Who we are

Jose's primary research interest focuses on emerging collaborative online innovation communities. His area of research includes digital innovation echo systems, community governance, digital platform strategy, emergent ICT-based business models. Part of his research involves developing and applying novel data science techniques in the study of online innovation networks.Jose has worked worked on and has co-authored research reports for various large European projects including CRE8TV, SPARK, and INSPIRE. For the CRE8TV project he identified barriers to value appropriation in digital market places. For the SPARK project he helped identify how to support social enterprises in their innovation activities. For the INSPIRE project, Jose co-developed a set of business innovation tools to support open innovation activities in European SMEs.

Dr Figlioli's main research interests are in the field of (a) open innovation for SMEs, for instance, assessing SMEs capabilities for OI and exploring SMEs' open innovation journeys; and (b) traditional and new models of innovation habitats, such as science and technology parks, incubators, accelerators, and innovation hubs.

Shes was a researcher at the INSPIRE project (https://www.inspire-smes.eu/), Coordination and Support Action funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 work programme, aiming to understand and support open innovation management in Europe’s SMEs.

Dr Francis' research interests are focused on using evidence-based theory to improve managment practice. His overall theoretical orientation is Organisational Sociology and he draws extensively from the practice area known as Organisation Development. His study of highly innovative organisations supplied the insights used in the Managing Innovation Training Programme that has been experienced by more than 10,000 managers in 19 countries. He has undertaken research into the role of open innovation in not-for-profit organisations and he is exploring the interdependencies between entrepreneurship, change, organisation development and innovation managment. He has completed a study of the styles used by Change Agents and is preparing this study for publication. For more than two decades he has investigated the competencies required for an organisation, and its leaders, to be effectively agile and his book 'Exploiting Agility for Advantage' was published by De Gruyter in Berlin in September 2020.

My primary current interest is climate change and strategy - evaluation, policy, development and implementation; I have sustained research profiles in design and design management; creative industries - product, process and value; and continuous improvement in new product development. My interest in railways links all of these.

I am a world leading researcher in the field of stock market liquidity. I am particularly interested in developing new measures of liquidity, how liquidity reacts to news, carbon markets and the liquidity of zero leverage firms. More recently, my research has also included liquidity of SMEs and cryptocurrencies. My future research plans are in the areas of liquidity and the coronavirus and on the association between liquidity and asset pricing.

Despoina’s research interests are on management of innovation in SMEs, peer-to-peer learning, open innovation, innovation policies and action research methodologies.She is an active member of CENTRIM and her research is contributing for the last 20 years on contemporary innovation management issues in many European and international research projects

Despoina is one of the main contributors in the work of Learning Networks e.g.  -Profitnet Impact Case Study- and has been working with SMEs and other organisations for at least 18 years on creating methodologies and strategies for companies to innovate and learn from each other as well as from external partner organisations (experts, academics, big companies etc.). 

My research seeks to connect leadership and projects. I am particularly interested in bringing in ideas about temporality and boundary work into the understandings of leadership, and ideas about plural leadership and meaning making into the understandings of leadership in projects. My previous and current research has been drawing on practice-based theories to look at various questions such as how individuals or collectives from different organisations or functions effectively work together to accomplish leadership work in major projects, how the leadership work of meaning making in a vanguard project contributes to developing grassroots innovations for sustainable development. The settings for my research include public organizations, private organizations and grassroots community projects.

My research is driven by my interest in understanding the twin challenges of environmental protection and economic development, especially where the two intersect. I am interested in questions of natural resource management, including the economic and policy instruments that are required to incentivise such management.

I have extensive experience in the Latin America and Caribbean region focusing on the management of forest, mineral and water resources. I also have interests in understanding the impacts and effectiveness of global and regional emissions trading schemes and have undertaken research on both the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). I am interested in how engagement with the private sector can help to address local, regional and global resource management issues.

I have experience in a range of primary data collection techniques including survey design, interviewing and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data using a range of software packages. I have worked as an independent consultant for NGOs, industry associations and international research agencies on projects relating to climate change, policy design and low-carbon development. I have published on subjects including REDD+, energy investment and mining.

Paul Levy has been a member of CENTRIM since it was founded in the 1990s. His research interests include innovation management, the management of change, creativity and team collaboration. In particular his more recent research has focused on digital innovation, the skills of digital management and mastery, the rise of disruptive innovation including cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology. He has also undertaken research into how small to medium sized enterprises innovative on and offline, engaging in projects examining the potential of drop-in action learning to stimulate innovation. Recently he was also involved in research that focused in digital transformation worknig with an in-depth case study approach in the I.T sector.

My research focuses on the nature of knowledge and learning in organisations and seeks to link this to questions about innovation and change. I am particularly interested in the social practices of producing, negotiating, and using knowledge within varied organisational settings, but especially project-based, network, and temporary forms of organising. My research draws strongly on practice-based theories, emphasising knowledge and learning as active accomplishments emerging from specific social settings that have important implications for how practices are shaped. Investigating the boundaries between different knowledge communities and how these are constituted, reproduced, crossed, challenged, and redrawn is a key element of this. The settings for my research have been many and varied, ranging from car factories to sewage plants, power stations to animation studios, offshore oil and gas platforms to humanitarian aid projects, road maintenance depots to aerospace companies, big rail construction projects to small firm action learning networks. Despite (or maybe because of) this diversity, the thread running through my research has been an enduring interest in the social and political dynamics of knowledge and practice and how these unfold in different contexts.

