Digital Innovation Journey

(Photo: Christina Häfliger)

Currently I am working on extending my theoretical knowledge on innovation ecosystems. Over the past few years, I have developed a strong research interest in innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic management. With multilateral sets of partners interacting in ecosystems, legitimacy processes are an important part of successful orchestration. I’m particularly interested in finding out how innovation ecosystems can be initiated and maintained so that they flourish, and how legitimacy is established.

My research at EINST4INE focuses on innovation orchestration. I’m interested in the mechanisms that contribute to prospering ecosystems. The orchestration of ecosystems involves multiple organizations and parties. Innovation ecosystems create new opportunities for diverse stakeholders to collaborate. At the same time, they create challenges for the inclusion of multiple perspectives of various stakeholders.

My expectations for the EINST4INE project are to learn and to build a network of colleagues working in different areas of digital transformation. I intend to contribute with insights through my own research and to profit from excellent research training. Having worked in higher education for the last couple of years, I had wanted to specialize in innovation. As I have been involved in several innovation projects in the past, I was looking for opportunities that would give me international research and training experience.

Research on innovation provides for me the opportunity to delve further into a topic I find fascinating. During the first few months we were able to participate in highly interactive reading and discussion sessions. We learned about various research activities and received a lot of input and tips from experienced researchers and practitioners. It is great to get to know a diverse group of young research colleagues and an extended network of partners in the field of digital business and organization. So far, we had many discussions in our cohort and were able to get to know our EINST4INE colleagues better. One topic that I particularly liked in our discussions was open innovation, as this has been an interest of mine for a while. Different forms of collaboration have fascinated me for a long time. When the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship presented this excellent opportunity to further develop my skills, I was – and still am – very happy to be able to pursue my new career path in research.