Department of Strategy and Innovation
Welcome to the Department of Strategy and Innovation (SI)
The department’s ambition is be an internationally leading environment for research and teaching in strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and international business. We are located in the middle of the beautiful CBS campus of Frederiksberg Find out more about us on these pages.
About the department (Panel content)
Who we are and what we do!
Our ambition
Research
We have diverse backgrounds in e.g. Economics, Management, Organisation and we use a plurality of theories and methods to analyze a diverse set of exiting (and big) research questions!
Staff
We are an international department (the mayority of faculty members are non-Danes).
Research
“ We study strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and international business. Our work appears in top journals and tackles major business and societal challenges. Collaboration, curiosity, and rigor place us among Europe’s leading strategy departments. ” Professor Keld Laursen
Head of Department
Education
“ We bring research into the classroom across bachelor, master, MBA, and executive programs. Students learn to think critically and act strategically in a changing world. Our teaching earns top evaluations and connects theory with practice. ” Michele Acciaro
Associate Professor
PhD Education
“ Our PhD program develops future scholars and experts. Fellows receive rigorous training, join international networks, and spend time abroad. Many secure placements at leading universities, proving the program’s quality and international standing. ” Professor Hans Christian Kongsted
PhD Coordinator
SI Seminars
We host a series of research seminars where distinguished guests present their current research.
All seminars will either take place online via Zoom, or in our Seminar room (Kilen - KL.2.53)
| Date | Speaker | Time and Location |
|---|---|---|
| 25-09-2025 | Luis Diestre, IE | 1 pm - 2:30 pm at Kilen (KL.2.53) |
| 04-12-2025 | Mahka Moeed, University of Wisconsin | 1 pm - 2:30 pm at Kilen (KL.2.53) |
About us
Head of Department
Christoph Grimpe (cg.si@cbs.dk):
I am a Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Department of Strategy and Innovation at CBS. Prior to joining CBS in 2010, I worked as a Senior Researcher at the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim (Germany). I hold a PhD from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management – in Vallendar (Germany) and master degrees in management and political sciences. My research has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Strategy Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Research Policy, as well as in Nature Biotechnology. I am affiliated with DRUID - the Danish Research Unit on Industrial Dynamics and with the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW). At CBS, I serve as the study director of the MSc program “Management of Innovation and Business Development”. Moreover, I have been appointed as a council member of the Independent Research Fund Denmark.
Collaboration and outreach
SI community
SI faculty is engaged to promote and celebrate new research in order to make a societal impact.
DRUID
DRUID is an international hub for research on innovation and the dynamics of structural, institutional and geographic change.
DRUID is governed in collaboration between CBS, Aalborg University, Aarhus University and University of Southern Denmark. Since 2014, the DRUID director is Mark Lorenzen from CBS/SI.
Videos from the conference’s DRUID Debates and DRUID Keynotes are widely used for teaching at PhD and MA levels.
Research and publications (Panel content)
Our research
The Department of Strategy and Innovation is a research intensive department within four main areas, namely Strategy and Innovation - as indicated by the name - as well as Entrepreneurship and International Business.
The department’s ambition is to create an internationally leading environment for research and teaching in strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and international business. The theoretical foundation for research in these areas is eclectic, combining strategy and internationalization theory with insights from organizational economics, sociology, psychology, and economic geography. The study of strategy and innovation has traditionally occupied a central position in the department’s research profile, whereas the study of entrepreneurship has developed through the recent years. Methodologically, the department places considerable emphasis on empirical methods, featuring qualitative interview studies, surveys, register data, or experiments.
Our primary research outlet is publications, but we are also involved in various research collaborations with external partners. Some of our projects are described in more detail in the left side menu.