I teach and research in the area of Supply Chain Managment. Research interests include the 'bullwhip effect' in supply chains and supply chain improvement.

Sushil’s research is in the area of international trade and development. It covers broadly: (i) Trade in primary commodities such as coffee and tea, with a focus on problems faced by commodity producers. (ii) Agricultural trade, with focus on consequences of trade barriers. (iii) International development issues such as Fair Trade, CSR, social enterprises, Environmental improvement initiatives, SMEs, and food security. The research aim is to analyse the interaction between international trade, ethical trading and economic development – it is mostly applied and issue-driven with a strong policy focus. His ongoing research projects include study of non-tariff measures in agriculture trade, market concentration in coffee markets, social enterprises and voluntary social standards.

Dr Noor Muhammad primary research areas consist of four clusters, including entrepreneurship in a conflict zones, women entrepreneurship, enterprise development, and multidisciplinary research. Entrepreneurship in conflict and rural regions have been recognized by academic scholars and researchers to be researched. International funding agencies provide opportunities for researchers to research on entrepreneurship in those countries facing uproar circumstances and how entrepreneurship and new enterprises can contribute to providing employment opportunities in the deprived regions. Therefore, he has developed realistic possibilities not only for further research projects and publications but also for collaboration with other international organizations who are interested to support his research further. Regarding women entrepreneurship, his research focuses that how women entrepreneurs operate small businesses in conflict environments face formidable challenges where a little research has been undertaken to explore these women entrepreneurs. Furthermore, he also publishes papers in other areas of interest to conduct a multidisciplinary approach, including operations research, economics and health care innovation management. He has published papers in these areas in well-reputed journals and some are under review.

I am a senior lecturer at the University of Brighton, United Kingdom. I hold a PhD in the field of branding and an MBA degree with emphasis in Marketing from the University of Stirling. My research interests involve brand management, digital marketing communications, integrated marketing communications and marketing research. I have published in such journals as: Information Technology and People, Journal of Strategic Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Product & Brand Management. I have made several presentations for the European, American and World Marketing Academies, and for many recognized international academic conferences, such as ICORIA, ICMC etc. and also acted as track chair. I have been a marketing consultant in various sectors for the past 10 years.

Steve has been at the forefront of action research in the field of Change. Active in high pressure change and transformation environments, he leads academic consultancy and development teams in large high profile organisations. His action research approach integrates the worlds of published academic research; research led action processes; and commercial and public practice, which allows him to generate effective solutions at client organisations. His policy interest in public/private activity was forged in the emergent period of public private partnership where he conducted research on leadership in this newly evolving business form, in collaboration with Government and KPMG. Still fascinated by the tacit and overt politics behind such practice, Steve is a regular contributor of change-in-action experience and critical academic evaluation to the International Research Society for Public Management. Author of a significant impact case study rated at 4* in the 2014 REF, he continues to collaborate with organisations where interventions have taken place to generate case based learning.

I’m an economic sociologist excited by the impact of technology on society, education and business. My joint research project into the Fully Functioning University was awarded Researchers of the Year 2017 by Professor Mark Cowling, Brighton Business School Head of research. The findings have been published by Emerald as part of their Great Debates in Higher Education series.

I research the history and role of higher education, graduate employability and how graduates might best be served by university. I am interested by the role social media, big data and internet technologies in how society works and how business is conducted.

George has led research on innovation and entrepreneurship. His research includes themes such as managing open innovation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs); linking SMEs with the research base; enabling business development and innovation activities through peer-to-peer learning networks; empower SME growth through innovation coaching; innovation  for non-high tech SMEs; new product development strategies for SMEs; managing and supporting innovation in Social Enterprises; and the life cycle for SMEs. 

George has also worked in various other innovation areas of research such as innovation policies benchmarking, business processes rengineering for SMEs and scenario foresight for innovation.

My research interests lie in the field of operations and supply chain management, specifically around two interrelated phenomena: operational efficiency and sustainability. Both of these phenomena often stretches beyond the walls of a single organisation and demand complex and holistic solutions. 

The most recent additions to my research scope include broader issues such as greenhouse gas emission and the social impacts of supply chain practices.  Due to the emergence of the digital economy, my research scope also includes the impact of the digital economy on business operations; for example, Industry 4.0.

Ben is completing a PhD in Economics across the three institutions participating in the South Coast DTP, under the supervision of Rob Hayward (University of Brighton) and Jonathan Wadsworth (London School of Economics).

His research, fully funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, seeks to ascertain whether previous UK studies' failure to detect adverse effects to natives' wages owes to the existence of other labour market adjustment mechanisms. Specifically, Ben examines whether the wage and employment impacts of immigration differ for heterogenous skill and age groups, and whether it induces firms to locate their production activities in the UK (as opposed to overseas) or change their production methods (and use the abundant labour type more intensively).

Ben is currently working at the UN's migration agency, the International Organization for Migration, in their Migration Policy Research Division.

Asset pricing, Portfolio choice, Corporate finance