Professor Christopher Lettl is Director of the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna). He is also Academic Director of the Vienna Innovation Program, a collaboration of WU Vienna with Top Universities from the United States.

His research focuses on the paradigm-shifting phenomenon of open and user innovation. He studies how organizations may best manage the opportunities and threats induced by this phenomenon with a specific focus on implications for strategy and organization design. Beyond this and more generally, he is interested in the areas of entrepreneurship, innovation management, strategic management, and organization theory. He has been cooperating in his research with scholars from renowned international institutions such as for example Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Berkeley University of California, Bocconi University, Copenhagen Business School, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. He received extensive research funding from various renowned funding organizations. The results of his research have been presented on international conferences and published in leading academic journals like Organization Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Management or Journal of Management Studies. His research has been featured in leading business media, including the New York Times and Handelsblatt. He received numerous research and teaching awards.

He serves the scientific community in numerous functions as Co-Editor and Referee for international journals, conferences, search committees, and funding organizations. For example, he has been a Referee for leading academic journals such as for example Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal or Journal of Consumer Research, and he is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Product Innovation Management and the Journal of Organization Design. He served as Key Note Speaker at distinguished policy events and as Key Note Speaker at distinguished academic conferences such as for example the Open and User Innovation Conference 2014 at Harvard Business School. 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). At the European Forum Alpbach he repeatedly contributed as Speaker and Organizer of breakout sessions.

He consulted numerous companies including for example IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, Lego, or Bang & Olufsen in their entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives. He has founded and established several educational programs in entrepreneurship and innovation management and teaches in the EDEN doctoral program of the European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM). He is founding member of the Open and User Innovation Society and Organizer of the Doctoral Consortium at the Open and User Innovation Conference. Beyond leading the Institute and contributing to the development of the Department, he serves WU in numerous other positions such as for example as Member of the Advisory Board of the WU-OMV Energy and Strategy Think Tank or as Co-Organizer of the Speaker Series at the Department of Strategy and Innovation.

From October 2016 until September 2019 he served as Chairman of the WU Senate and as Representative of WU’s Full Professors.

Curiculum Vitae

Honors

• Finalist of the 2018 Page JPIM (The Journal of Product Innovation Management) Best Paper Award for the article: Value creation and value capture in open innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management (together with Henry Chesbrough and Thomas Ritter).

• Winner of the 2016 Thomas P. Hustad JPIM Best Paper Award for the article: The Social Network Position of Lead Users (together with Jan Kratzer, Nikolaus Franke and Peter Gloor)

• Best Paper Selection for AOM Conference 2016, Anaheim, for the article: Exploring motivations of participants in grand challenges: A comparative case study in the space sector (together with Christian Garaus and Florian Schirg)

• Nominated for  2014 JPIM (The Journal of Product Innovation Management) Best Paper:  "Synergies among Producer Firms, Lead Users, and User Communities: The Case of the Lego Producer- User Ecosystem” (together with Christoph Hienerth and Peter Keinz)

• Selected as one of 9 articles included in the first virtual issue of The Journal of Product Innovation Management on the topic of co-creation: "Synergies among Producer Firms, Lead Users, and User Communities: The Case of the Lego Producer- User Ecosystem” (together with Christoph Hienerth and Peter Keinz)

• Symposium Proposal on Linking Open Innovation to Business Models selected for inclusion in the All-Academy Theme (AAT) program, AOM Conference 2015, Vancouver (together with Henry Chesbrough, Thomas Ritter, Christopher Tucci).

• Best Paper Selection for AOM Conference 2015, Vancouver, for the article: “Drivers of positive attention on firm-hosted user design platforms” (together with Morten Berg Jensen and Christoph Hienerth).

• Best Paper Award Finalist, Academy of Management Conference 2014, Philadelphia, Technology and Innovation Management Division, for the article: "Does God play Dice?" Randomness vs. Deterministic Explanations of Crowdsourcing Success" (together with Nikolaus Franke, Susanne Roiser und Philipp Türtscher).

• Best Paper Selection for AOM Conference 2014, Philadelphia, for the article: “Does God play Dice?” Randomness vs. Deterministic Explanations of Crowdsourcing Success” (together with Nikolaus Franke, Susanne Roiser und Philipp Türtscher).

• Best Paper Selection for AOM Conference 2012, Boston, for the article: “From funding to founding - The changing role of investors” (together with Stephan Jung).

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

• 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).

• 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.

• 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“.

• Active Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Art.

• Nominated and selected for Election Ballot for the position as Division Representative-at-Large of the TIM Division - Academy of Management.

• 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).