Innovation Workshop

Dr Nicholas Theodorakopoulos

Programme Director
Innovation vouchers
Aston Business School

Biography:

Professor in Strategic Entrepreneurship Development and Head of Work & Organisational Psychology Group at Aston Business School, Birmingham, UK. He is Director of the Aston Centre for People and Organisations, Academic Deputy Director of the Goldman Sachs ’10,000 Small Businesses Programme’ and Director of the MSc Human Resource Management & Business PT. His specialist areas of research, academic publications and teaching include strategic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial learning and development, innovation, and diverse entrepreneurship. He has received funding from various organisations, including ESRC, ERDF, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Leicestershire Learning and Skills Council, Centre for Enterprise and UK Trade and Investment to examine entrepreneurship in different contexts and has managed successfully research teams to deliver high quality output. Apart from contributing to a number of books and special issues as a guest editor, his papers have been published in a wide range of academic journals, including British Journal of Management, Work, Employment and Society, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, International Small Business Journal, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Public Administration and Technovation

Prof Mark Gilman

Professor
Birmingham City University

Biography:

Professor of SME Growth and Development at Birmingham City Business School and Head of CEIG. He joined BCU in 2015, moving from his post as Director of The Centre for Employment, Competitiveness & Growth at Kent Business School. Mark has published in the area of SME performance and growth and HR management alongside working directly with business in the creation of a range of support products. These products include The BIG Journey, The BIG Network, The BIG Toolkit, The BIG Diagnostic, and tailored coaching and consultancy assignments. He has worked in industry and academia for the last 40 years engaging with businesses of all sizes including Boots plc, Barclays Bank, British Airways and a number of public sector organisation. More recently he has been impacting the growth of over 500 SMEs through research and coaching interventions for ambitious business owners.

Prof Pawan Budhwar

Professor
Aston Business School

Biography:

A member of the Work and Organisational Psychology Group, Joint Director of the Aston India Centre for Applied Research and Joint Co-Editor-in-Chief of British Journal of Management, Pawan is globally renowned for his research into the international aspects of HRM, and has held many visiting professorships worldwide. Pawan’s research interests lie mainly in the linkages between HRM and performance in different international contexts. He conducts the majority of his empirical work in emerging markets, especially in India. Pawan’s work is of great significance given the links with developments within the Indian economy and the scarcity of research in the field within this context. His previous work has been extensively used by academics, especially his three-level framework of factors influencing HRM in a given context. He has examined HRM systems in emerging markets and established links with social, cultural, political and legal contexts, and this is increasingly being referenced by other researchers. He has received funding from a variety of funders such as the ESRC, Society for HRM (USA), British Academy, and ERDF to investigate a variety of HR aspects in different set-ups such as in Indian Call Centres, wherein he highlighted many people management related issues and challenges, and the problems emerging in this sector. Pawan regularly delivers keynotes at international and national events. He has received numerous awards for his research achievements.

Dr Javed Ghulam Hussain

Professor
Birmingham City University

Biography:

Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance and Research Co-coordinator in the Department of Accounting and Finance at Birmingham City University, UK. He obtained his B.A. (Hons) in Economics from Birmingham Polytechnic, M. Soc. Sci. in Money Banking and Finance and PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He is currently Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance at Birmingham City University where he has taught since 1990. He has delivered guest lectures in the Middle East, Far East and in Europe. Before joining the Birmingham City University, Professor Hussain was a Financial Analyst with the Forward Trust Group (now, a subsidiary of HSBC) and prior to that he has worked for Birmingham City Council. He has keen research interests in entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurship and small business finance. He has 27 years’ experience in many aspects of enterprise and entrepreneurship, including policy, research, practical support, education, and microfinance. He has published widely, over 40 scholarly articles in international journals and presented over 80 international conference papers. Professor Hussain leads Finance Research Group, has extensive experience of PhDs supervision and has examined PhDs examining internationally. He is a member of editorial team for a number of journals and has experience of providing consultancy and served as an advisor for public and private sector organisations.

Dr Geoff Parkes

Senior Teaching Fellow
Aston Business School

Biography:

Geoff is the Associate Dean for International at Aston Business School.  He has worked at Aston for 10 years, initially as a Visiting Lecturer and since 2011 as a full time member of the Marketing Group.  Prior to that, he ran a Commercial Finance brokerage raising in excess of £20m per annum for small firms.  His marketing career includes time at Ideal Standard Corporation and Black & Decker and for 10 years he was the Sales and Marketing Director at Aga Cookers. At Aston Geoff’s research interests examine access to finance and small firms, in particular studying personality and behavioural profiles of entrepreneurs and the impact this has on funding strategies.  The premise of Geoff’s research is that given a very different commercial funding market since Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, small firms must adopt new strategies in order to raise finance.  New models are developing – Crowdfunding, Peer-to-Peer finance, new variants of angel and asset finance – all mean entrepreneurs need to behave differently in order to successfully ‘market for money’. Geoff is currently involved in a 3 year study of entrepreneurs in the Creative Industries sector, and how different behavioural characteristics cluster entrepreneurs into different distinctive groups.  In analysing funding applications of these entrepreneurs over the course of this study, Geoff has demonstrated relationships between entrepreneurial types and identified behaviours associated with successful funding outcomes.  On the back of this research, Geoff and a team of academics from Aston secured £450,000 worth of European Grant Funding (ERDF) to run a series of Access to Finance Workshops for entrepreneurs.  These Workshops provided entrepreneurs with the opportunity to use psychometric testing to measure their own behavioural propensity to access finance. Given his background as a practitioner, Geoff’s teaching emphasises the importance of theory in the application of marketing strategy, and is able to draw on his own experience to illustrate how evidence based decision making can improve marketing practice.  He teaches Strategic Marketing Management, Marketing Strategy and Marketing for the Entrepreneurial Firm.  He teaches undergraduate, postgraduate and also has taught extensively on Aston’s Executive Education Courses.  He also lectures on the widely acclaimed Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Programme. At Aston Geoff is now involved in a number of initiatives designed to increase engagement between the University and small firms.  He is part of the team organising Venturefest2015, a showcase event for the small business investment community to be organised in Birmingham in April 2015.  He is also directly involved in new programmes to increase the flow of funds to small funds. Geoff is Deputy Chairman of Telford Business Partnership and a Non-Executive Director of Dolphins Day Nursery Ltd.  He is also a Visiting Lecturer at VWA Studienakademie in Stuttgart.

Dr Efstathios Tapinos

Senior Lecturer
Aston Business School

Biography:

Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management. I joined Aston Business School, after my PhD on Strategy Development Process at Warwick Business School. My research is focused on Strategy Development and particularly on its relationship with perceived environmental uncertainty. Within this field, I am researching Foresight and Scenario Planning. I am currently working on data generated during my visiting research fellowship at Said Business School, Oxford University. A number of papers on the current trends and practices of scenario planning are being developed from a global survey of the alumni of Oxford Scenarios Programme. I am also interested in scenarios for Brexit. Other, ongoing research concerns individual foresight and forward looking analysis. Within this field, I am particularly interested in how individual and teams make sense of the future. I am working on a post-Weickian theory of future sensemaking. Overall, I have more than 30 publications in journals and international conferences; and I have been involved in a number of successful research funding applications, having generated £1.6M. I have extensive experience on engagement on strategy development, growth strategies, strategic foresigh/scenario planning, I am currently working with:

• The Centre of Executive Education for the provision of executive education open and company customised programmes for mostly large organisations;
• The Aston Centre of Growth for the provision of growth programmes for SMEs;
• European Regional Development Funded (ERDF) programmes for supporting innovation in local SMEs.