Martin Steinert

The research I am focusing on lies in the intersection of technology, innovation, and business strategy. It is my philosophy is to investigate relevant, high-impact problems that engineering and technology-based firms face in the area of innovation and technology management. For complex problems I favor a mixed method approach that combines theory with longitudinal large-sample data, background fieldwork, and state-of-the-art quantitative methods. My work concentrates on factors that enable organizations to discover, develop and commercialize technologies. Of particular interest are product, service and/or system innovations that are based either on a physical network and/or that are influenced by direct and/or indirect network effects. Quite often newly designed value webs or the co-opetition with complementary goods and service providers in a creative way, allow for the emergence of powerful new business models and strategies. It is my goal to understand what enables (or hinders) such companies or businesses to disruptively innovate, pushing the particular sector back into the fluid phase or era of ferment. In order to answer this question, I conduct research on two interrelated streams: (1) disruptive technology analyses incl. acceptance and adoption research, make/buy decisions and impact on business ecosystems. The aim is to understand the underlying general applicable industry dynamics of innovations. (2) fuzzy front-end of innovations. Of particular interest is the intersection point of engineering design, largely driven by creativity and design thinking, and new product development with its stage gate models and open innovation funnel approach. The aim is to help bridging the two rather distinct perspectives and cultures in order to increase effectiveness and efficiency within the innovation process. Due to the nature of innovation projects and their usual technical origin, an interdisciplinary research approach, both, methodologically and with regards to content is self-evident.