Enterprise and Innovation on the agenda at Leeds Beckett lecture

David Douglas will present his extensive research as part of his inaugural lecture as Professor of Business and Management at Leeds Business School.

Director of Leeds Business School’s Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) programme, Professor Douglas explained: “The lecture will cover a diverse spectrum of activity in SMEs and entrepreneurship.  An example of entrepreneurship, and how entrepreneurs cognitively function, determine what judgements to make and ultimately manage their business, will be explored.  I will also look at how businesses innovate and adapt to survive in changing markets.”

In his lecture, Professor Douglas will review a selection of his and his co-authors’ research from the fields of SME and innovation.  He will discuss the type of studies used to research this field; from in-depth analysis of the single entrepreneur and the single firm to the complex multi-firm studies using multiple research methods.  A review of the challenges, requirements for good applied research, and potential other areas and approaches to researching the fields of enterprise and innovation will also be discussed.

Professor Douglas added: “What we are finding through our research, is that whilst support is offered to businesses through policy and interventions, it is not always the most beneficial or even required – often the business would have survived without it and it would have been better distributed elsewhere.”

Professor Douglas joined Leeds Beckett University in January 2015 having spent 19 years in the Business School at Staffordshire University as Director of Doctoral Programmes (research PhD/MPhil and professional DBA). The author of several critically acclaimed papers, his key research interests lie in enterprise and innovation - his predominant focus being applied research, with an emphasis on designing rigorous methodologies for real world business and organisational problems.

Having undertaken research and evaluation contracts for a number of public and private sector organisations, Professor Douglas’s recent work includes measuring the impact of support measures on regional innovation support for SMEs in traditional manufacturing industries across seven European regions for the European Commission and the effects of support for small businesses in developing diversification strategies for the UK Government.