Mr Manjula Dissanayake
Senior Lecturer
School of Management
College of Business and Law
Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD (as Co-Supervisor) - email supervisor to discuss availability.
Manjula Dissanayake is the Associate Head of Learning & Teaching - Adelaide Business School and the Academic Director – ThincLab & Entrepreneurship Programs of the University of Adelaide. He is an expert on strategising for sustainability and social impact at the Yunus Centre for Sustainability and Social Impact.He specialises in entrepreneurial learning taking a technology-centric approach to provide a flexible and personalised learning experience. He has also designed and facilitated many business accelerator/pre-accelerator programs including eChallenge program the longest-running pre-accelerator program in South Australia and Business Model Innovation program for business leaders in South Australia and Victoria. Manjula is also a certified Personal Initiative coach, the only empirically proven program to result in 30% profit growth in two years by practising business leaders. Prior to the University of Adelaide, Manjula was a facilitator for the Accelerating Information Technology Initiative (AITI) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Manjula is a co-founder of highly successful technology start-up companies in Silicon Valley raising multi-million dollars, one of which was acquired by Symbol Technologies, which subsequently got acquired by Motorola (now a Google Company) in 2002. Manjula has worked on innovative projects for leading clients including Macy’s, Kohls, Verifone and JPMC in the USA and retail, banking and government sectors across more than 15 countries. He also has over 10 US patents in the technology space and published research papers and book chapters on entrepreneurial learning within business accelerators and business model innovation.
| Date | Position | Institution name |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 - 2019 | Co-Founder/Chief Technology Officer | Emojot Pty Ltd |
| 2004 - 2012 | Vice President - Global Operations | Zone24x7 Inc |
| 1998 - 2004 | Engineering Manager | Motorola Inc |
| Date | Institution name | Country | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 - 2017 | University of Adelaide | Australia | PhD |
| 2003 - 2005 | University of Colombo | Sri Lanka | Master of Advanced Computer Science |
| 2001 - 1997 | Manchester Metropolitan University | United Kingdom | Bachelor of Information Systems (First Class) |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Spurrier, H., Kamineni, R., Dissanayake, M., & Lindsay, N. (2025). New venture team trust: Perceptions of new human, AI and AI-augmented teammates during funding activities. Journal of Small Business Management, 32 pages. |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2017 | O'Connor, A., de Zubielqui, G. C., Li, M. H., & Dissanayake, M. (2017). Supporting entrepreneurship in high cost economies: What can governments do. In Entrepreneurship Concepts Methodologies Tools and Applications (Vol. 2-4, pp. 629-731). IGI Global. DOI |
| 2014 | O'Connor, A., Corral de Zubielqui, G., Li, H., & Dissanayake, M. (2014). Supporting entrepreneurship in high cost economies: What can governments do?. In G. Roos, & N. Kennedy (Eds.), Global Perspectives on Achieving Success in High and Low Cost Operating Environments (1 ed., pp. 290-392). Hershey, PA: Business Science Reference. DOI Scopus3 |
| 2014 | Balan-Vnuk, E., Dissanayake, M., & O'Connor, A. (2014). Policy analysis for entrepreneurship education in necessity-based contexts: a Sri Lankan case study. In J. Brewer, & S. Gibson (Eds.), Necessity entrepreneurs: Micro-Enterprise and Economic Development (1 ed., pp. 160-182). United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing. DOI Scopus4 |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2024 | Spurrier, H., Kamineni, R., Nicmanis, M., & Dissanayake, M. (2024). Maximizing AI's Strategic Value: Human-AI Team Development Interventions Enable Dynamic Capabilities. In C. Singla, A. Karna, & S. H. Lee (Eds.), India Strategy Conference Proceedings 2024. Ahmedabad, India. |
| 2023 | Willmott, T. J., Dissanayake, M., Luck, E., & Conduit, J. (2023). Smart garments and ageing in place: A social marketing formative research study. In Proceedings of the 24th AMS World Marketing Congress. Canterbury, United Kingdom. |
| 2013 | Dissanayake, M., O'Connor, A., Corral de Zubielqui, G., & Li, H. (2013). How do capabilities of the entrepreneurs vary across the different stages of the firm? Evidence from the literature. In Proceedings of the Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research Exchange Conference 2013 (pp. 1-3). Australia: QUT Business School. |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2015 | O'Connor, A., Dissanayake, M., & Roos, G. (2015). How does a Government business support program influence business growth?The case for a business model innovation program in Australia. Poster session presented at the meeting of http://acereconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ACERE-Program2015FINAL.pdf. Adelaide, SA. |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2019 | Dissanayake, M. (2019). 29575428, Display screen with a graphical user interface. USA. |
| 2017 | Dissanayake, M. (2017). 15242125, Novel system for capture, transmission, and analysis of emotions, perceptions, and sentiments with real-time responses. USA. |
| 2015 | Dissanayake, M. (2015). 9094454, Location specific personalized enterprise services using video signature of an electronic display. USA. |
| 2014 | Dissanayake, M. (2014). 13/690,010, Failsafe content presentation for electronic signage applications. United States. |
| 2013 | Dissanayake, M. (2013). 13667204, Electronic display sign and merchanise pairing. USA. |
| Date | Role | Research Topic | Program | Degree Type | Student Load | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Co-Supervisor | The new topic looks at the impacts of AI adoption on team effectiveness and the mediators and moderators of this. It will build on recent research in AI-human teaming, team effectiveness, and the future of work. | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Harry Ross Spurrier |
| 2023 | Co-Supervisor | The new topic looks at the impacts of AI adoption on team effectiveness and the mediators and moderators of this. It will build on recent research in AI-human teaming, team effectiveness, and the future of work. | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Harry Ross Spurrier |