RTM Lunch & Learn Discussion with Ademir Vrolijk

Event Type: Webinar
Location: Online

Date/Time

Managing Innovation and R&D, Knowledge Management, Leading Innovation Organizations

What kind of solver should you attract for your innovation contest?

Ademir Vrolijk introduces the opportunist-transactor dichotomy, which bridges the gap of whom to attract in innovation contests and how to attract them.

In an RTM Lunch & Learn on Friday, February 3, at 12 pm EST, join us for a presentation on a concrete way to influence who shows up to solve innovation contests. There are different kinds of solvers, and some are expected to do better than others. Opportunists view the innovation contest as an onramp to a new pursuit instead of a temporary undertaking. Understanding solvers according to this new dichotomy may be a better predictor of success, according to the authors’ study. Ademir will offer a deeper understanding of participants that participate in complex contests, and he’ll provide a concrete way to influence who shows up to solve.

Presentation – Feb 3, 2023

Lunch & Learn registrants will receive a copy of the paper, “The Opportunists in Innovation Contests,” which was published in RTM Volume 66, Issue 1.

Ademir Vrolijk

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Toronto

About Ademir Vrolijk: Ademir Vrolijk is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. He studies engineering design in real-world settings and explores how technical organizations can leverage collaborative approaches, like crowdsourcing, to design better systems. He received a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Carleton University and a PhD in Systems Engineering from The George Washington University’s Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Department. He was also a Visiting Researcher at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) at Harvard University. Outside of academia, Vlorijk has worked as a project management professional in the defense and medical technology industries. He also sat on the National Board of the Canadian Space Society.  a.vrolijk@utoronto.ca