The core project team comprises of the 4 PhDs together with a wider team of academics and industry professionals.
The supporting network and supervising business and academic crew:
Prof. Dr Rick Aalbers is a full Professor of Corporate Restructuring and Innovation at the department of Business Administration of the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He has been a visiting scholar at Imperial College London, National University of Ireland at Galway and The Tokyo Institute of Technology. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a Manager at Deloitte Consulting where he advised on strategic change in the financial services industry. A native of The Netherlands, he holds a Masters degree in Business Administration from Rotterdam School of Management, a second Masters degree in Business Economics (cum laude) from Erasmus University’s School of Economics and a PhD in Business and Economics from Groningen University. His work has been accepted for publication by leading international journals, including Research Policy, Harvard Business Review, Long Range Planning, Journal of Product Innovation Management, MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, Journal of Business Strategy, Management Decision, Innovation, Ivey Business Journal and British Journal of Management, among others. A monograph on Innovation networks appeared with Routledge in 2015.
Remco Neuteboom is the Senior Vice President, Chief Digital Officer, Global Financial Services at Atos. Alongside his team of industry directors, Remco works on major digital transformation projects in Financial Services. Remco’s particular areas of focus include Customer Experience, Operational Transformation, Trust & Compliance and Business Reinvention — ranging from developing new data-driven business models through to Cloud strategy. He is also responsible for the Atos Group FinTech strategy and go-to-market approach to working with innovative start-up companies, including the Atos Global Fintech Program.
Ivo Luijendijk – Atos Group Industry Director Data Analytics and Emerging Technologies – Global Financial Services and member of the Scientific Community. Ivo is a business technologist with over 20 years of experience in bringing technology driven innovation into the business of his clients. His natural drive to understand and demystify complex topics is a constant in his career, where he helped clients make the changes they needed with the help of technological innovations as they emerge. After 15 years’ experience as a banking consulting, Ivo now drives business reinvention for the Atos global financial services clients.
Dr Saeed Khanagha is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at VU University, Amsterdam. He is a former ITN ESR, and has received his PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has been collaborating in a number of research projects with several multi-national companies, including Ericsson, Intel and Phillips. His research is focused on organisational capabilities for managing emerging technologies and new business models for the digital age. His research has been published in outlets such as Journal of Management Studies, Long Range Planning and R&D Management. He currently serves as organizer and guest editor of a Long Range Planning special issue entitled Strategizing in a digital era. He has co-organized several events, including two extensions to SMS annual conferences in Stockholm (2015) and Amsterdam (2018) and three panel sessions that bring practitioners and scholars together in interactive settings.
Himanshu Vyas is the Chief Strategy Officer – Head of M&A and Strategic Partnerships, Global Financial Services at Atos. Himanshu’s current focus is to develop and execute the Atos M&A and strategic partnership-based growth strategy for the Global Financial Services Market. Around 20 years ago, he started his career as a coder for mission-critical real-time systems. Over the years he has worked in India, Canada, the USA and Sweden. Nowadays he works in the United Kingdom with a variety of international responsibilities across business development, sales and operations. Himanshu joined Atos in 2016 in his current role. He holds bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-BHU (Class of 1998), Management Education in Marketing, Finance and Organizational Leadership from the Indian School of Business (Class of 2003) and Harvard Business School (Class of 2015).
Prof. Dr Miriam Wilhelm is a professor at WU Vienna and a former associate professor at the University of Groningen. She studied business administration in Ingolstadt, Tokyo and Berlin. Miriam obtained her PhD at the Institute of Management of the Free University of Berlin. Her current research focuses on sustainability issues in global supply chains. She is interested in supply chain governance and multi-stakeholder initiatives. She has researched this topic in a number of empircal projects in the global garment, consumer electronics and fisheries industries. Miriam has been a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo, the Social Science Center Berlin, Meiji University Tokyo and the University of Melbourne. She has also gained working experience outside academia which allowed her to build up in-depth expertise on the automotive industry where she continues to engage in teaching programs for practitioners.
Ir. Jo Sevarts is the Senior Vice President for Business Development and for the Insurance Industry, both positions on group level at Atos. He has lead multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural teams in the ICT industry for more than 25 years and has deep knowledge and expertise of Banking, Insurance and Pensions.