Publications
See all publicationsmarts 2026
Nourishing Sustainability Innovation
Scientific Trajectories in Industrial Protein Research
Go to publicationdecember 2025
Investments and Financing Challenges of the EU’s Port Managing Bodies
Findings from a Comprehensive Survey
Go to publicationdecember 2025
Evaluating Creative Output With Generative Artificial Intelligence
Comparing GPT Models and Human Experts in Idea Evaluation
Our research units
CBS Maritime is committed to addressing the big question of how to achieve economic and social progress in the maritime industry and aims to create strong partnerships with primary stake holders, partners from the maritime industry, as well as similar research environments at relevant universities and business schools.
CBS Maritime bridges classical management disciplines (e.g. economics and finance, organisation, marketing, management and accounting, logistics and operations research) with neighbouring disciplines that place business in a broader societal context (e.g. business and economic history, law, economic geography, political science, sociology and information systems research).
The research profile is thus based on longstanding business school traditions, and it involves the ability to model, calculate and optimise different business issues but also a critical stance towards methodological and disciplinary constraints.
The MRA is directed by Thomas Roslyng Olesen, with Hanna Barbara Rasmussen's support. Both are part of our department.
Our HUBS
International Business and Global Strategy (IB&GS) HUB.
The IB&GS Hub is research-based. It aims to establish a forum within SI to discuss research in progress and research ideas and to foster collaboration among its members. The Hub also intends to outreach scholars in the field outside SI to enrich the conversation. The ambition of the Hub is to facilitate research outputs in top-field academic journals that contribute to the academic discourse in international business and global strategy but also active research links with other academic institutions and industry stakeholders.
Contact persons: Marcus Møller Larsen and Grazia Santangelo
Entrepreneurship HUB
The aim of the entrepreneurship (ENT) Hub is to organize activities around three broad areas: research, teaching, and external collaborations with the Danish entrepreneurial ecosystem (with focus on Copenhagen). We believe this hub can support at least one of the department’s key areas (Entrepreneurship) in both research and teaching activities. We also believe our proposed activities can increase the visibility of our department in the Danish entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Contact persons: Jose Mata, Vera Rocha, Ali Mohammadi
HUB on Corporate social (ir)responsibility (CS(I)R).
This hub is centrally concerned with both corporate social responsibility, ‘do good’ behaviours of companies, and corporate social irresponsibility, when company practices do not meet stakeholder behaviours. In the hub we look at all four domains identified by the Global Reporting Initiative, i.e. the natural environment, labour practices, human rights, and impact on society. The main aim of the hub is to improve the quality and quantity of research at SI in this space. Secondary aims are to increase collaboration in the department on this topic, to consider opportunities for (joint) research funding, and to look for ways to disseminate research into (CBS) teaching as well as externally. This hub primarily touches upon the strategy and international business areas of SI, but potentially also upon innovation (CS(i)R issues in innovation) and entrepreneurship (CS(i)R issues in startups). The connection to strategy comes from the strategic implications of CS(i)R work in the hub on larger, established firms.
Contact person: Michael Mol
People Hub
People Hub’s primary goal is to stimulate and advance excellent management research dealing with individual/people-based decisions or outcomes. For this purpose, the hub envisons creating and fostering a vibrant network of researchers working on issues such as inventors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, refugees, network brokers, genders, TMTs, hirings, redeployments, etc. People Hub is explicitly designed to span all four topical pillars of the department and facilitate an exchange of ideas, theory, methodologies or data. With its inception, People Hub will be SI’s platform from which a shared pool of knowledge on related topics emerges, collaborative research projects are started and new colleagues can become part of the research community quickly. In the medium to long term, People Hub will also likely be enabling its members to collaborate in new or existing teaching activities, potentially including the Nordic Nine, as well as joint research grant submissions.
Contact persons: Vera Rocha, Ilaria Orlandi, Ali Mohammadi, Christoph Grimpe and Wolfgang Sofka (chair).
