Researchers and partners

The participating researchers represent a wide variety of experts covering structures, impact and consolidation within the public sector project innovation research. The participants represent professors, senior researchers, junior researchers as well as high level officials from different Nordic countries.

Lead project partners:               

Professor Stefan Sjöblom, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland

Stefan Sjöblom  Ph.D., political scientist and professor of Local Administration at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki and  associate professor of Public Administration at the Åbo Akademi University. Main research interests: local and regional governance, participation, administrative reform policies and evaluation studies. He has been partner in several national and international research projects on governance, local and regional development. He has been PI Academy funded project ProDem – Democratic Impact of Administrative Reforms – Temporary Governance Instruments in Regional Development, carried out at SSKH in 2012-2014. He is also one of the coordinators of the European research network SUSTAIN established in 2005 between European researchers on governance, regional development and rural-urban relations. He has recently been co-editor of several books and special issues pertinent to InnoNord: Metropolitan Ruralities (Emerald Group Publishing Ltd 2016); Sustainability and Short-term Policies (Ashgate 2012); special issue on Projectified Politics (Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, 17:2 2013) and a special issue on the Project state (Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 3: 2009).

University lecturer Christian Jensen, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

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Associate Professor Birgit Jaeger, Roskilde University, Danmark

Birgit Jæger, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Department of Society and Business, Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research focuses on the increased use of ICT in society and especially the development of e-government. In this way, she has studied the development of e-government in Denmark as well as in international contexts; made several evaluations of experiments with ICT in local communities; and studied the inclusion of senior citizens in the information society. Recently she managed a part of a research project called: Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector (CLIPS).

 

Partners:

Professor (Emeritus) Rolf A Lundin, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden

Rolf A. Lundin is Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at Jönköping International Business School and Courtesy Professor-in-Residence at Umeå School of Business. Research-wise, he has been into Management Science (with a PhD from the University of Chicago) and studies related to Organization Theory. During the last 30 years or so he has been studying various aspects of projects and temporary organizations. In that field, he has published widely. His most recent book came in 2015, a Cambridge University Press publication with the title “Managing and Working in Project Society – Institutional Challenges of Temporary Organizations”. He is the lead author of that monograph in a group of six full professors. The book was awarded the PMI literature award for 2016 and described as “outstanding”. His most recent work has been concentrated to various aspects on how to understand “projectification” in different societal sectors: industry, the public sector, voluntary organizations and others.

Professor (Emeritus) Evert Vedung, Uppsala university, Sweden

Evert Vedung is emeritus professor of political science especially housing policy at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF) and Department of Government. He has developed a process-tracing method to capture series of deep and wide effects and side effects of innovation policy (Vedung & Bjurulf, 2015, ”Three Approaches… ” in Elg, Ellström, Klofsten & Tillmar, Sustainable Development in Organizations – Studies on Innovation Practices, 313-345. His two most cited publications in English are Public Policy and Program Evaluation (1997, rev. ed forthcoming 2018) and “Policy instruments: Typologies and Theories” in Carrots, Sticks and Sermons: Policy Instruments and Their Evaluation (1998). In “Four Waves of Evaluation Diffusion” (2010) he has stylized the history of evaluation and evaluation research into tidal surges. He is also associated with Aalborg University, and higher education and auditing institutions in Rio de Janeiro and Brasília.

Professor (Emeritus) Karl-Erik Sveiby, Hanken School of Economics, Finland

Dr Karl-Erik Sveiby, Professor Emeritus at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland has studied knowledge-intensive firms since the 1980’s. His books and measuring practices for intangible assets became seminal for the early Nordic Knowledge Management and Intellectual Capital movements. His most cited work is The New Organizational Wealth-Managing and Measuring Intangible Assets (1995). Karl-Erik has featured on the editorial boards of five scientific journals. He has published 14 books and some 50 articles and book chapters (downloads from www.sveiby.com). He is co-editor of Challenging the Innovation Paradigm, Routledge 2012. His current research interests are collective leadership in knowledge intensive organizations and the ´dark sides´ of innovation. Before academia, he co-founded the publishing company Ekonomi & Teknik Förlag, which in the 1990´s became Sweden’s largest in trade press.

University Lecturer Beata Segercrantz, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland

Beata Segercrantz Ph.D. (Management and organization, Hanken School of Economics) is a University Lecturer in social psychology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her current research contributes to critical studies of innovation and project work. She is in particular interested in how innovation is discursively constructed in management research, in EU social innovation policy and during technology implementation projects in care work. Her analyses focus mainly on (un)desirable effects of innovation. Her work has been has been published as book chapters and in international journals, such as Organization and Ephemera – theory and politics in organization. She is co-editor of the book “Challenging the innovation paradigm”.

Senior Lecturer Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren, Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden

Dr. Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Department of Political Science at Lund university in Sweden, and a research fellow at K2, the Swedish Knowledge Center for Public Transport Research. Mukhtar-Landgrens main research interests include urban development planning and emerging new roles and governing tools for municipalities, including experimental governing, projectification and trust based governing. In 2018 she will participate in three different research projects, one on social investments as a policy instrument and a perspective in local government, and two projects on the role of cities in governing smart mobility, with emphasis on how cities can influence processes in a more sustainable direction. Mukhtar-Landgren is also part of a research team within the committee on public sector trust in Sweden.

