May 2015 | INGENIO [CSIC - Universitat Politècnica de València] - Instituto de Gestión de la Innovación y del Conocimiento

Ana García Granero

Ana completed her PhD thesis in June 2013 at INGENIO and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Grenoble Ecole de Management since September 2014.

INGENIO felt like and still feels like home to me. I landed at the institute as a naïve student, trained as an economist, with a master’s degree in strategy and business administration and with a relatively short experience in the private sector. Naivety is common when one starts a PhD since the reality never matches the initial expectations, and progressing through the thesis towards understanding what science is about (eureka!) is hard.
INGENIO´s research staff were really helpful in guiding me through this journey. I managed to shout out loud “eureka!” after completing a thesis based on the analysis of organizations, corporate innovation and the role of openness and external agents in this process. INGENIO provided me with multiple opportunities to build a research portfolio in line with contemporary academic market needs. For example, I had the chance to participate in a public research project, which sought to answer questions related to the role of openness, R&D, strategy and management practices and innovation in Spanish manufacturing companies. INGENIO also encourages junior researchers to travel abroad in order to learn from different work environments and broaden professional networks. This freedom to pursue research visits allowed me to visit Rotterdam School of Management and Copenhagen Business School, where I engaged in fruitful collaborations with world’s leading scholars, which significantly helped me in becoming competitive in the international arena.
Not by chance I had the opportunity of a post-doctoral position at Grenoble Business School, where I am currently developing my scholarly interests on open innovation, university-industry collaborations, management practices and composition of Top Management Teams.

Cristian Matti

Cristian completed his PhD thesis at INGENIO in March 2015 and is currently employed at the Climate-KIC European Project since April 2015.

I arrived at INGENIO from the UK with no scholarship and a preliminary PhD proposal on a topic, environmental innovation, that was relatively novel to the institute at the time. Before the end of the first year as a Ph.D. student I had the opportunity of becoming involved in a research project funded by the Framework Program of the European Commission. My participation in the project made a big difference for my professional life: therein I gained experience in collecting and analyzing data, designing more research proposals. In this process I also learned from failure, joined several international projects and completed my PhD. A week after my Viva, I got my current job in Brussels for the main EU initiative on Climate Change.
This professional trajectory reflects a lot also the evolution of INGENIO and of its research staff, from whom I learned that contradictions are just another way to see opportunities. The mix of different people regarding knowledge, background and capacities combined with dynamics of a relatively young organization provides a favourable as well as challenging context for those who are prepared to experiment with ideas and explore different paths towards developing new skills.

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Ana García Granero

Cristian Matti