Technology, Innovation and Place

Our academics are exploring how entrepreneurial behaviours, innovation capacities and productivity are influenced by economic, social and policy contexts at local, regional and national scales.

Our research examines the diffusion of new technologies, innovations relating to products, processes and methods of decision making and problem solving, and the resilience of domestic and cross-border supply chains. We are interested in how entrepreneurial behaviours, innovation capacities and productivity are influenced by economic, social and policy contexts at local, regional and national scales and how policy makers and other actors might support and encourage ‘high road’ business practices.

Collaboration for innovation in the water-sector (Theme 7 of the TWENTY65 research programme)

Kamal Birdi (Institute of Work Psychology) and colleagues are working on Theme 7 of TWENTY65 which addresses the issue that the transformative aims of providing tailored water for all demand radically innovative new approaches requiring creative and integrative collaborations between Water Companies and their major stakeholders.

Learn more about Kamal's work

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Reverse Logistics

Juliana Matos De Meira and John Cullen (Centre for Research into Accounting and Finance in Context) and Erica Ballantyne (Operations Management and Decision Sciences) are investigating the management of retail returns and the associated activities throughout the whole supply chain.

Learn more about the Reverse Logistics project

Made Smarter Innovation - Materials Made Smarter Research Centre

The Made Smarter Innovation Centre will deliver multidisciplinary research in the area of Digital Manufacturing. Carolyn Axtell and Karina Nielsen (both Institute of Work Psychology) and colleagues are leading the work package focusing on social and organisational change in digital transformations.

Learn more about the Materials Made Smarter Centre

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Opportunities and Dilemmas of AI Development and Adoption

Fraser McLeay's (BRISTT) project aims to assist service organisations to adopt sophisticated emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, in order to improve their productivity and performance and, as a result, the prosperity of regions across the UK.

Learn more about Fraser's project

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DoSSIER (Domain Specific Systems for Information Extraction and Retrieval)

The project, DoSSIER, which Elaine Toms (Operations Management and Decision Sciences) is working on, will develop fundamental insights into how professionals comprehend, formulate, and access information in the workplace. We have seen the success of search tools in ordinary life, e.g. Google, Bing, but information findability in the workplace has not been so successful.

Learn more about DoSSIER