Associate ProfessorKrithika Randhawa

Krithika's research centres on strategic decision-making for the adoption, commercialization, and scaling innovation and emergent technologies. With internationally recognised expertise in open innovation, she provides insights and managerial guidelines on its contemporary applications of digital platforms, ecosystems, crowdsourcing, and collaborative business models, all aimed at driving industry transformation and sustainability transitions.

Research portfolio

Krithika's work tackles critical questions: How can organizations promote openness across innovation ecosystems? What roles do such collaborative forms of organizing play in facilitating the adoption of digital technologies? How do managerial choices shape the development of open innovation ecosystems? Positioned at the intersection of open innovation, digital ecosystems, and managerial decision-making, her research program explores how both corporations and startups can leverage these strategies to innovate their offerings, ultimately transforming industries. especially in manufacturing, healthcare, and public policy.

Krithika's research has advanced robust conceptual insights on open innovation.

• Randhawa et al. 2016 - a bibliometric review of open innovation has been featured as an exemplary article for shaping the field with > 875 Google Scholar citations, and in the 99th Citation Percentile (Top1% globally).

In her empirical research, Krithika investigates open innovation at the organizational, ecosystem and individual levels.

• At the organizational level, she examines the capabilities and business models that enable the co-creation of innovation across ecosystems. (e.g., Randhawa et al., 2017 & 2018: on the role of open innovation capabilities and digital platform-based ecosystems; Shaikh & Randhawa, 2022a: on open innovation governance; Randhawa et al., 2021b: on business model innovation). Another research stream advances the idea of 'open social innovation' on the use of crowdsourcing by public, not-for-profit organisations to deliver societal benefits (Schmidthuber et al 2021; Randhawa et al., 2019 - in the 99th Citation Percentile (Top 1% globally).
• At the ecosystem level, she studies how (digital) innovation ecosystems emerge and evolve (e.g., Randhawa et al., forthcoming: on legitimizing digital technologies in open innovation ecosystems; Randhawa et al., 2022: on shaping innovation ecosystems in healthcare; Shaikh & Randhawa, 2022b: on the role of government regulation in building national innovation systems; Randhawa et al., 2021a: on the role of open innovation ecosystems and business model evolution to leverage digital technologies in advanced manufacturing)
• At the individual level, she explores the microfoundations of open innovation: how managers shape (digital) ecosystem and make open innovation project decisions (e.g., Leckel et al 2021: on individual preferences for open innovation platform interactions and design; Wilden et al., 2023: differences in senior and middle managerial decision-making in selecting innovation projects).
• Krithika has received the prestigious Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2024-2027) for a 3-year multi-level study on "Governing Industrial Data Ecosystems: Open Innovation in a Digital Economy". This project will identify governance mechanisms to address data-sharing barriers at the ecosystem, firm and managerial levels to unlock the full potential of open innovation in industrial data ecosystems.

Research impact through industry and policy engagement

Besides high-quality academic outputs, Krithika has also achieved widescale industry and policy impact through her research. Her work on how to develop and govern digital platforms and ecosystems to crowdsource and co-create products, business models and policies has delivered solutions to long-term industry partners in manufacturing, healthcare and public policy.

For example:

• Studies on the government use of digital crowdsourcing for societal impact (Randhawa et al., 2019) - with industry partner Bang the Table, one of the world's largest digital civic engagement platform provider with over 750 public sector clients globally engaging over 9 million people online. Research on public crowdsourcing through civic digital platforms by local governments in Austria (Schmidthuber et al., 2021)
• A policy report 'Australia's Digital Future' (Randhawa & Green, 2022) with a framework of IoT adoption drivers and impact - in partnership with IoT Alliance Australia, the peak national industry body for IoT with over 500 participating organisations and 1000 individual participants.
• Development and implementation of a pioneering R&D hub (open innovation ecosystem) for mass-customised, patient-specific, 3D-printed tumour implants in Australia - in a five-year collaborative Innovative Manufacturing CRC project with Stryker (Fortune500 medical device manufacturer), RMIT University and St Vincent's Hospital. This novel study (Randhawa et al., 2021a) was the finalist for the 2022 California Management Review Best Paper Award.
• Research on shaping healthcare innovation ecosystems (Randhawa et al., 2022) - in partnership with the Australian government's Primary Healthcare Networks. This research explores how healthcare service ecosystems emerge and evolve, and how openness can be promoted across innovation ecosystems.
• Global benchmarking of innovative management practices in the manufacturing and health sectors for the Australian Department of Industry and Science, New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development, as well as NSW Health and Queensland Health, in collaboration with the London School of Economics. Related insights have been published in Agarwal et al., (2013, 2014) and Gollan et al. (2014).
• Current research includes a 2024 DVCR Strategic Research Impact grant project with colleagues from Engineering, Medicine and Health faculties focused on commercializing assistive technologies, and an Ignition grant project in collaboration with IIT Madras, the Net Zero Institute, and the John Grill Institute aimed at advancing new energy technologies and sustainability.
• Ongoing projects with (former) PhD students examining the adoption and scaling of emergent technologies like IoT and AI. Key studies focus on the evolution of Thailand's Eastern Economic Corridor for Innovation to promote digital technologies and regional development; the emergence of B2B platform ecosystems centred on the Industrial Metaverse to transform the manufacturing industry; and how established companies can co-innovate with tech startups through corporate accelerators.