Externally funded projects
Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship
Department of Strategy and Innovation is the proud host of a very prestigious donation from the ‘A.P. Møller and Chastine McKinney Møller Foundation ’. The Foundation has donated 40 million Danish kroner to the establishment of an Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and thus provided CBS with the opportunity to strengthen its research and education activities within entrepreneurship.
Digital Markets Competition Forum
The DMC Forum is an initiative to bridge academic research and practice to discuss the different perspectives on the ways digital platforms create value in the digital economy and the pressing challenges for competition regulation in digital markets.
Ongoing:
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Education (Panel content)
Our programmes
The teaching of the department is very diverse across programs and areas and largely falls within the four research areas of the department, i.e. strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship and international business. Moreover, the department is also involved in teaching the foundations of business studies i.e.: statistics, microeconomics and industrial economics. Hence, the staff of the department is involved in teaching of bachelor programs, master programs, part time study programs as well as MBA and PhD programs. Among those, the department is home to the two most sought-after master programs at CBS, namely Management of Innovation and Business Development, and Finance and Strategic Management. The department is heavily involved in the different programs in shipping management and logistics on bachelor, master and MBA level, as well as master programs within biotech business and healthcare innovation.
Read more about the various programs:
MSc in Business Administration and Bioentrepreneurship
MSc in Bioentrepreneurship is a full- time two- year (four semesters) programme. You will take courses in advanced biology and learn the business tools and methods from business required to translate scientific research and patents into innovative products and viable business opportunities. Teaching draws on industry experts, high quality academic faculty, real life cases, insight into bio ventures, and a three month internship in one of Denmark’s leading life science companies.
MSc in Business Administration and Innovation in Health Care
With a focus on the unique work context of health care organizations, students will learn to analyse health care innovations as business cases and develop actionable skills for their design and implementation. Courses draw on industry experts, high quality academic faculty and real life cases.
Management of Innovation and Business Development
MSc in Economics and Business Administration (cand.merc.)
Management of Innovation and Business Development focuses on innovation from different perspectives including strategy, project management, entrepreneurship, management control and finance.
Finance and Strategic Management
MSc in Economics and Business Administration (cand.merc.)
Through an understanding of the financial tools, economic organisation and strategic processes of a company, you will learn to provide support for internal decision making, and evaluate the potential risks and outcomes of these decisions.
The Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in International Shipping and Trade has been developed in collaboration with Danish shipping companies and the Danish Shipowners' Association and has close exchange partnership with Singapore Management University (SMU) and Texas A&M University in Galveston. It is a 3-years academic study program providing students analytical skills and competencies within business economics as well as tailored courses in maritime economics, maritime law, and maritime logistics and supply chain management. The program was offered at CBS for the first time in September, 2014.
The Minor in Maritime Business at the Master of Science (M.Sc.) study program in Economics and Business Administration (cand.merc.) gives students the option of complementing their business economics skills and competencies with deep knowledge of the global shipping industry and the workings of international maritime logistics and trade. The Minor is a collection of three courses: 1) "Developments in International Shipping", 2) "Global Transportation and Maritime Logistics", and 3) "Management of Maritime Operations within Supply Chains". It has been offered every fall since 2012.
Our PhD programmes
CBS covers all of the classic fields within business economics and business languages connected with the management and operation of public and private companies – for example, marketing, finance, accounting, management accounting and organisation. In addition, research is carried out in a number of subjects necessary for the understanding of the challenges that companies face in the global knowledge society. These include not only business law, informatics, international economics, intercultural understanding and media research, but also fields such as philosophy, political science, design, art, anthropology, and business history.
In comparison to other international business schools, this wide range of subjects is unique. There are different routes to becoming a PhD student at CBS.
The PhD programme is subject to the regulations contained in the Ministerial Order on the PhD Course of Study and on the PhD Degree, which CBS has implemented in the programme regulations.
Being a PhD student in SI
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Impact and career paths for our PhD students
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Placement of our recent PhD students (Panel content)
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PhD programmes within Strategy and Innovation
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