Julian Kurtz is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and is currently doing his PhD in Information Systems at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). There he has led several research projects funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and industry partners such as Siemens Digital Industries. During his PhD, he attended international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals such as SMR - Journal of Service Management Research and Production Planning & Control.

His research at the IfM focuses on the micro-foundations of digitalisation capabilities to enable digital service innovation in manufacturing firms to become smart service providers. Herby, he is particularly interested in the internal operations management of these firms to manage this transformational journey of becoming smart service providers. He has a strong background in operations management and service innovation, having studied Industrial Engineering and Management at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). In addition, he was a visiting researcher at IIM Bangalore in India, where he studied smart services in the context of platform value creation. He also gained various practical experience at BOSCH, Hilti and TRUMPF.