The center is anchored in the research faculty at Nova SBE and complemented by leading affiliate researchers from renowned institutions. Its mission is to produce high-quality multidisciplinary research by fostering cooperation between management, scientists, and professionals of diverse backgrounds. Its ambition is to become a leading center in its areas of expertise.

Its key research topics include Open and User Innovation, Innovation Diffusion, User Entrepreneurship, Multi-sided Platforms for Innovation Management, Patient Innovation and Patient Entrepreneurship, Open Social Innovation, Crowdsourcing, and Distributed Problem Solving, Crowdfunding, Technological Change, Lead users, Toolkits, and User Identification, Institutions, Innovation Law, and Policy.

The research team is composed of an interdisciplinary group of scholars from innovation management, entrepreneurship, data science, healthcare platforms, and bioengineering.

The Scientific Director is Pedro Oliveira, the Deputy Scientific Director is Leid Zejnilovic and the Executive Director is Maria João Jacinto, Nova SBE Post-doc Fellow.

With the ambition of becoming a leading center in its areas of expertise, it will work in close collaboration with the Nova SBE’s Innovation Ecosystem and will generate distinctive expertise on business and economic development of new ventures based on open innovation and/or new solutions developed by users with a focus on real social and economic impact.

The center also hosts the research activities of Patient Innovation, a non-profit association and digital platform aimed at promoting the sharing of innovative solutions developed by patients and caregivers to overcome problems imposed by a disease or health condition.

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