Postgraduate research opportunities

Innovation ecosystems have become a pervasive topic in strategy and innovation management scholarship and practice. Navigating such ecosystems requires strategies that focus on interdependencies, complementarities, alignment among value co-creation partners, and coopetition. The literature on ecosystem strategy has focused on the perspective of the ecosystem leader while largely ignoring that of complementors, which make up the bulk of an ecosystem’s power. Moreover, innovation ecosystems rarely emerge fully formed, and ecosystem strategies need to take ecosystem dynamics into account. However, prior research is relatively silent on the implications of ecosystem dynamics for ecosystem strategy. In my multiple case study research, I address these gaps by developing a new conceptual framework that untangles the mechanisms underlaying ecosystem dynamics and considers how change at the ecosystem level impacts the roles, activities and business models of complementors and requires continuous adaptation. By integrating social network theory and the concept of agency, my framework also considers how complementors can leverage bottlenecks and asymmetric relationships to influence the development path of ecosystems and create ecosystem structures that benefit them. I thus highlight the recursive link between complementors’ ecosystem strategies, ecosystem dynamics and ecosystem structures.

• Dr Stephan von Delft
• Professor Denis Fischbacher-Smith

Graduate Teaching Assistant in Strategic Management, International Strategic Management, and Entrepreneurship

Pierric is a PhD researcher, funded by the College of Social Sciences to undertake world-class research on innovation ecosystems. Prior to his PhD, Pierric worked on radical innovation and corporate startup engagement at the Fraunhofer Society in Berlin, where he received extensive training in both qualitative and quantitative research methods as well as the underlying research philosophies.

Pierric undertook a Master's degree in Global Innovation Management at the University of Strathclyde and Aalborg University, which he graduated with First Class Honours. His dissertation investigated digital strategy and startup collaboration at Danish multinational pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. Pierric Appert has also received a Bachelor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering from the University of Upper Alsace, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, and the Baden Württemberg Cooperative State University.

Alongside his studies, Pierric has cumulated over 4 years of industry experience across various functions in large corporations (Siemens, Bosch, Daimler), SMEs (Allied Vehicles) and startups (Queue-it, Xtel, Devialet). Pierric also has several years of teaching experience, obtained through his role as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Adam Smith Business School.