Research
Following the centres overall agenda and vision, KITE comprises a number of linked themes. In practice this means that staff come together around specific projects and publications which reflect their interests and expertise, under the direction of the centre directors and executive. Overall these themes connect to a vision of the changing nature of innovation.
These linked and cross-cutting themes include :
Complex Project Innovation
eBusiness@Newcastle
Innovation, Sustainability & Enterprise
Public Services Innovation (PSI)
Complex Project Innovation
The main focus of the Complex Projects Group is upon issues affecting the management of projects that are technologically and/or organisationally complex. Issues of prime interest to the group include innovation, knowledge management and the design process in complex project settings.
To inform our work we draw upon a wide range of critical theories, including:
- complexity theory
- sense making
- cognitive framing
- actor-network theory
- social constructivism
Our aims are to inform the practice of project management through the application of critical theory to an understanding of project contexts and to enhance the theoretical underpinnings of the study of projects.
Contact Neil Alderman to find out more about the Complex Projects Group.
eBusiness@Newcastle
An integral part of KITE is the eBusiness@Newcastle group.
We are particularly interested in the impact of Internet related technologies and eBusiness on the global business environment, their effect on strategies and ebusiness models and the resulting organisational, and product and service innovations. We are also interested in high technology entrepreneurship and small ebusiness research.
Our research covers a wide range of markets and sectors, including virtual worlds and metaverses, Web 2.0, banking, telecoms, retailing and digital media with a particular focus on innovative applications and new ways of creating value.
The group consists of several academics and PhD researchers. We also have a number of external academic and industry collaborators, with whom we work on various e-related research, development and consultancy projects, which draw upon our business and technical expertise.
Visit the eBuisness@Newcastle website
Contact Feng Li to find out more about eBusiness@Newcastle
Innovation, Sustainability and Enterprise
These cross-cutting themes have a wide-ranging salience across the Centre. The sustainability area seeks to identify the conditions for producing environmentally sustainable and socially accepted innovations, through analysis of relevant policies, strategies and practices of diverse stakeholders and their role in technology development.
It recognises that successful innovations (in both the commercial and ecological senses) are produced by actions within enterprising firms and other institutions but also shaped by actors throughout society, including users and the public.
KITE research on innovation and environmental sustainability contributes fundamentally to the Energy and Environment theme of the Newcastle Science City initiative.
Audley Genus RCUK Beacon Fellowship 2009/10
Audley's RCUK Beacon North East Fellowship project aims to improve university engagement with communities in Newcastle upon Tyne. It aims to discern local visions and actions relevant to building low carbon communities, and ways in which university and other actors can support these.
The project aims to encourage innovative environmentally sustainable behaviour. It also seeks to encourage university researchers and other specialists to work with - and to challenge their assumptions about working with - non-specialists in co-creating scenarios and plans for low carbon living.
The project contributes to wider UK and EUl collaborative research on ‘eco-neighbourhoods’, part of which concerns how to scale up novel engagement and energy use practices.
On the enterprise side staff have interests in small firms and entrepreneurship from a variety of perspectives, focusing on individual and organisational behaviour and on more ideological and discursive perspectives; and have conducted the specific projects relating to entrepreneurship education, narratives of enterprise, indigenous enterprise, finance and the micro-firm and small firm labour control.
Contact Audley Genus to find out more about the Innovation, Sustainability and Enterprise themes
Public Services Innovation (PSI)
Led by Rob Wilson, the Public Services Innovation (PSI) group in KITE (formally SBI) is an interdisciplinary research group drawing on the theoretical basis of social science, management practice and information systems grounded in the real world challenges of public service, multi-agency partnership working. The group has an established reputation in applied action research and development projects in the context of public service delivery.
Much of our current (and past) work in this area is focussed on public service partnership working (including the role of the VCS/third sector) and public service innovation (e.g. multi-agency information sharing).