Dr Federica Rossi has been awarded a £10,000 research grant by the British Academy/Leverhulme for a research project on Innovation Intermediaries and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The project investigates the role of innovation intermediaries (organisations that facilitate business innovation by providing R&D assistance, brokering, bridging and other knowledge-intensive services) in supporting company adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as Robotics and the Internet of Things.
These technologies, characterised by increasing device connectivity, interoperability and automation, may potentially disrupt traditional production processes; but limited research exists into the factors that facilitate their adoption, particularly the role of intermediaries. The researchers address this gap in knowledge by collecting original evidence from case studies of business implementation of such technologies in different sectors and countries (France, Germany, Italy, and the UK).
The project will run until April 2020 and is led by Dr Federica Rossi (Birkbeck), Dr Annalisa Caloffi (University of Florence, Italy) and Professor Margherita Russo (University of Modena-Reggio Emilia, Italy).
