Extreme innovation by users: community responses to regulation and the emergence of new forms of innovative activity
The deadline for 2012 Doctoral College Studentships has now passed.
The Brighton Doctoral College is pleased to welcome applications from self-funded or externally sponsored students for programmes of research in this or a closely related area, beginning from September 2012. Applications are welcome from students wishing to study full time or part time, and applications are welcome from students in employment who have the support of their employers.
- Based in the Brighton Business School
- Supervisors: Stephen Flowers; Professor Flis Henwood.
Application deadline
The university cannot guarantee that students can start at their requested date unless deadlines are met.
- UK/EU students: The deadline for the university to receive applications for an entry date of October is the 1 August, for January entry it is the 1 November and for May it is the 1 March.
- International students: The deadline for the university to receive applications for an entry date of October is the 1 June, for January entry it is the 1 September and for May it is the 1 January.
Innovation by users is a widespread and potent force that has been observed amongst firms and individual consumers across a wide range of areas. Users have been observed to innovate in areas as diverse as scientific instruments, mountain bikes, open source software, video games, and medical instruments. Evidence is also beginning to emerge that innovation by users, or patients, is present in the area of therapeutic medical devices and medical therapies.
This research will focus on a user created medical therapy developed to treat a chronic form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a type of autoimmune disorder. Autoimmune diseases present a particular challenge to medicine as their cause is not fully understood, no cure is currently available, and they are very hard to treat. The context provides an opportunity to explore the tensions between user-led and mainstream medical innovation and how, in the context of strong regulation, users can have a far greater freedom to innovate. Relevant issues to be investigated include the following:
· Mapping the scale of scope of user-developed medical therapies;
· Investigating the role of regulation in the dynamics of medical therapy innovation;
· Examining the tensions that may exist between mainstream and user-led innovations;
· Investigating the role of user communities in the development and dissemination of innovations;
· Analysing the regulatory, organisational, and front-line practices concerning the management of user-led innovations;
This area of study will benefit from the position of CENTRIM (Centre for Research in Innovation Management) as the leading centre of User Innovation research in the UK. It will also draw on established links with a strong international community of researchers in this area and the supervisory team is well placed to facilitate the researcher’s development over their programme of study. The studentship will also benefit from CENTRIM’s reputation in innovation management research and existing collaborations with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research) at the University of Sussex, the University of Nottingham, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, and Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust.
This studentship will be based at the Freeman Centre, a shared research facility between CENTRIM and SPRU. As such, it offers an opportunity to join an internationally recognised hub of innovation research.
Applicants should possess a First or Upper Second Class Honours degree (or equivalent) in a relevant social science or business and management discipline. They should also possess, or be near to completing, a Masters level degree.
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