Speakers

Originally a chemical engineer, Professor John Bessant has been active in research, teaching and consultancy in technology and innovation management for over 25 years. He currently holds the Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Exeter University where he is also Research Director. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He served on the Business and Management Panel of both the 2001 and 2008 Research Assessment Exercises. He has acted as advisor to various national governments and to international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank and the OECD.

Professor Bessant is the author of over 30 books and monographs and many articles on the topic and has lectured and consulted widely around the world. His most recent books include Managing innovation (2018) (now in its 6th edition) Entrepreneurship (2018) (both published by John Wiley and Sons) and ‘Riding the innovation wave’ (Emerald, 2017).

Jaideep Prabhu is Professor of Marketing, Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise, and Director of the Centre for India & Global Business at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

He has published in and is on the editorial board of leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing. He has appeared on BBC News24, BBC Radio 4 and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and has been profiled in BusinessWeek, BBC World Service, The Economist, The Financial Times, Le Monde, The New York Times and The Times. He has consulted with executives from Bertelsmann, Barclays, BP, BRAC, BT, GE, IBM, ING Bank, M&S, the NHS, Pearson, Roche, Shell, Siemens, Unilever and Vodafone.

He is the co-author of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, described by The Economist as “the most comprehensive book yet” on the subject of frugal innovation. His 2015 book Frugal Innovation: How to do Better with Less won the CMI’s Management Book of the Year Award 2016. His most recent book How Should a Government Be: The New Levers of State Power was published in February 2021.

Dr Muthu De Silva is a Professor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Assistant Dean (Research) at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. Her research advances our understanding on co-creation. In particular, she has contributed to our knowledge on how actors in an ecosystem engaged in co-creation, and associated good practices, capabilities, intellectual property and impacts. She has published in world-leading journals such as Research Policy, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, British Journal of Management, R&D Management, and Technovation, among others. She has secured major grants from Innovate UK, Intellectual Property Office, EU and British Academy/Leverhulme, OECD, and British Academy of Management. She is a fellow of Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. She is in the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Management.