Innovation and IP Management
Innovation management is widely recognised as a key part of many firms’ strategic thinking and management efforts. It has become an area with rapidly growing interest from academia and industry. With a focus on technological innovation, our research aims to develop improved understanding of innovation and the associated management issues. We aim to provide support to those managing innovation through practical engagement of firms in research.
Intellectual Property Management
Investigating the role of IP in the technology and innovation processes on a strategic level in open and distributed innovation processes, as well as the use of IP information for decision making, such as technology intelligence.
Management Tools for Decision Support
Exploring the development and use of structured methods to gather, explore organise and communicate the information necessary for decision-making and management.
Breakthrough innovation
This project investigated ways in which firms can improve their capacity to generate breakthrough innovations
Innovation management - a tool set for SMEs
This work aims to combine the outputs of past research in a accessible workshop based tool set for smaller companies who wish to develop their innovation skills.
Open innovation
Our research in this area is focused on helping companies understand the opportunities and challenges of open innovation – for example, the role of intermediaries and how small and large firms can collaborate effectively.
Innovation Productivity Grand Challenge
This collaborative research programme explored the implications of the changing 21stcentury context of networked, global and increasingly open innovation – a world in which knowledge flows become as important as knowledge creation.
Emerging Industries Programme
Mapping techniques have been used to identify the patterns, enablers and barriers associated with industrial emergence, leading to a set of new methods for capturing learning from the past, and supporting strategic planning for early stage technology ventures.
Innovation processes for product service systems
Within this project we aim to explore whether, and explain how product service system (PSS) innovations impact firms’ innovation behavior. We are interested to understand whether and how PSS innovations shift firms’ innovation trajectories towards more environmentally friendly directions in order to reduce the negative externalities that result from firms’ innovation activities.
When operating PSS solutions commonly no ownership transfer takes place to the user, who enters into an enduring contractual relationship with the offering firm (i.e. instead of a single purchase contract as often characteristic for product sales). During the PSS use, its user becomes temporary proprietor enabling a high use-flexibility. In the project we primarily aim to how this impacts firms’ innovation behaviour, corporate strategic and specific operational R&D objectives as well as the trajectory that firms pursue in their innovation activities (i.e. whether PSS align economic and ecologic behaviour).
Project partners include the Institute for Innovation Research (Kiel University), Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (Hamburg University of Technology - TUHH) and the Centre for Sustainability Management (Leuphana University in Lüneburg).
PhD research in Innovation and IP Management
Patent roadmaps to support forecasting and strategic decision-making
Forecasting the development and potential success of emerging technologies is important to decision makers. It enables them to be proactively choosing suitable strategies and avoid possible negative impacts, with potential disastrous consequences. Both patent forecasting and roadmapping have been used for technology forecasting to guarantee larger profits and occupy dominant positions first. This research aims to combine both patent analytics and roadmapping for the purpose of technology forecasting for supporting strategic decision making. (Tianyi Wang)
Aligning IP strategy with the business model
This research intends to explore the impact of the business model on IP strategy and interrelations between the two aspects, i.e. how to align IP strategy with the business model to exploit IP’s value. The objective of the research is to first improve the understanding of how business models influence firms’ IP strategy, and further to improve the approach for firms to developing their IP strategy and aligning it with their business model to exploit IP’s business value. (Mingjin Guo)
A structured mapping approach for understanding the dynamics of new technology-based venture emergence
This research aims to develop a theoretically underpinned structured mapping approach for understanding the dynamics of new technology-based venture emergence. This will be achieved by exploring the integration opportunities between roadmapping and innovation system functions at the firm level. (Yuta Hirose)
Balancing the innovation portfolio
This PhD study explores the concept of a balanced innovation portfolio. The context of balance in a portfolio can vary across firms with respect to various factors such as strategy and competition. The aim is to understand the challenges faced by firms in managing innovation portfolios and develop a portfolio balancing approach considering the dynamic nature in a portfolio. (Nitish Gupta)
EPSRC - The Future of Patent Analytics: A Foresight Study of Breakthrough-enabling Technologies
In a connected world, where successful technological development depends increasingly on collaboration of different partners, effectively utilizing patent data has huge, yet unexploited potential. Given suitable analytics solutions, the data can be used for regular decision making on a strategic level in all kind of organizations, small or large, private or public, young or old. With the digitization of patent data since the BACON project in 1984 and gradual improvements of analytics over the last decades, patent data has become increasingly accessible for a wider audience. While few providers of patent analytics solutions have started to adapt novel technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the major industry players face inertia due to technological legacy problems being locked-in to unsuitable data architectures. We believe, helping the industry to explore and understand the potential of novel technologies will trigger further investments and boost the development of new solutions enabling previously untapped use cases, for instance, to connect research partners more effectively. Involving key stakeholders, such as technical experts, lead users of patent analytics solutions, patent specialists and decision makers, the project will conduct a foresight study to develop a technology roadmap for the next 10 years of patent analytics. (Leo Aristodemou)
Partnerships of automotive manufacturers in Silicon Valley for the development of the electric vehicle ecosystem
Since 1995, when Daimler was the first automotive manufacturer to establish a small innovation office in Silicon Valley, a number of manufacturers, such as VW, BMW, GM, Ford, Toyota, and others, have followed suit. Among other aims, these technology offices are used to form local partnerships and develop innovative technologies, such as electric vehicles. I am researching the partnerships the technology offices form with local players, in order to address various dimensions of the EV ecosystem. I will research how the open innovation activities have changed over time, as underlying technologies in the EV ecosystem have matured, as well as how the technology offices fit into the overall business. (Martha Geiger)
Towards a solution to new technology-based firm equity-based funding issues at different stages of firm development
Open Innovation practices in small- and medium-sized enterprises have been largely ignored by previous literature on the topic. This PhD study focuses on the role of spatial economics on the implementation of Open Innovation practices in high-tech SMEs. An extensive literature review as well as in-depth case studies of high-tech SMEs located in the Cambridge technopole cluster feed into the development of a framework of OI practices in SMEs and hopefully lead to a better understanding of the impact of location specific variables on Open Innovation. (Bingqing Zhao)
