Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing

Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences

Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing

The Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship and Marketing (ITEM) group focuses on understanding and improving new business and product development processes within firms, organizations, and institutions in a high-tech context.

Passionate about improving new business and product development processes in high-tech firms 聽

In a marketplace where customers are more aware, active, and value-driven, firms must rapidly conceive and develop new products and services that meet customers' changing demands. As such, firms are not only urged to step up their development efforts, but also to continuously re-examine established methods for new business and product development. This is important because emerging new perspectives on business and product development have changed the rules of the game. With the onset of open innovation, new business and product development is no longer the exclusive playing ground of one single firm. Instead collaboration with external parties is required to accelerate new business and product development to keep pace with competitors. Moreover, technological breakthroughs in areas such as healthcare, ICT, and mobility require that organizations renew their business models to successfully market new products and services.

ITEM鈥檚 research, educational and valorization program focuses on new business and product development processes in all different organizations with a specific emphasis on high-tech products. This perspective is unique in the sense that it covers the entire cycle of development efforts, from the very front end of new business and product conception to start-up and commercialization respectively. Moreover, it combines an industrial engineering and management perspective to capture the complexity and multidisciplinary nature of new business and product development, and deliberately exploits the various competences and forms of expertise at the interface with related engineering disciplines to help businesses improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their innovation efforts. Through this focus ITEM is, as such, not just able to conduct good disciplinary work, but also to connect to the cross-disciplinary research themes of Logistics and Interface, Humans and Technology, Sustainability and Value of Big Data of the department and the strategic areas of Energy and Health at the university level.

By focusing on new business and product development, ITEM makes an important contribution to contemporary research on the optimization of complex processes, systems and organizations in high-tech industries. This is imperative because in such industries, new business and product development are the main drivers of growth, profitability and survival. Moreover, the group鈥檚 research is incorporated in university-wide educational programs on entrepreneurship and innovation to educate the engineers of the future in successful new business and product development.

ITEM鈥檚 research, educational and valorization program centers on means for measuring and improving the process of conceiving, developing, and launching new products and businesses. As such it entails all the strategic, tactical and operational activities involved in identifying and exploiting new business and product opportunities, including new service development, business model design and technology commercialization, and new product and service commercialization. To cover all these facets, ITEM focuses on three major research lines that together cover the full spectrum of the new business and product development process: (1) technology entrepreneurship and new business venturing; (2) new product development and management; and (3) new productmarketing.

ITEM鈥檚 scholars are involved in several research projects with national, European, industry and university funding on a variety of new business and product development topics. For these projects, we collaborate not only with researchers in the Netherlands, but also internationally, and with companies like ASML, Philips, and Heijmans or governmental organizations like the European Commission and the Netherlands Space Office (NSO). The aim of our projects is to contribute scientifically, but also perform research that is relevant and useful for practice.

ITEM NEWS

All ITEM news

April 22, 2025

From Opportunity to a Viable Business Model

Ren茅 Unteregger's research reveals how health tech entrepreneurs effectively navigate through uncertainties to arrive at viable business models

March 25, 2025

State of Circular Entrepreneurship in the Netherlands: Challenges and Opportunities

Research shows that SMEs in the Netherlands are on average 56% circular, with challenges in financing and regulations

More news

'Spiritual father' of the Brainport model receives honorary doctorate from 果冻传媒

February 17, 2025

Towards a Circular Plastics Economy

February 7, 2025

IE&IS 果冻传媒 Award 2024 granted

February 4, 2025

New members strengthen ITEM group: welcome Bieke Henkens and Eduard Esau!

January 24, 2025

All ITEM news

Recent Publications

Our most recent peer reviewed publications

Meet some of our researchers

Full Professor

Thijs Zwienenberg

Some of our Research Projects

Research project

Freight Traffic Management as a Service

Digitalization is a key enabler in the transition towards a healthy logistics and freight transport system.

Research project

Managing knowledge flows

Drivers of the learning curve at customer service

Research project

URBANE

Developing a sustainable business model for agro-ecological farming in West-Africa

Research project

Circular Plastics Network for training

To demonstrate that a sustainable future for plastics is possible

Research project

SEE-V-Lab

Bridging the gap between entrepreneurship intent and entrepreneurship action

entrepreneurship education

The 果冻传媒 offers many courses for students who want to develop entrepreneurial skills.

Below you find an overview of all courses for Bachelor, Master, PhD and PDEng students.

Design science perspectives on innovation & entrepreneurship research (PhD course)

The ITEM group will again be offering the PhD course 鈥淒esign Science Perspectives on Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research鈥� in June 2025. This on-campus course provides participants with in-depth knowledge of design science approaches in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship. Instructors include Marcel Bogers, Philip Cash, Isabelle Reymen, Fred Langerak, Jason Li-Ying, and Georges Romme. More detailed information on the program and registration process is available here.

Work with us

Please check out the 果冻传媒 vacancy pages for opportunities within our group.

If you are a student, potential sponsor or industrial partner and want to work with us, please contact the ITEM secretariat
or the ITEM group chair, dr. ir. Bob Walrave

Contact

Visiting address

Atlas 6.402

De Zaale

Eindhoven

Netherlands

+31 (0)40 247 2170
Postal address

Atlas 6.402

P.O. Box 513

5600 MB Eindhoven

Netherlands
Secretary

item.ieis@tue.nl

果冻传媒