Prof. dr. ir. J.A. Buijs (Jan)

Chair in Management of Innovation  
Product Innovation Management      

Biography

Jan Buijs (1948) is now for more than 25 years full professor and chair in product innovation and creativity at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) of the Delft University of Technology (DUT).  He was educated as an industrial design engineer (MSc in Delft 1976), and received his PhD (also in Delft) in 1984. Before working at  the Delft University he spent ten years as a management consultant.
He is responsible for research in management of product innovation, creativity and multi-disciplinary design/innovation teams. He teaches strategy, brand and project management, creative problem solving, innovation and integrated new product development. He is active both in the Bachelors programme as well as in the Strategic Product Design master programme. He has supervised more than 230 graduates and 14 PhD’s.
He has published numerous papers, articles and three books. His first book "Innovation and Intervention" (1984, published in Dutch by Kluwer, Deventer) was awarded  best management book of the Netherlands in the year 1985. His latest book, co-authored by Rianne Valkenburg is "Integrated New Product Development" (published in Dutch by Lemma, Utrecht), now in its third revised and enlarged version (2005).  This book has become the standard book on new product development in the Netherlands.
From 1985 he was editor and from 1991 till 1998 editor-in-chief of the largest Netherlands academic management journal "M & O, tijdschrift voor management en organisatie'  (published by Samsom, Alphen aan den Rijn). During the years 1992 - 1996 he was member of the board of the Netherlands Association of Certified Management Consultants (Ooa). From  2000 till 2007 he was chairman of the European Association for Creativity and Innovation (EACI). A non-profit organisation to stimulate the debate and discussion among professionals and academics in the Creativity & Innovation-field. And since 1991 he is member of the editorial board of Creativity & Innovation Management published by Blackwell (UK).
In 2007 he received the “Leermeester Award” to celebrate his excellent qualities as teacher, researcher and the impact that has in the IDE-domain.

Education

• 1960-1966 HBS Rotterdam
• 1966-1968 Aeronautical Enginering TUD
• 1968-1970 Business Economics (Erasmus University)
• 1970-1976 IDE Delft (MSc IDE)
• 1984 PhD IDE TUDelft

Experience

• 1976 – 1986 Management Consultant at TNO (Innovation Consulting Group) working for Dutch SME’s as well as international Multinational corporations. Executed a lot of Executive training programmes in the Netherlands and abroad.
• 1986 – present Professor and Chair IDE TUDelft

Specialisation / field of research

Innovation (leap like changes in P/M/T-combinations), creativity (analogy thinking) , multi-disciplinary design team work (multi-X-teams) , Management of New Product Development (reaching shared understanding), Fuzzy Front End of Innovation (very early stages of the innovation process), Branded New Product Development (bridging branding, corporate strategy and NPD), Delft Innovation Model (DIM).

Lectures and/or coaches students on:

• Bachelors programme: Business, Culture & Technology
• SPD Master programme: Brand & Product Strategy, Design Strategy Project, Creative facilitation, Preparation for Graduation, Graduation projects
• IPD Master programme: Professional Design Practice

Publications

Click here for an overview of my publications.