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

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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s 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

November 28, 2023

Sharon Dolmans and Daniele Barresi participate in 21st Erasmus-Descartes Conference

ITEM group researchers take the stage at prestigious conference on Technology Transfer and Quantum Impact.

November 17, 2023

Marcel Bogers secures consecutive spot on Highly Cited Researchers Ranking

Marcel Bogers has once again secured a spot on the prestigious ' Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers Ranking,' recognizing his contributions to the...

More news

Co-creation can serve as the catalyst for the most innovative outcomes. Here’s how.

November 16, 2023

Design of protocol for dynamic governance of corporate blockchain ecosystems

November 2, 2023

Structural stimulus for valorization at TU/e

October 11, 2023

NWO funds research on collaboration in circular agriculture missions

August 31, 2023

All ITEM news

Some of our Research Projects

More research projects by the ITEM group

Research project

SEE-V-Lab

Bridging the gap between entrepreneurship intent and entrepreneurship action

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

Circular Plastics Network for training

To demonstrate that a sustainable future for plastics is possible

Research project

URBANE

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

Research project

Managing knowledge flows

Drivers of the learning curve at customer service

Meet some of our researchers

Assistant Professor

Project Related Publications

See all publications

Our most recent peer reviewed publications

entrepreneurship education

The TU/e 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.

Studyguide page of entrepreneurship education

Work with us

Please check out the TU/e 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
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
Postal address

Atlas 6.402

P.O. Box 513

5600 MB Eindhoven

Netherlands
Secretary

item.ieis@tue.nl

Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing

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

ITEM NEWS

Some of our Research Projects

SEE-V-Lab

Freight Traffic Management as a Service

Circular Plastics Network for training

URBANE

Managing knowledge flows

Meet some of our researchers

Vikrant Sihag

Arjan Markus

Ed Nijssen

Sjoerd Romme

Néomie Raassens

Paul Wiegmann

Thijs Zwienenberg

Duygu Keskin

Isabelle Reymen

Marcel Bogers

Fred Langerak

Alex Alblas

Zahra Shams Esfandabadi

Jeroen Schepers

Sharon Dolmans

Project Related Publications

Problem exploration for creating value propositions when developing point-of-care solutions

A dynamic perspective on collaborative innovation for smart city development

Crafting and assessing design science research for entrepreneurship

Forging a sharper blade

Unveiling socially responsible licensing

entrepreneurship education

Work with us

Contact

Visiting address

Visiting address

Postal address

Postal address

Links