Professor Alan Pilkington

I am an Associate Professor in Operations Management, Innovation and Technology. I have become an expert on bibliometrics, citation and cocitation analysis, and applied these tools to bot literature and patent networks.

My work on enterprise engineering is a main focus and examines the innovation processes within emerging and disruptive technologies. 

I consider innovation to be the product of individual, organisational and knowledge trajectories. By modelling the relationships between observed typologies within each of these spheres, conditions for successful innovation can be identified and failures explained. This work is leading to tools which will help managers define sucessful and achievable technology strategies. 

I am exploring this framework through a range of case studies focussing on the development of alternative fuel technology in the car industry, and nanotechnology. A current dimension of this work involves examining patent data to plot the development of technology. More specifically, I am identifying and studying the characteristics of the networks forming between both groups of firms and individual inventors. This allows me to build an undertsanding of the relationship between the previously isolated ideas of structural holes and social capital.