New €4.3m project aims to increase innovation

Published: 25 February 2021

Business School academics are working with industry leaders and partner universities to help boost innovation in Europe. The €4.3m project will examine how different industries, companies, and cultures manage to adapt to rapidly changing situations.

Gilbert Scott Building

Business School academics are working with industry leaders and partner universities to help boost innovation in Europe.

The €4.3m project will examine how different industries, companies, and cultures manage to adapt to rapidly changing situations.

It aims to help companies and technologists navigate how to communicate the value of new technology and have their ideas accepted in society, and for policy makers to better understand how to support and encourage innovation.

Professor Niall MacKenzie is leading the project at University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School, working with Co-Investigators Dr Jillian Gordon and Dr Dominic Chalmers. He said: “Currently we don’t fully understand how society accepts new technologies or organisational forms in a way that is systematic and actionable. By investigating how society accepts new technologies, ideas, and ventures across 15 different topics our work will help unlock the innovation potential across industries and European countries in a way that benefits everyone. 

We are looking at working with a range of industries including bioenergy, Internet of Things, and FinTech to develop knowledge and policies that will support enterprise and innovation. Policymakers, entrepreneurs, technologists and society more generally will all benefit from the insights produced by the project.”

The University is partnering with Aalborg University in Denmark, Sweden’s Halmstad University, and Oulu University in Finland, and working with industry partners including Nokia, FinTech Scotland, Scottish Edge and the Shaftesbury Partnership to deliver this work. 

The “Legitimation of Newness and Its Impact on EU Agenda for Change” (LNETN) project is funded by the European Commission's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovation Training Networks Programme, who has provided €4.35m to finance 15 PhD projects across the four host universities. There will be mobility between the partners in the form of students going on secondments to each country and working with industry partners.


Enquiries: clairelouise.smith@glasgow.ac.uk 

First published: 25 February 2021