Professor Julia Brennecke

Personal Statement

I am Professor in Innovation Management (part time, permanent) at the University of Liverpool. I am also a Chair in Innovation Management at the University of Potsdam in Germany. Prior to joining ULMS in January 2017, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Transformative Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia and at the Department of Organization and HRM at the University of Freiburg in Germany. I also spent seven months as a visiting fellow at Sciences Po Paris, France. I obtained my doctoral degree in Business from the University of Göttingen in Germany.

Focusing on collaboration within and between organizations, my research interests lie at the intersection of innovation management and organization studies. I aim to create a better understanding of how and why firms and their employees form network ties and seek to expose the consequences of collaboration for performance and innovation. I have conducted research and consulting projects with several large industry partners, for instance in aerospace or biotech, analysing their embeddedness in collaborative networks as the social infrastructure for innovation. My research has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, Research Policy, and Human Resource Management. I am on the editorial review board of the Journal of Management Studies and convenor of the EGOS Standing Working Group on Organizational Networks.

I welcome enquiries from prospective doctoral students interested in researching networks and innovation. Potential topics include instrumental networking, the evolution of networks along stages of the innovation process, the dark side of networks for innovation.