Innovation Design

Prof.dr.ir. Elke den Ouden has been (part-time, 2 days/week) a full professor of Business Process Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven University of Technology since August 2008. She was educated as an industrial design engineer (MSc in 1990) at the Delft University of Technology, and received her PhD in Technology Management from the Eindhoven University of Technology in 2006 for her thesis Development of a Design Analysis Model for Consumer Complaints - Revealing a New Class of Quality Failures. Due partly to her experience and network in the industry, she has been appointed part-time professor in the Business Process Design Group of the Industrial Design Department. She is responsible for research in the field of industrial and business aspects of designing intelligent systems, products and services for social/societal transformations. She is involved in the Intelligent Lighting Institute in Eindhoven, where her contribution is researching the added value for various actors and stakeholders of (semi-)public intelligent lighting solutions.

Besides her academic role, she holds a position as a senior consultant for innovation in the Philips Innovation Services group, in which role she advises companies both inside and outside Philips on innovation and product development. She has been working with Philips, where she has held a number of positions as advisor and manager in the field of product innovation, for over 20 years. From 1997 she spent four years in Singapore where she set up an advisory group for the Asia Pacific region. She has been involved in both small and large organisations and innovation projects. She is also involved in the Dutch program Growth Acceleration, that aims to support small businesses in making steep growth in turnover towards 20 million euros. Through her experience she is able to bridge the strategic level of consulting, with the tactical level of structural process improvement, with theoperational level of engineers and designers making the practical design decisions. Her projects have covered a wide range of innovations for the consumer electronics industry, healthcare industry, lighting industry, as well as service organisations in design, software development and education.

She is invited as a speaker on a regular basis: to conduct guest lectures at universities (e.g., Rotterdam School of Management, Delft University of Technology, Cranfield University, Cambridge University, University of Technology Sydney and National University of Singapore), as well as to give in-company talks to professional audiences (Bosch Germany, ONA Maroc, Alliander The Netherlands). She has been invited as a speaker by the Speakers Academy since early 2010.

She is active in many professional networks, such as the Product Development and Management Association (The Netherlands chapter), Association of Dutch Industrial Design Engineers in the Netherlands, and holds a position on the advisory board of the Front End of Innovation Conference Europe.