Current fellows

Ingrid’s research circles around the organization of international standards (such as ISO standards) and various certification and accreditation audit practices connected to these standards, which play important roles in today’s hyper-organized society. Her research focuses specifically on attempts to organize such activities into coherent regulatory regimes or social actors. In a more general sense, her interest lies in understanding dense and complex organization outside and among formal organizations and how traditional features in organization theory such as responsibility and control, is distributed not within but outside formal organizations. In her work she collaborates with Professor Nils Brunsson (Uppsala University/Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research, SCORE) and Kristina Tamm Hallström (Stockholm School of Economics/SCORE).

At SCANCOR, she will collaborate with Professor Patricia Bromley at Stanford Graduate School of Education.

Ekaterina’s research interests lie in the field of innovation and technology management. Ekaterina’s postdoctoral project at Stanford focuses on intermediaries of knowledge and technology transfer particularly in the context of university-industry collaboration. Ekaterina is interested to understand how the traditional forms of intermediation in that context (as Technology Transfer Offices) are complemented by interdisciplinary centers and by the emerging forms of intermediaries as e.g. digital platforms: how those co-evolve and how the new forms institutionalize. The study aims to find the ways to facilitate knowledge and technology transfer within organizations and across organizational boundaries by understanding the mechanisms implied by multiple intermediary forms to aid complex university-business relationships, the problems existing and emerging, possible solutions as well as implications beyond the studied context. Ekaterina collaborates with Professor Francisco Ramirez at the Graduate School of Education and Professor Henry Etzkowitz at The International Triple Helix Institute.

My research seeks to understand how technological innovation, product design, and cultural currents in society intertwine in shaping the dynamics of markets and industries. I am especially interested in how changes in the material constellation of products, e.g. formal and functional attributes, influence how actors perceive, understand and valorize products. Additionally, I am interested in the social dimensions of innovation and technological change, especially how cognitive representations of markets shape the technological choices and strategic decisions of actors. In terms of methods, my research mainly draws on qualitative methods such as archival work and interviews, at times combined with quantitative elements. My current research is situated in the hearing aid industry, the market for drone technology applications and the plant-based meat market. My paper co-authored with Stine Grodal titled Big, Beige and Bulky: Aesthetic Shifts in the Hearing Aid Industry (1945-2015) won the best paper award at the 2018 Academy of Management in the Technology and Innovation Management (TIM) Division. At Stanford I work with Prof. Woody Powell at the Graduate School of Education and Prof. Sarah Soule at the Graduate School of Business on a project studying the evolution of the meat substitute market.