The Group
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The Group of Strategic Management and Innovation pursues quantitative and qualitative research in the fields of strategic management and innovation, focusing on topics such as organization and management theory, strategic management, digital technology/artificial intelligence, collaborative innovation, and online communities. The Group’s mission is Enabling strategy and innovation in a digital world. Committed to outstanding management research and education. The Group consists of an international team of research assistants, Ph.D. students, as well as Senior Researchers and Lectures, with diverse backgrounds ranging from social sciences to engineering and natural sciences. This unique composition results in a highly inspiring and vibrant group with capacity to examine Phenomena at the intersection between organizations and technology. We seek to pioneer research and theory on the intersection between technological innovation, strategy, and organizations. Our impact manifests in recognizable scientific impact (Citations: Google scholar >34’000, SSCI > 5’800, Scopus >8’900).
The Group has strong and longstanding research collaborations with a host of industry partners in Pharmaceuticals, Chemical and Mining, Health Care, Professional Services, Information and Communication Technology, Manufacturing, as well as in non-profit (e.g., hospitals, patient organizations, online communities) and governmental organizations (e.g., Canton of Zurich, SwissMedic). Members of the team regularly present their research findings in workshops and events with the Boards and executive managers of these industry partners, and publish their research findings in leading scientific journals as well as popular media and industry/practitioner-oriented publications. Examples of the Group’s impact include policy changes around digitization; policy implications at a cluster initiative focused on regional high-tech industries, both in our collaboration with the Office for Economy and Labour, Canton of Zurich; HR and innovation management policy changes in a world-leading Professional Services firm; a reorganization of R&D units and the divisions of a world-leading specialty chemicals producer; and various changes in the innovation management at a leading pharma company.
To continue fulling its mission, the Group will focus on six areas:
1. Strengthen our thought leadership in the area of strategic management of digital technology in the life sciences and in online communities: In an increasingly digital world, these topics will continue to shape the agendas of policy makers and organizational leaders; our objective is to develop theory and perform rigorous, yet relevant, research on these pillars, collaborating with external academics, to inform strategy and policy. We aim to publish our work in highly respected international academic journals.
2. Facilitate more extensive collaboration across chairs in the department: This involves running an inter-chair research seminar series, the Innovation Brown Bag series, and encouraging more inter-chair co-authorship. We also aim to host several academic visitors (late Ph.D. and more senior scholars) for short research exchanges in the 3-12-month range.
3. Continue to successful acquisition of third-party funding (SNSF, industry partners, other organizations) to support our research without compromising the independence of the Group.
4. Continue to develop our teaching program, keeping our courses challenging and up-to-date. We will focus on developing the existing courses further rather than creating entirely new courses.
5. Contribute to the department-wide Ph.D. program in Management.
6. Mentoring and placing of Ph.D. graduates and Senior Researchers in leading universities and industry positions.