Prof. Richard K Lester

Professor Lester’s research addresses two broad topics: the organization and management of systems of innovation; and the public and private management of energy technologies.

(1) Energy Systems Innovation and Policy: Lester has had a long-standing interest in the technological development of the energy sector. Much of my research and teaching over the years has focused on different aspects of this subject. This research is currently concentrated in three areas: Accelerating U.S. Energy Innovation, The Future of Nuclear Power and the China Energy Program.

(2) Innovation and Creativity: Pressures for shorter product development cycles, lower project costs, and greater product variety have once again brought to the fore an old problem: how to organize product design and development. The central issue is, as it has always been, the ‘creative spirit’ and the way it seems to conflict with the efficient management of virtually every other aspect of the business. There is a well-developed set of tools for managing other business functions, but creativity is a ‘black box’. We need to open up the black box and see what is inside. At the Industrial Performance Center we have been studying product and service design and development in a variety of sectors in an attempt to find out what such a theory might look like and how it could actually be used. This research has revealed two fundamental processes that are central to innovation. One, rational problem-solving, is well understood and dominates management and engineering practice and economic policymaking. The other, which we refer to as interpretation, is much less well understood, but is the source of much creative output. These two processes are radically different from each other in almost every respect, and require vastly different managerial approaches, yet both are needed to sustain the creative output of both individual firms and entire economies. One area of current research focuses on corporate strategies for preventing interpretive processes from being crowded out by the insistent demands of problem solving, and for combining the two processes effectively within the same organization. A second strand of research focuses on the implications for public policy of the need to cultivate interpretive spaces to boost the innovative performance of national economies.

(3) Local Innovation Systems: The vigor and dynamism of local economies depends on the ability of local firms to adapt to changing markets and technologies by continually introducing commercially viable products, services, and production processes – that is, by innovating successfully. Not all local economies adapt with equal success. The outcome depends on the capabilities of local firms to take up new technological and market knowledge and to apply it effectively. In the Local Innovation Systems Project at the IPC we are investigating the contributions made by local universities to those capabilities. We are carrying out longitudinal, comparative case studies of innovation-enabled transformations in different industries in multiple locations around the world. The locations include both technologically sophisticated and economically less-favored regions. The sectors include both mature and new industries. Some of the locations are home to first-tier universities, some to second-tier universities, and some to no universities at all. A key finding is that the university role in local innovation processes depends on what kind of industrial transformation is occurring in the local economy. New industry formation, industry transplantation, industry diversification, and industry upgrading are each associated with a different pattern of technology take-up and with a different set of university contributions. A current research focus is to extend our analytical framework, which emerged from our studies in advanced economies, to the problem of designing and implementing economic development strategies for universities in emerging economies.