Dr. Judith Terstriep

Head of Research Department Innovation, Space & Culture

Dr Judith TERSTRIEP (Economist) – is Head of Research Department »Innovation, Space & Culture« at the Institute for Work and Technology at the Westphalian University Gelsenkirchen and lecturer at the Ruhr-University Bochum. She has long-term experience in (social) innovation research. Primary research interests involve the interplay of innovation, (social) relations and knowledge from the perspective of innovation, management and spatial theory. Focal areas of work cover social innovation and its measurement, innovation strategies, regional development, smart and inclusive growth, networks & cluster, sectoral and regional analyses. Judith is well-experienced in the coordination of European, national and regional joint projects and has been appointed as an expert by the European Commission, federal ministries and various foundations. She received her doctorate from the TU Hamburg on the topic »Innovation, Knowledge and Relations – On the Role of Clusters for Firms’ Innovativeness«. Currently, she coordinates the joint project IndiSI – Social Innovation Indicators funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research Germany which develops indicator sets to measure social innovation concerning organizational innovativeness, regional innovation capacity and early indicators in discourse.

Focal Areas of Work & Research:

• Regional development & innovation strategies (including transnational action plans)
• Smart Specialisation
• Social innovation and its economic underpinnings
• Networks, cluster, cluster management & the micro-foundation of clusters
• Sector/regional analyses, benchmarking, evaluation
• Coordination of European joint projects

In her ongoing PhD thesis, she studies cluster effects on firms’ innovativeness and performance. The work is being supervised Prof. Dr. Christian Lüthje (Institute for Marketing and Innovation at the TU Hamburg-Harburg) and PD Dr. Dieter Rehfeld.

Memberships/Further Activities:

• CINet – Continuous Innovation Network
• TCI Research Community
• KIS-IP Horizontal Steering Group (EU)
• Project evaluator for the European Commission
• Former member of the Europe INNOVA Innovation Panel on ICTs

English Publications (Selection)