MCI professorship to Maria Wallnöfer

In recognition of her outstanding achievements in research and teaching and her exemplary contributions to the further development of the Entrepreneurial School^®, the MCI recently awarded the professorship to Maria Wallnöfer. In the presence of family, friends, and colleagues, she was presented with her certificate by MCI Rector Andreas Altmann and Head of the Academic Council Franz Pegger, before giving fascinating insights into her teaching and research areas in her subsequent inaugural lecture.

Maria Wallnöfer completed her studies in International Economics & Business Studies and Business Education at the University of Innsbruck before completing her doctorate at ETH Zurich in 2012. She then worked as a manager for strategic planning and marketing at Swarovski.

Since 2018, Maria Wallnöfer has been part of the MCI as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Industrial Engineering & Management. Furthermore, she is involved in program development of MCI’s Executive Education. In her teaching activities, she focuses primarily on the areas of marketing and strategic management as well as practical projects, in which she and her students have already worked with the Tyrolean Chamber of Commerce and Agrarmarketing Tirol.

In her research, Maria Wallnöfer focuses in particular on the importance of the business model for corporate success, which is expressed in the title of her inaugural lecture "Unlocking value in the VUCA world: The power of novel business models!".

She argues the relevance of the business model as a new theoretical approach to explaining competitive advantage in a world in which value creation processes are shifting beyond company boundaries. Platform-based business models such as Airbnb, Uber, and Netflix are not only fundamentally changing the value creation logic of traditional industries, but are also challenging managers in this changing competitive environment to rethink the mechanisms for establishing competitive advantage.