The principal role of the research group is to act as a focus and facilitator of innovation research within the Business School. The group is led by Professor Jonathan Sapsed.

Focus of the Research Group

The Innovation Research Group focuses on two missions.

Internal mission

The first is an internal mission to:

• enhance internal collaboration within the Business School and the Marketing, Operations and Systems subject group in particular, by facilitating interaction between individuals with research interests in the general field of innovation
• provide support for early career researchers
• develop the PhD programme in innovation and entrepreneurship
• provide for the dissemination of innovation research output

External mission

The second is an external mission to:

• provide linkages with other academic groupings, in particular the newly created BAM Special Interest Group in Innovation
• act as a host for conferences workshops
• promote innovation research findings to a wider audience, both within the region and further afield
• develop a programme of support for local business and other partners in relation to aspects of innovation activity, such as the Innovation Studio concept

Current research

Research currently being pursued within the innovation research group addresses a range of innovation themes, including:

• entrepreneurship, gender and identity
• services innovation
• innovation policy and business clusters
• design and product development
• social and community innovation
• collaboration and user engagement
• business model innovation
• IT-enabled innovation
• innovation in complex projects

In addition, Professor Savvas Papagiannidis leads on eBusiness@Newcastle. This embraces research on e-business, ecommerce and internet-related technologies with links to colleagues in the School of Computing Science.

Work in the group is focused on the dynamic interactions between the rapid development of internet-related technologies and innovations in strategy, business models and organisational design.