About IKON and its people

ABOUT IKON

IKON is a multidisciplinary research centre within Warwick Business School, established in 1997 to explore the interactions between innovation, knowledge and organizational processes, here.

Our mission is to apply insights from social and organizational theory to empirical studies of how knowledge, evidence, and expertise are created, shared, and used. Through this work, we aim to support innovation, sustainability, and organizational transformation.

IKON researchers undertake both theoretical and empirical research on the social processes and practices that underpin organizational innovation and transformation, and how these processes are shaped by specific organizational and institutional contexts. We focus particularly on the social and material dimensions of knowledge production, use, and circulation, organizational learning, and interorganizational collaboration. We adopt a distinctive social perspective that complements traditional economic and technological approaches by focusing on the processes, practices, and relationships that drive change and transformation

We are also actively promoting the development of qualitative interpretive research methodologies and organizational ethnography and provide support to early career scholars. Since 2013, we have run the Warwick Summer School on Practice and Process Studies. Further information can be found here

International Collaborations

The group actively collaborates with other departments of the University, national and international institutions. Project partners or institutions with whom we conducted joint research include the WMG, University of Oxford, King’s College, Aston University, Newcastle University, Bath University, and the University of Edinburgh. We maintain active research collaborations with international universities in the USA (Bentley), Switzerland (USI Lugano), Norway (BI Oslo and UiO), France, (ESSEC), Aalborg (U of Dublin), and the Netherlands (VU Amsterdam), Brazil (UFMG Belo Horizonte), and Australia (Monash). We are actively supporting the Partnership with Stellenbosch University.

We regularly apply for grants and conduct externally funded projects, organise academic and research events, and provide support to early career scholars. From 2004 to 2020, IKON ran the Knowledge and Innovation Network, a self-sustaining industry network that constituted an outlet for collaborative activities.

Key research themes

Networking and innovation
Knowledge and situated learning in organisations
Communities of practice
Evidence generation and use
Managing knowledge work
Expertise development and transfer
Practice theory
Routine dynamics
Financial practices & sustainability

Key current and recent projects

Management insights for tackling grand challenges: the case of climate-related financial risks in the financial investment industry (Dittrich, UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, £1.1 million)
A Practice-theoretical Account of Organizational Attention (Mengis & Nicolini, Swiss National Science Foundation, £%78.000)
Exploring Innovations in Transition to Adulthood (EXIT Study) (Currie, Swan, ESRC, £1.63 million)

People

IKON is comprised of a distributed network of researchers working in the area of innovation, knowledge and organizational networks.

Full time IKON staff at Warwick are:

Professor Davide Nicolini - Director of IKON
Professor Jacky Swan - co-Director of IKON
Dr Katharina DittrichLink opens in a new window (University of Warwick)
Dr Matt HurstLink opens in a new window (USI, Lugano & University of Warwick)

IKON colleagues in other Warwick groups / institutions include:

Dr Jeanne Mengis (University of Lugano, Switzerland) (also a WBS Associate Fellow)
Dr Bjørn Erik MørkLink opens in a new window Link opens in a new window(BI Norwegian Business School) (also a WBS Associate Fellow)
Professor Harry Scarbrough (Bayes Business School)
Professor Mike Bresnen (University of Manchester)
Professor Maxine Robertson (Queen Mary, University of London)
Dr Julius KobLink opens in a new window (University of Warwick)
Dr Matthias TagerLink opens in a new window (University of Warwick)

IKON Visitors

IKON is pleased to welcome visiting academics.

Previous visitors have included Professor Paul Carlile (Associate Professor of Management and Information Systems, Boston University School of Management); Rodrigo Malgaes Ribeiro from UFMG, Brazil; Mohammad Rezazade Mehrizi, from VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Gabriel Van Bunnen (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium); Dr David Meacheam of the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia; Jan Storgårds from the Helsinki School of Economics, Finland; Claus Jørgensen from the Institute of Business and Technology at Aarhus University, Denmark.

IKON Vacancies

Details will appear here when available.