John Bessant is Professor of Innovation Management. He graduated from Aston University with a degree in Chemical Engineering in 1975 and later obtained a PhD (also from Aston) for work on innovation within the chemical industry. After a spell in industry he took up full-time research and consultancy 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 held the Chair in Technology Management since 1987.
Prior to joining the faculty at Cranfield, John was Director of Brighton University’s Centre for Research in Innovation Management which he set up in 1987. He oversaw its development into a research institute with a staff of thirty people working on around fifty projects for public and private sponsors in the field of effective innovation management.
John was awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Advanced Institute for Management Research in 2003. He is also an Honorary Professor at SPRU, Sussex University and a Visiting Fellow at several UK and international universities. In 2003 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management.
His areas of research interest include the management of discontinuous innovation, strategies for developing high involvement innovation and enabling effective inter-firm collaboration and learning in product and process innovation. He is the author of 20 books and many articles on the topic and has lectured and consulted widely around the world. He has acted as advisor to various national governments and to international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank and the OECD.
His most recent book – ‘Managing innovation’ (John Wiley and Sons) – was awarded the ‘best book’ prize by the European Association for Creativity and Innovation in 2001. |
