Report from the R&D Management Conference in Trento
From 9 to 13 July Professor Bram Timmermans and PhD candidate Nicolas Gibney participated in the annual R&D management conference in Trento, Italy.
This academic conference is organized by the RADMA (Research and Development Management Association) in close collaboration with a host institution, this year the University of Trento.
Due to the active involvement of a professional association, there is a relatively large number of participants from industry who co-organize sessions and workshops in collaboration with academics, present ongoing research, and take part in plenary panel discussions.
Central themes at this year conference where Platform and ecosystems, Innovation and digital transformation, People and territories, and Entrepreneurship and SMEs, with many DIG relevant research papers.
Nicolas Gibney participated in the PhD colloquium, which in addition to get feedback on his research on ecosystems, this provides a good arena to build contacts and future research collaboration with academic peers at other institutions and leading faculty.
Bram Timmermans presented the paper “When are ecosystems superior?”, co-authored with Lasse B. Lien. This paper is research output that directly emerged with the collaboration with DIG partners in Theme 4 on Strategy in and for digital ecosystems.
The premise of the paper is to give our account on why ecosystems demonstrate to have superior way of organizing value creation in some situations, but not in others.
Participating in such conference allows us to test and get feedback on some of our ideas, often leading to some heavy debates. The overall goal is to take comments and turn it into a valuable academic contribution but also a contribution that is valuable for industry and society at large.