Vice Dean Therese Dille, University College of Southeast Norway, Norway

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University Lecturer Sebastian Godenhjelm, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland

Dr. Sebastian Godenhjelm is a University Lecturer at the Swedish School of Social Science (SSSS). Godenhjelm has previously worked as a senior officer at the Ministry of Justice, and has conducted several evaluations for the Ministry of Labor and the Economy, the Ministry of Forestry and Agriculture as well as the think tank MAGMA. He is a member of the board of the Nordic Political Science Association (NoPSA) and the secretary of the Nordiska aministrativa förbundets finska avdelning (NAF). He is also a member of the Special Interest Group (SIG-13) on public sector project management and has been a board member of the Finnish Political Science Association (VTY).Godenhjelm´s research interests centres around public management, participation, actors and processes in regional development in Finland. The research area is linked to the relationship between traditional forms of governing versus new forms of governance often charatterised as temporary network type project organizations.

Doctoral student Mats Fred, Malmö University, Sweden

My research aims to expand our understanding of, what is sometimes referred to as, the projectification of public administration – the proliferation of projects activities and the processes of “projectifying” ordinary activities in public organizations. Despite quite heavy critique, projects as an organizational solution seem to be growing in numbers in public organizations, and ordinary, routine, day-to-day activities are framed, presented and understood as projects. What are the driving forces behind this development and how does it effects public organizations? My work is inspired by critical management scholars and researchers engaged in political and organizational ethnography.

PhD student Isak Vento, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland

Isak Vento is a Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki. His thesis considers the transformations in organizing public policy implementation and its consequences for effective and legitimate public governance. His thesis focuses on the Cohesion Policy of the European Union, which besides being one of the largest public policies in the world, is also in the vanguard of interactive policy implementation. Overall, he is interested in critically examining the formation of power in the modern society. Vento is a member of the board of the Finnish Political Science Association, member of the board of the Nordic Political Science Association and editor of the web journal Politiikasta. Vento has also written several reports on order by private organizations and foundations.

Other core co-partners/co-authors

  • Professor Jonas Sönderlund, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
  • Associate Professor Peter Aagaard, Roskilde University, Denmark
  • Associate Professor Cato Christensen, Oslo and Akerhus Univrsity College of Apllied Sciences, Norway
  • Degree Programme Director, Principal Lecturer in Health Promotion Maria Forss, Arcada University of Applied Sciences, Finland

 

External partners:

Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation TEKES, Finland

Program Development Manager Christopher Palmberg

Dr. Christopher Palmberg is currently Program Development Manager at Tekes, Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, with responsibility for cross-cutting RDI program development issues and renewal of program activities. Prior to this he had responsibility for innovation research and its utilization for Tekes strategy and policy throughout the Finnish innovation environment. He has extensive experience of research on sectoral patterns of innovation and renewal, emerging and converging technologies, developments of the ICT sector, innovation and industrial policies having worked as a researcher at the Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT) and the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA). During 2007-2009 he was responsible for the Working Party on Nanotechnology (WPN) at the OECD in Paris, which advised governments on emerging policy issues related to the development and use of nanotechnology. After OECD he worked as Senior Consultant at Advansis, an innovation policy and evaluation consultancy. He has been a member and chairman of the international evaluation panel of the Swedish Strategic Innovation Area programs, and has also been involved in several other program evaluations both in Finland and abroad. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Economics and Management from the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, and a Licentiate Degree in Economics from the Åbo Academy University in Finland.

Sweden´s innovation agency VINNOVA, Sweden

Miriam Terrell

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Senior Programme Manager Rebecka Engström

Dr. Rebecka Engström is Senior Programme Manager at Vinnova, the national innovation agency in Sweden. During the latest years, the agency has emphasized societal challenges as main drivers for innovation and growth. With this, public sector at local, regional, national and international level becomes increasingly important, especially as a partner to private sector, research and civil society in governance of the challenges none of them can handle by themselves. Dr Engström has worked with the programmes  Challenge Driven Innovation, with regional innovation systems in VINNVÄXT, local innovation systems in Innovation Platforms for Sustainable and Attractive Cities, and with international cooperation in JPI Urban Europe. At present she focus on program development and renewal of program activities within these areas in relation to the Swedish Government’s Cooperation progamme for Smart Cities. Rebecka Engström holds a PhD in Environmental Strategies Analysis and previous to her work at VINNOVA she has worked with issues of Environmental Management in private as well as public organisations.

Innovation fund Denmark

Hanne Harmsen, PhD, is Executive Vice President at Innovation Fund Denmark, a public Danish fund supporting research & innovation. Here she is responsible for InnoBooster –  hugely popular in the Danish start-up and SME environment with investments up to 5 m DKK and  1800 applications annually as well as for InnoFounder, a highly competitive incubator for graduates. Finally, she is responsible for the Industrial PhD and PostDoc program with 140 new fellows per year. She has researched and taught innovation management, has held several positions in university leadership, consulting and as a board member.

Innovation Norway

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Anila Nauni PhD, is a senior advisor at the Department for innovation in public sector, Division for Society and Health at the Research Council of Norway.