Prof. Dr. John Bessant

John is co-Director of the EPSRC/AIM collaborative programme with Cambridge, Cranfield, Loughborough and Liverpool Universities: the Innovation and Productivity Grand Challenge. He holds a degree in Chemical Engineering and obtained his PhD for work on innovation within the chemical industry. After a spell in industry he took up full-time research teaching in the field of technology and innovation management working at Aston’s Technology Policy Unit, the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University and at Brighton University where he directed the Centre for Research in Innovation Management (CENTRIM). He served on the Business and Management panel of the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise and is also a member of the 2008 panel. In 2003 he was awarded a Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He has acted as advisor to a number of companies, various national governments and to international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank and the OECD. His areas of research interest include the management of discontinuous innovation, strategies for developing high involvement innovation and the use of learning networks to facilitate diffusion of innovation. He is the author of 15 books and many articles on the topic and has lectured and consulted widely around the world. His most recent books include ‘Managing innovation’ (now in its 3rd edition and selected as one of the best innovation books at the European Academy of Management meeting in 2005) and ‘High involvement innovation’ (both published by John Wiley and Sons).