Entrepreneurship & Innovation (E&I) Research Seminar – 2 Speakers
You are warmly invited to join the next Entrepreneurship & Innovation (E&I) subject group’s seminar in the New Year. We will have two speakers. Further details below. The seminar is scheduled for Friday 16th January 2026, 2-3:30pm, NUBS.2.03. We look forward to seeing you there.
If you would like to attend, please register using the following link
Entrepreneurship & Innovation Research Seminars – 2 speakers Thanapat Udomsirikun & Dr Dolores Modic
- The first speaker will be NUBS PhD student, Thanapat Udomsirikun (2-2:30), who will be presenting a conference paper that is in progress and would welcome feedback and discussion:
Title: Open innovation and hybrid governance as enablers of process innovation: A multi-stage analysis of robotic arm implementation
Abstract: Open innovation (OI) is increasingly recognised as important for Industry 4.0 adoption. However, limited empirical research explains how OI supports the implementation of complex technologies as process innovations and how inter-firm governance enables such collaboration. This study addresses these gaps by examining the implementation of robotic arms through an in-depth case study of ThaiCane, one of Asia’s largest sugar producers and a major global exporter, based on 31 semi-structured interviews. Adopting a process perspective grounded in the implementation lifecycle framework proposed by Voss (1992), the analysis traces how OI and governance mechanisms evolve over time. The findings show that firms initially rely on inbound OI to expand technology search and support vendor selection, before shifting toward coupled OI as integration challenges intensify. In parallel, governance evolves from formal contractual arrangements toward greater reliance on relational coordination as technical interdependencies expose the limits of contracts. The study provides a process-based explanation of how open innovation and inter-firm governance co-evolve during Industry 4.0 process innovation, highlighting the importance of adaptive coordination in brownfield and emerging-economy contexts.
- The second speaker (2:30-3:30) will be Dr Dolores Modic, Associate Professor in Innovation and Management at Nord University Business School, Nord University, Norway. Currently, Dolores is a visiting researcher at University of Cambridge, IfM at the Innovation and Intellectual Property Lab (IIPM). She also leads the Centre for Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property at Rudolfovo – scientific and technological centre Novo Mesto, Slovenia. Previously, she has been a Fulbright Scholar in the US at UNC Chapel Hill (2015), and the JSPS Research Fellow at Kyushu University in Japan (2016-2018). Dolores has published in leading scientific journals in innovation and management (including Research Policy – AJG 4*). Her research interests encompass technology transfer, IP management, and more recently innovation for circular economy. She is also an ad hoc reviewer for several top tier journals and serves as an expert to funding agencies. Dolores has also participated in more than 15 projects (sponsored by agencies in Europe, USA and Asia), with various roles (author, PI, WP leader etc.).
Title: Coming Back for More: University-industry Repeat Licensing Relationships
Abstract: Licensing continues to be a technology transfer mechanism that is the predominant focus of universities. Although university licensing events are typically seen as one-time events, there has seemingly been an increase in repeat interactions between the university and the same licensee via licensing agreements. The reasons for the existence and proliferation of these repeat licensing interactions are not fully understood, either in their potential to reduce the licensing transaction costs for the licensee and the university, as well as in other factors such as the continuous inventor´s involvement and their engagement in follow up research. The purpose of this paper is to understand the nature of these repeat licensing interactions as longer-term relationships between two types of stakeholders: the TTO and the licensees. In doing so, we develop a taxonomy of these repeat interactions based on micro-level university data from a Japanese university and report the following main findings. First, our findings confirm a significant rate of repeat licensing beyond initial licensing agreements, including a high percentage of those aiming for novel technologies. Second, we find that large firms pursue such long-term relationships not necessarily to keep a connection with a specific principal inventor, as some studies posit, but rather for technological diversification reasons. Lastly, our findings highlight that repeat licensing for universities creates additional value creation through higher income if the licensed technology is novel. Our study offers new insights into the long-term relationships between universities and firms and provides a new layer in terms of technology transfer metrics.