I am looking for PhD Students: with interest in studying product development and innovation management, for example: open innovation, absorptive capability and dynamic capabilities, social media, digital marketing, Design-thinking, SMEs, and internationalization. Students with a multi-disciplinary approach are welcomed.

Research Area:  Design-Thinking in Action: Challenges and Management for Innovation Success. 

Awarding Body:  Daiwa Anglo-Japanese foundation.

Research Area: Innovation, Enterprise, and SME Engagement in Emerging Markets: from product innovation to business model innovation

Awarding Body:  the Seed-Corn (pump-priming), University of Sussex, UK. 

Research Area: How Firms Learn About New Product Development in Their Business Networks

Awarding Body: the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA)

Research Area: Marketing in Smart Successful Scotland, Project MISSS

Awarding Body: the Scottish Enterprise

Senior Lecturer of Marketing and Innovation Management, Department of Marketing, Lancaster University Management School 

External Examiner

• University Centre Peterborough, Open University (2023-2027)
• Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University (2016 - 2022)

British Academy Management (BAM, UK)

• Council Member (2023-2025)
• Member, Peer Review College (2022-2025)

Sustainability, Design-Thinking, and Digitalization - the Trinity

To balance business and sustainability is an uneasy task.  Yet it leads to opportunities for sustainable business where the application of design-thinking and innovative approaches such as digitalization plays an important role.  This research project explores opportunities and challenges that firms face when they develop sustainable business.  

Design Driven Innovation

Innovation is at the heart of economic prosperity.  Design Thinking (DT) is the key to drive innovation success.  This project investigates the challenges of applying DT and how firms manage these challenges to enhance innovation success through a cooperation of Lancaster University and Hitotsubashi University Academics.  The outcomes offer strategic guidelines that help businesses and policy makers capitalise on the advances of DT to achieve enhanced business performance. The cooperation promotes cross-fertilization of business practices and know-how across business and country silos, contributing to the improvement of national and global economy.   

Building Market Capability for New Product Development

Through the dual theoretical lenses of absorptive capacity, dynamic capability and market orientation, this project investigates how firms develop market capabilities in new product development.  The extant literature, which largely stems from a technological perspective, reveals the existence of two independent sets of properties embedded in the notion of broader capability building. One set foreground building on knowledge and development of procedures, including elements of ‘path-dependence’ theory, with its associated features of process, position and path.  The other privileges the issues that depart from well-trodden procedures, pointing to destruction, experimentation and change.  This project explores an existence of a simultaneous relationship of two sets of properties in developing market capability.

Public Innovation Funding Programmes and SMEs’ Export Performance

This project studies in what way and to what extent different regional, national and European innovation funding programs help SMEs to expand sales in foreign markets.  Prior research suggests that heterogeneous public programs stimulate different types of innovations in terms of the degree of novelty, the targeted user groups or the targeted competitive advantage. This project involves a longitudinal study by using panel data of German SMEs. 

Behavioural Competencies and Entrepreneurial Funding Resource Orchestration

Although much is known about the importance of competencies for firm survival, little is known about competencies which are specifically beneficial to financial resource orchestration in fringe industries. The project explores what the key behavioural competencies are that relate to financial resource orchestration, and how entrepreneurs develop these competencies.  

Internationalisation, Cooperation and Innovation Performance of SMEs: Evidence from Japan and Germany

This project however studies how the internationalization associates with innovation. We focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and consider the link is moderated by inter-firm cooperation and is contingent by the determinants of product newness, firm size, sectoral importance and country differences.

My research interests are mainly driven from work experience in industry.  My PhD study investigates how firms learn about new product development in their business networks.  ‘Multi-disciplinary’ approach is at the heart of my research development.  My current work mainly entails big data analytics and mixed research methods; specifically, I am interested in the National Community Innovation Survey results in Germany, Japan and the UK (see ZEW Discussion Paper, 16-078, Mannheim 2016).   The research theme that my earlier work has enjoyed the biggest impact is that of B2B marketing, product innovation, global networking (see Industrial Marketing Management, 40 (5), 691-698).  Another stream is that of business networks and management learning (see Management Learning, 46(3), 337 -360). My research has subsequently evolved to look at marketing strategy; network collaboration, product innovation and social media (see International Journal of Online Marketing, 6(3), 15 – 33), contributing to several under revision/review journal papers (see my C.V.).  Since 2019, I involve in the research projects on the topic of Design-Driven Innovation, resulting in several important engagement such as awarded funding and  international workshop.  

I have involved and obtained several research grants from different funding bodies.  For example, working with Professor Susan Hart and Professor Gillian Hogg, I studied the best marketing practices in Scotland, a project sponsored by the Scottish Enterprise.  As a principal investigator (PI), I successfully obtained a research grant from the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) to investigate business network learning in managing product development.  I have also led a research team and won a Seed-Corn pump-priming funding to study innovation, enterprise, and SME engagement in emerging markets.  This research project has generated several further research projects and then publications in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship and SMEs. My research project 'Design-Thinking in Action' has won the research award supported by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation (2019 - 2022)

I am looking for PhD Students: with interest in studying product development and innovation management, for example: digitalization and AI, design-driven innovation, open innovation, absorptive capability and dynamic capabilities, social media, SMEs, internationalization, and cross-country study. Applicants with a multi-disciplinary approach are especially welcomed.  

Weifan Zhang, ‘The Medical Device Market and its Industrial Evolution in China’, University of Sussex.  Weifan has successfully defended his thesis with minor changes on 9 October, 2016.

Undergraduate Studies: 

- Managing Marketing Innovation (MKTG315)

- Marketing Research (MKTG210)

- Introduction to Marketing (MKTG101)

Postgraduate Studies:

- Marketing Management (MNGT602, LUMS, UK)

- Marketing Management (EMMM, EMLyon Business School, Lyon, France)

Rebecca Liu holds an MBA from the University of Missouri (USA) and a PhD from the University of Strathclyde (UK). Her research spans innovation and new product development, business network learning, digitalization and AI, design thinking, SME, and internationalization.

Her work has been recognized with awards from prestigious organizations, including the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation (Daiwa), the Product Development Management Association (PDMA), and the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM), among others.

With over 15 years of commerical experience, Rebecca has held managerial positions in international markets, working for and collaborating with leading golbal organizations such as FedEx, General Motors, Philips Electronics, and PA consulting Group.

Her research has been published in top-tier journal and presented at renowned international conferences, including Industrial Marketing Management, Management Learning, Industrial and Corporate Change, the British Academy of Management (BAM) Conference, the International Product Development Management (EIASM-IPDM) Conference, and the Journal of Product and Innovation Management (JPIM) Research Forum.