Clarivate Analytics published the names of some of the world’s most influential scientific minds in its Highly Cited Researchers 2016 listing. There are only two Dutch researchers in the ‘Economics & Business’ category – Volberda and Jansen – and they both come from RSM’s Department of Strategic Management & Entrepreneurship.
“Keep an eye on the future”
“I’m very honoured to be included in this list for the third time. It shows that peers in the field heavily cite the papers I’ve co-authored on absorptive capacity, ambidextrous organisations, management innovation, strategic flexibility and co-evolution,” says Prof. Volberda, adding that this listing also recognises RSM’s high-quality research and thought-leadership through INSCOPE: Research for Innovation of which Volberda is the scientific director.
Prof. Jansen is also proud that he has been included in this list for three years now. “Going against the notion that impact comes with the years, I show that young scholars can really make a difference early when writing and publishing research that is novel, different and thought-provoking. I hope that I will inspire other scholars in doing so too,” he says.
Jansen: “I think quite a few papers touch upon the most important challenges of today’s organisations: how to excel today and keep an eye on the future.” He added that bringing together new insights from adjacent research areas is important, which is why he works together with a variety of scholars in various domains. “I’m also very happy with the research environment at our school and the connection we have with important stakeholders.”
Professor Henk Volberda
In 2016, Prof. Henk Volberda worked on several publications focusing on the antecedents of successful innovation. Based on the results of the Erasmus Innovation Monitor and embedded surveys in NXP and Ericsson his research team has been studying the interactions between top management and middle line management, the entrepreneurial orientation of teams, as well as the regulatory focus of managers.
Volberda’s research team has also started several real-life experiments in several large firms on management innovation funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. And for the Port Authority Rotterdam and Smart Port 2.0 they did the Harbor Innovation Monitor, and he plans to develop a Human Capital Agenda for ports.
In addition to journal publication leading to the Highly Cited Researchers listing, Volberda is writing a book for Oxford University Press entitled Re-inventing Business Models: How firms cope with disruption.
Professor Justin Jansen
Building on the idea that entrepreneurship provides the basis for economic growth and social well-being, Prof. Justin Jansen has been focusing on the importance of building a viable and sustainable ecosystem supporting the birth and growth of organisations. “Although there has been quite some attention to start-ups lately, we still lack appropriate numbers of firms that are able to grow rapidly and are able to scale up their business model,” says Jansen.
By combining insights from earlier studies about ambitious leadership, the ability to combine exploration and exploitation as well as the ability of leaders to develop and leverage social networks, Jansen says his research team has been setting a new large-scale research project focused on uncovering the DNA of a scale-up company. “I hope that in a few years we will be able to predict which company will engage in rapid growth based upon sophisticated algorithms that emerge from our research project.” For this, his team at the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship launched the second version of the ScaleUp Dashboard, a ground-breaking project on identifying and showcasing scale-ups in the Netherlands.
