Christian Wedl

Biography

Christian obtained a Master of Science in Management and Technology with a major in Marketing, Strategy and Leadership and a minor in product development from the Technical University of Munich in 2013. During his Masters degree, Christian stayed for half a year at the Technion - Israel Insitute of Technology, where he focussed on entrepreneurship and innovation management. 

Christian worked in both Academic and Industrial environments. Between 2012-13, he worked as a working student for Siemens Technology Accelerator and Siemens Novel Business, the corporate venturing unit of Siemens. In this time he contributed to the spin-off of Caterva GmbH, a virtual power storage provider. Between 2013-14 he worked in internships for Autoloader AG, a German robotics start-up and Youse GmbH, a German user experience consultancy. In 2014 Christian joined the chair of Strategic Management and Innovation as a research associate and doctoral candidate.

Research Interests

Christians research interests are focussing on the intersection between innovation and organizational theory. In his doctoral project, he focusses on understanding how innovation processes, in particular innovation control mechanisms, change over time. With his doctoral project, Christian aims to contribute to the understanding about how control mechanisms can be become enablers for innovation processes.  

Christian has profound knowledge about qualitative research methodologies. His work relies on the grounded theory approach. During his project he conducted 140 interviews and non-participant observations. Moreover, he has good knowledge of quantitative analysis, since his Master thesis focussed on analysing how patent and company company characteristics shape the propensity for patent transactions.

Publications

Conference presentations

• Wedl, C., Ben-Menahem, S., He, F., von Krogh, G. (2018). What is Innovation Anyway? The Co-Evolution of Control Mechanisms and Organizational Innovation Structures. The Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Chicago, USA
  
• Wedl, C., Ben-Menahem, S., He, F., von Krogh, G. (2017). The Creation of Enabling Control Systems for Innovation Processes. The 7th Israel Strategy Conference in Haifa, Israel.
  
• Wedl, C., Ben-Menahem, S., He, F., von Krogh, G. (2017). What is Innovation Anyway? The Co-Creation of Innovation Narratives and Controls. The 7th Israel Strategy Conference in Haifa, Israel.
• Wedl, C., Ben-Menahem, S., He, F., von Krogh, G. (2017). The Enabling or Constraining Formalization of Innovation Process Controls? A Story in the Eye of the Beholder. Druid Conference 2017 in New York, USA.
  
• Wedl, C., Geilinger, N., von Krogh, G. (2015). Open Innovation: Does it Enhance the Speed of Product Development? Strategic Management Society Annual Meeting, Denver, USA

Professional Service

• European Management Journal (Ad-Hoc Reviewer)

Awards and Recognitions

• Nomination for the ODC Best Paper Award; Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2018 (with Ben Menahem, S.; Fang, H.; von Krogh, G.)
• Recipient of the OMT ABCD Best Reviewer Award; Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2019

Supervised Theses

• Aligning operations strategy and business strategy - Cost factor management for value-adding operations in automotive industries (MAS Thesis, 2015)
• R&D Cooperation strategy of multinational companies in the wind energy industry (Semester project, 2015)
  
• Strategy for an automation company to sustain competitive advantage in the era of internet of things (MAS Thesis, 2016)
  
• Information systems implementation: Drivers of user resistance (MSc Thesis, 2016)
• Organizational ambidexterity: The effect of tight customer coupling on firm performance and innovativeness (MSc Thesis, 2016)
  
• Towards solution-centric business - A research into business model innovation (MSc Thesis, 2016)
• How does mutual trust influence the inter-firm knowledge transfer in a collaboration? (MSc Thesis, 2017)
• The internationalization of Swiss SMEs in China - A layer role model (MSc Thesis, 2017)
• Increasing the share of wallet of rental SMEs in the market of Sweden - A case study of Hilti (MAS Thesis, 2018)
• Institutionalization of management innovations: A comparison between the computer science and the civil engineering profession (MSc Thesis, 2018)
• Servitization strategy: A focus on service design and customer value in a move from products to services (MAS Thesis, 2018)
• Analysis of the idea journey of innovative ideas: The case of a construction company (MAS Thesis, 2018; Co-supervision with Vivianna Fang He)
• What are the factors affecting the process of new product idea selection? A Systematic literature review (MSc Thesis, 2019; Co-supervision with Shiko Ben-Menahem)
• Idea Evaluation in the Early Phase of the Innovation Cycle (MAS Thesis, 2019)