Univ. Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke

Email: nikolaus.franke@wu.ac.at Tel.: + 43 1 31 336 / 4585

Professor Nikolaus Franke is Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. He is also Director of the TU/WU Entrepreneurship Center, a joint technology transfer organization together with the Technical University Vienna, Academic Director of the MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and founding member of the Research Institute for Family Business. Together with Professor Christopher Lettl he leads the User Innovation Research Initiative Vienna.

His research areas are user innovation, toolkits for user innovation, horizontal innovation networks, and more generally entrepreneurship, innovation management, and marketing. He has cooperated in his research with scholars from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Illinois, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, University of Bern, Technical University of Munich, Copenhagen Business School, University of Munich, and many others. His research projects have been financed by funds like Volkswagen Stiftung, Vienna Science and Technology Fund, and OeNB. Results have been presented on international conferences and published in academic journals like Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Marketing or Management Science. He received several awards for research and teaching and serves as co-editor of the Journal für Betriebswirtschaft (JfB) and as referee for numerous international journals, conferences, search committees, and funding organizations.

He is Scientific Director of the yearly competition “Top 100 – Germany’s most innovative SME”. He is member of many juries and evaluation committees, for example of the Ernst & Young Austrian Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Austrian National Innovation Award and the Rudolf Sallinger Award. He consulted many firms from start-ups to leading multinationals, and served as invited speaker in executive meetings worldwide.

Nikolaus Franke is married and has two daughters.

Curriculum Vitae

Honors

• Theo Schöller-Preis (Munich Best Paper Award Innovation Management) for the article “The ‘I designed it myself" effect in mass customization” (Management Science, together with Martin Schreier and Ulrike Kaiser) (2011)

• WU Best Paper Award for the article „Testing the Value of Customization: When Do Customers Really Prefer Products Tailored to Their Preferences?” (Journal of Marketing 73, together with Peter Keinz and Christoph Steger) (2010)

• Theo Schöller-Preis (Munich Best Paper Award Innovation Management) for the article „Testing the Value of Customization: When Do Customers Really Prefer Products Tailored to Their Preferences?” (Journal of Marketing 73, together with Peter Keinz and Christoph Steger) (2010)

• Best Paper Award 2010 of the German Academic Association for Business Research (Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft) for the article “The ‘I designed it myself’ Effect in Mass Customization." (Management Science 65, together with Martin Schreier, and Ulrike Kaiser) (2010)
  

• WU Best Paper Award for the article 'Complementing Mass Customization Toolkits with User Communities: How Peer Input Improves Customer Self-design' (Journal of Product Innovation Management 25, with Peter Keinz and Martin Schreier) (2009)

• Highly Commended Winner at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2007 for the article 'The Six Identities of Marketing:  A Vector Quantization of Research Approaches' (European Journal of Marketing 40, with Josef Mazanec) (2007)
  

• Best Paper Award, American Marketing Association (AMA) Summer Conference, Track New Product Development, Product Management and Entrepreneurship for the article 'Does Individualization Pay? Measuring Customer Value of Individualized, Segment-Specific, and Mass Marketing Products in the Newspaper Market' (with Christoph Steger) (2007)

• Best Paper Award, American Marketing Association (AMA) Summer Conference, Track New Product Development, Product Management and Entrepreneurship for the article 'Efficient Identification of Lead Users: Screening vs. Pyramiding' (with Eric von Hippel and Reinhard Prügl) (2005)

• Senator Wilhelm Wilfling Research Award (SWWR Forschungspreis) (2004)

• WU Best Paper Award 2003 for the article 'The 'Making' of an Entrepreneur' (R&D Management 33, with Christian Lüthje)

• Kardinal Innitzer Award (Kardinal Innitzer Förderpreis) for habilitation (2003)

• German Marketing Research Award (Förderpreis der deutschen Marktforschung) for dissertation (1997)

• POCO Retail Marketing Award for dissertation (1997)

• German Marketing Research Award (Förderpreis der deutschen Marktforschung) for diploma thesis (1994)

Publications