Chair of International Business at Åbo Akademi University where she received her doctoral degree in management science in 1996. She also holds a B.Sc. in pharmacy. Prior to her return to Åbo Akademi University in 2003, she served as Associate Professor in Information Systems at University of Turku, and Professor of Marketing at Turku School of Economics where she was head of the Innomarket research unit. She is Docent at the Turku School of Economics where she taught prior to returning to Åbo Akademi and she is Docent at Hanken. She has held a variety of teaching and research positions in such fields as Entrepreneurship, Market Research, Information Systems, International Marketing, Strategic Management and Pharmacy. She has published widely on entrepreneurship, biotechnology business, and knowledge management. Her current research interests are in entrepreneurial intentionality, entrepreneurial cognition and entrepreneurial growth and performance in technology entrepreneurship.

She has co-authored, with Alan Carsrud, Entrepreneurship (2007, Greenwood Publishing, Ltd.) and Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind: Inside the Black Box (2009, Springer Verlag), Understanding Family Businesses, Undiscovered Approaches, Unique perspectives, and Neglected Topics (in press, 2011 Springer Verlag) and two case book publications in Springer Briefs in Business (2011): Family Firms in Transition: Case Studies on Succession, Inheritance, and Governance and Understanding Family Firms, Cases on the Management of Crises, Uncertainty and Change. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Small Business Management. Her research appears in Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Enterprising Culture, New Biotechnology, Screenings, VINE- Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, Journal of Decision Systems, Market-Focused Management, Knowledge and Process Management Knowledge Management Research and Practice, European Management Journal.