Jo understands the drive for digital transformation and supports clients in their digital journeys. He has strong capabilities in people management and is always focused on developing long-term relationships with clients and partners. Jo obtained a Master of Science degree in Information Technology from Eindhoven University of Technology and a postgraduate degree in Leadership from Glasgow Caledonian University.
Dan Cohen spent over 30 years leading multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural teams in global firms addressing the areas of Financial Services, Public Sector and Scientific & Technical Computing. He worked at Atos as the Group Senior Vice President – Global Financial Services, where his main focus was leading the continual transformation of Atos’ full product and service portfolio, with an emphasis on industry orientation and relationship management within Financial Services. Overtime, he has amassed a wide range of skills relating to people management and cultural change through internal and external relationships following direct and general management roles. In his 30 years with IBM he also spent time on five international assignments that took him to Europe, Asia Pacific and South America. Dan’s pro-bono work has spanned many different organizations across the globe, including board level involvement at The International School of Beijing, The Princes Trust – Edinburgh, and Chemocare – New Jersey. Dan holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Emory University.
Mike Schavemaker is Transformation lead for Royal Philips in the areas of Innovation and Digitalization and AI. He drives and supports both within Philips as well as with external companies to identify new areas of growth, supports decision-making processes in the front end of innovation and facilitates in creating innovation roadmaps. He particularly has specialized in Artificial Intelligence and Open Innovation and has a track-record in mobilizing and engaging crowds for breakthrough innovation purposes or breakthrough organizational change. Mike holds an MSc in Innovation and Technology from Erasmus University Rotterdam and Nanyang MBA, Singapore and an Executive Master of Business Innovation at the TiasNimbas Business School. As member of the FINDER Advisory Board, he counsels the FINDER PhDs with his industry and academic expertise and is an active contributor to the community.
Chris Vialle is Partner within Monitor Deloitte | Deloitte Consulting, focused on Strategy, Analytics and M&A within the Banking, Payments and Fintech sector, based out of Copenhagen. He serves senior leadership within Financial Services in developing strategy, addressing strategic issues and realizing transformational change. He is currently focused on the Nordic region, serving clients across Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Before joining the Nordic practice, Chris was part of the Monitor Deloitte Strategy practice in New York, and in Amsterdam, serving clients across North America, EMEA and Asia.He holds a Master’s Degree in Information Sciences (MSc) and in Business Administration (MSc) at Radboud University in Nijmegen. He is guest lecturer Corporate Strategy and has a publication in Ivey Business Journal
Prof. Dr Koen Heimeriks is a Professor of Strategy at Warwick Business School. Previously he lead a faculties at Copenhagen Business School, Rotterdam School of Management as well as Tilburg University and he has also been visiting at Aalto, Carnegie Mellon University and INSEAD. He earned his PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology. Koen’s research focuses on how companies develop corporate development (i.e., alliance, acquisition and divestiture) capabilities to realize corporate growth in high-tech settings. His work features in numerous top journals, including Academy of Management Annals, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Strategic Organization. Besides his research, he trains, consults for, and works with executives at publicly listed and large private firms operating in volatile settings, e.g., high-tech and chemical industries with a focus on corporate development and entrepreneurship, strategy, organizational change and growth strategies. Both his research and teaching won him prestigious international prizes.
Prof. Dr Hans van Kranenburg is a full Professor of Corporate Strategy at Radboud University Nijmegen. Professor Van Kranenburg is Head of the Strategy Group at the Department of Business Administration. He has previously been a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford, Media Management and Transformation Centre at the Jönköping International Business School (Sweden), the University of Navarra (Spain) and the University of Chicago (USA). He was Head of Business Administration and Director of the Research Programme Responsible Organisation at the Nijmegen School of Management. He has published on various subjects, including the strategic behaviour of organisations, industry dynamics, alliances and networks, foreign direct investments and non-market strategies.
