Univ. Prof. Dr. Christopher Lettl

Email: christopher.lettl@wu.ac.at Tel.: + 43 1 31 336 / 4585

Professor Christopher Lettl is Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. He is also Director of the Research Program on Business Model Innovation at the Department of Strategic Management and Innovation. He is also Academic Director of the International Summer University Russia in Vienna. He leads the User Innovation Research Initiative Vienna together with Professor Nikolaus Franke.

His research areas are user innovation, new organizational forms for innovation, multi-institutional development collaborations, and more generally entrepreneurship, innovation management, organizational design and strategy. He has been cooperating in his research with scholars from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Berkeley University of California, Bocconi University, Copenhagen Business School, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Pennsylvania State University, University of Groningen, Norwegian School of Management, Berlin University of Technology, and several others. He received extensive research funding from the Danish Research Ministries. The results of his research have been presented on international conferences and published in leading academic journals like Journal of Consumer Research, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Research Policy, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Long Range Planning, R&D Management, Schmalenbach Business Review. His research has been featured in leading business media, including the New York Times and Handelsblatt. He received research and teaching awards and has been providing numerous services to the research community, such as serving as co-editor and referee for international journals, conferences, search committees, and funding organizations.

He has established several educational programs in entrepreneurship and innovation (e.g. master program at the Aarhus School of Business, Denmark) and teaches in the EDEN doctoral program of the European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM).

He served as key note speaker at distinguished policy events such as the EU Presidency Event in Helsinki and the Czech Innovation Day in Prague. He has been serving as academic advisor for the G8-G5 Heiligendamm Process on Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights, for the UK Minister of Science and Innovation, and for the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Resort: Invest in Denmark). He consulted numerous companies in their entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives.

Curriculum Vitae

Honors

• Winner of the Tudor Rickards Best Paper Award 2008 for the article “Towards a social network perspective of lead users and creativity: An empirical study among children”, Creativity and Innovation Management 17, with Jan Kratzer)

• Finalist for the Danish Elite Research Award 2009

• Elite Teaching Award 2009 by the Danish Ministry of Education for the course concept „Collaborative New Business Development“

• Research Grant from Danish Strategic Research Council for research program on the Governance of Community-based Innovation (together with Professor Sören Salomo from the Danish Technical University, Copenhagen) – Funds provided by the Council: Euro 2.5 Million

• Active Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Art

• WU Teaching Award 2010 in the category „Excellent Teaching“ for the course “Exploring Core Challenges in Open Innovation".

• Best Paper Selection for AOM Conference 2010, Montreal, for the article: “Forecasting the attractiveness of user-generated designs via online data: An empirical study within the LEGO community” (together with Morten Berg-Jensen and Christoph Hienerth).

• WU Award: Cooperation Representative of the Year (2011) - Granted by the WU Vienna International Office.

Publications