr, C.I.V., Phaal, R. Probert, D. Technology Intelligence – Identifying threats and opportunities from new technologies, IfM, Cambridge (2007), Series: Product and service innovation. 

Papers

For a full list of Letizia's publications see Google Scholar