About
Dr Anup Karath Nair (PhD, MSc, B-Tech, FHEA), is an accidental academic who is currently Lecturer (Asst Prof) in Strategic Management and Innovation at the University of Liverpool Management School. He holds a PhD in Strategy and Organisation from the Strathclyde Business School, a European Joint MSc in Global Innovation Management from the University of Strathclyde and The Technical University of Hamburg Harburg where he studied as an Erasmus Mundus scholar and a B-Tech in Electrical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India. Prior to his appoint at Liverpool, Dr Nair was Lecturer in Engineering Management at the University of Strathclyde where he also served as Industrial Projects coordinator at the Department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management. Before returning to academia to pursue his post-graduate studies, Dr Nair has enjoyed corporate stints with IBM and SAP Labs, working on R&D projects within the domain of enterprise resource planning and business intelligence. He has also worked on crafting public policy for 'Grassroots Innovations' with the National Innovation Foundation, Government of India. Dr Nair is the recipient of two 'Recognising Excellent Teaching Awards' from the University of Strathclyde. He is also a Fellow of The British Higher Education Academy.
The overarching theme within Dr Nair’s research has been to develop a deeper conceptual, theoretical, methodological, empirical and practical understanding of how strategy and innovation emerge and get realised in practice. His research explores organizational mechanisms for the management of strategy and innovation, predominantly, within technology driven businesses. This is the primary reason for his continued interest in process philosophy, strategy and innovation practices and process research methods as these allow him to investigate and generate the crucial ‘know how’ knowledge sought by business practitioners. His research on strategy and innovation has been published in leading international journals including Human Relations, a Financial Times Top 50 Management Journal. His research on innovation made it to the Finals of the 2019 Max Boisot Annual Award for Best Paper by European Group of Organization Studies. His current research investigates how 'digital disruption' unfolds within firms and what firms can do to respond to the challenges of digital disruption.
Dr Nair has also undertaken numerous successful consulting assignments on strategy, new product development, organisational transformation and business process re-engineering. He has successfully delivered a range of technical and commercial projects for several large and small firms, including, 3M, Unilever, Jaguar Landrover, BAE Systems, Peak Scientific, Turner and Co, Elite Contract Furniture, Kennedy Smith Press, Bioforce UK and Chivas Brothers. As a result of his collaboration, Peak Scientific in 2016 became the only Scottish-based firm to win the prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in both the International Trade and Innovation categories. He is currently leading an internal corporate venturing Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Elite Contract Furniture. Dr Nair welcomes PhD applications from students who, like him, are curious about and interested in developing 'know how' , 'know why' and 'know what' knowledge on strategy and innovation with organisations.