Jubilee professorship in Industrial Engineering and Management

Meet Lars Bengtsson...the new holder of the Faculty of Engineering’s jubilee professorship in Industrial Engineering and Management, specialising in technology strategies and business models.

How does it feel to be a jubilee professor?

– It feels great. I am delighted. The idea is to further boost research and third cycle studies in engineering and economics within the successful programme in Industrial Engineering and Management.

You recently came from the Blekinge Institute of Technology, BTH, but you “grew up” at the School of Economics and Management in Lund. What differences have you noticed?

– I probably had more contact with Lund’s Faculty of Engineering (LTH) in four years at the Blekinge Institute of Technology than I had in twenty years at the School of Economics and Management in Lund. Although Lund’s School of Economics and Management and its Faculty of Engineering are neighbours, the mental distance between them is sometimes great.

What is your research about?

– Among other things, I have studied cooperation between universities and business and thereby what is known as the Swedish paradox, according to which we invest a lot in research but get little financial pay-off from it. I have researched new companies and new technologies originating in the university world, but also the way in which research and education are affected by cooperation with business and industry.

Organisations and structures which are supposed to facilitate cooperation, such as research parks and business incubators, are also part of the research.

In recent years I have been interested in open innovation as a business model. Instead of developing everything itself, a company can exploit external knowledge through internet services and competitions; it can use idea brokers or open a new market for small companies, as Apple did with the Appstore.

What are you hoping to work on?

– As a researcher, I have previously had a lot of contact with Ideon – including in the run-up to their 20th anniversary in 2003 – and I hope to resume that contact for the 30th anniversary. At the time, I investigated all the companies that had ever been active at Ideon. At least half of them had some connection to the Faculty of Engineering (LTH). The development around ESS and MAX IV would also be interesting to follow. I hope to conduct more research on open innovation and the innovation of business models as well.

Do you have an engineering background yourself?

– Not beyond the fact that I once learnt computer programming. I also have a past as a trained upper secondary school economics teacher and taught in Australia for three years; I appreciate the Anglo-Saxon tutor system with small student groups.

– I am also the person who put up the sign to Venture Lab outside the Engineering Faculty’s student union building ten years ago: I was appointed the first director of Venture Lab, the student business incubator, by Allan Malm.

FOOTNOTE: Lars Bengtsson is 55 and has a degree in Business Administration from the School of Economics and Management in Lund, where he was promoted to professor in 2007. A year later he was offered a professorship at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Industrial Engineering and Management. He grew up in Teckomatorp, resides in Lund and has a partner and three children from a previous relationship. He does a lot of sport in his free time, including exercising at Gerdahallen and playing badminton and golf.

The jubilee professorship at the Faculty of Engineering is a 2011 donation from seven companies in Lund which would like to see more research at the intersection between engineering and economics.

This text was first published in the Lund University Magazine -LUM