Dr. Koen van den Oever is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Nijmegen School of Management (PhD from Tilburg University). His research is published in the Strategic Management Journal and is centered around three main topics: strategic decision-making, board of director composition, and interorganizational relationships (IORs). In short, he uses a behavioral lens to study when organizations engage in IORs, the influence of board of director composition on the strategic decision-making process, and how different forms of decision-making affect organization’s behavior (in IORs). His dissertation on strategic decision-making for organizational change was finalist for the best dissertation award 2018 by the Strategic Management division of the Academy of Management.
Dr ir Fleur Deken is an Associate Professor Organizing for Innovation Processes at VU University Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics. Her research focuses on collaborative innovation. Currently she is involved in research projects on crossover collaborations between organizations from different sectors and the role of design thinking in digital innovation. Her theoretical interests lie in social practices and process research. She holds a PhD from the Delft University of Technology (cum laude), an MSc (cum laude) in Strategic Product Design (Delft University of Technology), a BSc in Psychology (University of Amsterdam) and Industrial Design Engineering (Delft University of Technology). She has published in Design Studies, Journal of Engineering Design, Research in Engineering Design and in a various conferences such as the Academy of Management Meeting and at the European Group of Organization Studies conference. She teaches courses on technology and innovation, qualitative research methods, and statistics.
Dr Sebastian Schäfer is the Managing Director TechQuartier. Sebastian is a Cambridge-born behavioral economist and innovation enthusiast. As entrepreneur and lecturer, he has been engaged in building a dynamic startup scene in the Metropolitan region for many years. Prior to founding TechQuartier, Sebastian was head of Goethe University’s Business Incubator and research fellow at the Management and Microeconomics department. He lectures at Goethe Business School and is associated with the Center for Leadership and Behavior in Organizations and the Frankfurt Laboratory of Experimental Economics at Goethe University.
Jean-Francois Zehner is the Head of the Deal Competence Center in Atos Global Financial Services. Jean-Francois shares his passion for operational excellence to nurture sustainable relationships and mutually profitable agreements with key clients. Jean-Francois is a seasoned executive who masters the challenges of accelerated transformation across large complex organizations. Focused on multi-cultural team management, he insists on carefully planned execution to deliver tangible results.
Philipp Tuertscher is an Associate Professor of Technology and Innovation at the KIN Center for Digital Innovation at VU Amsterdam. He has obtained a PhD in Management from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Before joining VU Amsterdam, Philipp worked as an Assistant Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and as a Visiting Scholar at the Pennsylvania State University. His research explores collaborative innovation in a variety of settings. Besides studying large-scale scientific collaborations at CERN, Philipp has been studying innovation processes in crowdsourcing and collaborative online communities such as Linux, Wikipedia, and Threadless. His work has been presented at international conferences and published in leading journals including Academy of Management Annals, Organization Science, Information Systems Research, and Organization Studies.
dr. K.J. (Killian) McCarthy is an Associate Professor of Strategy (Tenured) at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Innovation Management & Strategy – Faculty of Economics and Business. Killian is trained as an economist; he has a BSc in Economics (Cork), an MSc in Economics & Law (Utrecht), a Research Masters in Economics (Utrecht and Vienna), and a PhD in Economics (Groningen). Today he primarily works on topics relating to corporate strategy, but has worked and continues to publish too on topics like money laundering and international tax competition. His expertise is the consequence of (international) mergers and acquisitions on the financial and innovation-based performance of the initiating firm as well as the disciplines of international business, strategic management, innovation and technology management.
Frederik Kerling – Head of FinTech and Quantum industry Director – Global Financial Services and member of the Scientific Community. Frederik is a Senior Quantum Expert with a background in theoretical physics specializing in Quantum engineering who has since made the transition into consulting, cybersecurity, and finance. Frederik teaches courses in quantum and cybersecurity at multiple universities and work in business and patent development. He specializes in bridging the gap between complicated technologies and realistic commercially viable business outcomes. After 8 years of experience as a cybersecurity, innovation, and quantum consultant, he is currently heading the FinTech Engagement program with Remco
This project (FINDER) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 813095.
Activities are orchestrated under the Radboud Centre for Organization Restructuring. The Centre for Organization Restructuring studies how corporate restructuring takes place, how firm reshape their business models for the future, how new forms of collaboration replace prior means of operating, and how a company’s performance and innovative capacity are affected, as well the consequences for society at large.
FINDER 