Organising Innovation

Innovation offers many opportunities for corporations. The question merely is how to make best use of them. In his inaugural address, Van den Ende shows what the innovation process entails; he provides examples of successful innovations and discusses the current issues and trends in this field.

Challenges facing corporations are how to handle uncertainty, to cooperate with external parties, and to reduce cost and time. Van den Ende’s research is focused on management of innovation processes and organisation of system innovation. Seeking the perfect cohesion between the academic approach and the world of business is one of Van den Ende’s challenges.

In his address, he will show how the quality of ideas can be enhanced, how ideas of external parties can be effectively used and how corporations can choose if they want to develop complementary products themselves or leave that to others. Van den Ende will also address the specific issues of the Netherlands with regard to innovation, and how to manage these.

Jan van den Ende holds the Endowed Chair of Management of Technology and Innovation at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He received a PhD from Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands). His current research interests include the idea generation process, collaboration for innovation and systemic innovation. His research group has already had three NWO projects approved.

Van den Ende has published in journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Research Policy, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, R&D Management, and Group and Organisation Management. In his teaching activities, Jan van den Ende has renewed the master program and set up a post-experience program in Innovation Management. Van den Ende: ‘We teach our students to think critically about the strategy and organisation of innovation and we provide them with skills to contribute to innovation performance.’