Center for Innovation Research

Innovation is a highly complex process in which managers juggle technical, organizational, economic, social, and psychological aspects, each having distinct effects on innovation inputs, processes, and outcomes. All these aspects are contingent on time and space and affect the innovation process and outcomes at multiple levels. Due to this diversity of factors and contingencies the field of innovation research is populated by scholars from many disciplines studying a wide range of questions. While this richness is an asset, it can also result in fragmentation and losing the big picture about how innovation unfolds in and around organizations. Together, we will aim to build bridges between the various subfields, topics and disciplines, with quality of research being the predominant goal.

Innovation strategy involves a number of decisions regarding the nature and type of innovations to engage in, as well as the speed, openness, and flexibility with which the organizations respond to challenges. Additionally, organizations experience a tension between routine and innovation, which implies that they need to balance the resources dedicated to explorative and to exploitative projects. In many respects, issues related to innovation strategy are inseparable from those related to the organization of innovation activities.

Following the highly successful conference held in 2010, the second international conference of the Center for Innovation Research at Tilburg University will bring together exemplary scholars who study how innovation relates with the strategy, organization, learning and performance of corporate and other entities. We are open to a variety of theoretical perspectives and welcome papers that incorporate various levels that can affect innovation – e.g. nations, sectors, networks, clusters, single organizations, business units, teams or individuals – as long as the papers recognize and contribute to the understanding of innovation as an organizational phenomenon. We are looking mainly for empirical papers, but strong, forward-looking theoretical contributions are also welcome. Please join us for two days of intensive discussion and dialogue in the lush atmosphere of Country Estate DE ROSEP.

Country Estate DE ROSEP offers ample possibility for accommodation. We encourage all conference participants to stay at the conference venue due to co-location benefits and scarcity of alternative hotels nearby. An added attraction of the conference is the opportunity to visit the southern Netherlands in spring and sample the best local beers Belgium and the Netherlands have to offer.

Confirmed speakers/special guests include: