STEFANO BRUSONI

Stefano Brusoni is Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich). He coordinates the TIMGROUP - the new Chair of Technology and Innovation Management at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics (D-MTEC).

About me
I joined ETH Zürich in June 2011 as Professor of Technology and Innovation Management. Previously, I was Associate Professor of Applied Economics at Bocconi University, where I was also a fellow at KITeS (Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies). I hold a DPhil in Science and Technology Studies from SPRU at the University of Sussex (UK). Prior to entering academia, I worked as a firefighter (which I enjoyed tremendously) and as many other things that I have happily left behind. I am now being continuously surprised by my three kids Enrico, Pietro and Teresa (all faithful FC Inter supporters without any pressure from my side) and struggling to live up to their expectations.

Research Interest
Over the years, I have looked at the emergence of alternative product architectures and how they explain firms evolutionary dynamics, in terms of their vertical boundaries and long-term viability. The collaboration with Andrea Prencipe has generated a number of papers on modularity, its causes and strategic consequences (see my CV below for a publication list). Together, we investigated how firms can leverage on modularity to rely on strategic outsourcing without loosing their ability of introducing new product architectures.
More recently, I have started studying how individual-level differences matter to explain where new architectures or, more generally, new set of rules (procedures, routines) come from. Here, joint work with Daniella Laureiro-Martinez and Maurizio Zollo is being fundamental to help me make sense of this new area of work (though I doubt I am actually reciprocating their contribution of insights, hard work and humour). Also, work with Anja Schulze here at ETH intends to understand how managerial systems (e.g. lean management techniques) work and evolve over time, and the extent to which they support innovation and change. Lean techniques represent an instance of a 'process architecture' for managerial decision making and thus naturally extends the work on product and technological architectures on the one side, but also provide the organizational context in which individuals take decisions and evaluate their consequences.
Methodologically, I consider qualitative methods as my home turf, despite my original training (ah! The things that people do when they are young!) in economics. Recently, I have begun learning a bit about neuro-psychological techniques to observe individuals cognitive characteristics. Brain imaging is also something I have become very curious about. I am very much interested in understanding the extent to which these techniques can be used in social sciences. They carry tremendous potential, but also very serious methodological problems and ethical implications.

Publications http://www.timgroup.ethz.ch/people/brusonst

 

ANNABELLE GAWER

Annabelle Gawer is Assistant Professor in Strategy and Innovation at Imperial College Business School. An award-winning researcher and educator, she is an expert on technological and digital platforms, such as Google or Facebook. She teaches strategic management, high-tech strategy, and digital platforms to MBAs, EMBAs, and executives.
Annabelle is a leading voice in advancing research managerial practice, and policy on technological platforms. Annabelle's pioneering research on platform leadership and innovation ecosystems has led to new understanding of the rules of high-tech industries, ranging from computers and telecoms to electronics. She offers insights on the strategic management of platforms by exploring the interaction between their design, economic forces, and organizational and institutional dynamics.
Annabelle's highly cited research draws on rigorous empirical work, and creative cross-fertilization of the academic disciplines (economics, engineering, organization theory) in which she was trained, first as an engineer in France (Ecole des Mines), then at Stanford (MSc Industrial Engineering), and later at MIT where she earned a PhD in Management of Technological Innovation. Her research has been published in the MIT Sloan Management Review, the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, the European Management Review, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Articles written for a managerial or a regulatory readership were also been published in English, Japanese, and Chinese, for example in the Wall Street Journal, the European Business Review, Communications and Strategies, the Hitotsubashi Business Review, and the Beijing Business Review.

 

RICHARD N. LANGLOIS

Richard N. Langlois is Professor of Economics at the University of Connecticut. He was educated at Williams, Yale, and Stanford. Before coming to Connecticut in 1983, he was affiliated with the Center for Science and Technology Policy and the C. V. Starr Center for Applied Economics at New York University. Professor Langloiss principal research area is the economics of organization. He is the author (with Paul L. Robertson) of Firms, Markets, and Economic Change: A Dynamic Theory of Business Institutions (London: Routledge, 1995), which articulates (among other things) the theory of dynamic transaction costs and the theory of modular technological systems. Another focus of Professor Langloiss work has been the economic history of technology. He has written on such industries as computers, semiconductors, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and software. His history of the microcomputer industry won the Newcomen Award as the best article in Business History Review in 1992. Recently, Professor Langlois has turned his attention to explaining the changes in corporate organization in the late twentieth century, a set of phenomena he refers to as the Vanishing Hand. His latest book, The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler, and the New Economy (Routledge, 2007), received the 2006 Schumpeter Prize of the International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society. Also in 2006, Professor Langlois received a Provosts Research Excellence award from the University of Connecticut; and in 2007 he received the University of Connecticut Alumni Association Faculty Excellence Award in Research.

 

AXEL LEIJONHUFVUD

Axel Stig Bengt Leijonhufvud was born in Sweden. He came to the United States in 1960 to do graduate work and obtained his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He taught at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1964 to 1994 and served repeatedly as Chairman of the Economics Department. In 1991, he started the Center for Computable Economics at UCLA and remained its Director until 1997. In 1995 he was appointed Professor of Monetary Theory and Policy at the University of Trento, Italy. His research has particularly dealt with the limits to an economy's ability to coordinate activities as revealed by great depressions, high inflations and (recently) transitions from socialist towards market economies.

 

LUIGI MARENGO

Luigi Marengo is Professor of Economics Laboratory of Economics and Management, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

Research Interests:
Organizational Economics, Economics of technical change, Behavioural Economics, and Economics

PUBLICATIONS
https://mail.sssup.it/~l.marengo/publications.html#articles

 

CHARLES JASON WOODARD

Jason Woodard is Assistant Professor in the School of Information Systems at Singapore Management University. His research explores the relationship between system architecture and competitive strategy, with a focus on software-intensive systems. He is especially interested in the role of architectural control in shaping the evolution of technology platforms. He received a Ph.D. in Information, Technology and Management from Harvard University in 2006. Before graduate school, he was a technical evangelist for IBM's efforts related to Java, XML, and open-source software.

Curriculum Vitae

 

ENRICO ZANINOTTO

Enrico Zaninotto is professor of Business Economics at the University of Trento. He was educated at the University of Venice and at the Catholic University of Louvain la Neuve. He joined the University of Trento in 1994, after the University of Venice and the University L. Bocconi of Milan. At the University of Trento he leaded the Rock, group of Research on Organisation, Coordination and Knowledge. He published papers on production theory, standard diffusion and modularization. Current research is focussed on two main topics: coordination theory and entrepreneurship and firm dynamics.

 

 

Department of Economics via Inama, 5 I-38100 Trento tel. +39 461 282201