Professor
Mark Dodgson AO

Mark is Professor of Innovation Studies at the University of Queensland Business School, and Visiting Professor at Imperial College Business School. The focus of his work over the past 30 years has been studying corporate strategies and government policies for technology and innovation. 

Mark is Professor of Innovation Studies at the University of Queensland Business School, and Visiting Professor at Imperial College Business School. The focus of his work over the past 30 years has been studying corporate strategies and government policies for technology and innovation. 

He has been an advisor and consultant to numerous private-sector companies, and to UK, US, Australian and Asian government departments and agencies. Mark has researched and lectured widely throughout Europe, North America, Australia, Asia and Latin America and have been an invited participant at international conferences in over 60 countries. Mark has travelled extensively throughout most regions of Africa.

Mark has been a Director of the Think Play Do Group, a London-based innovation consulting, training and software company, and the Playfulwork company; Non-Executive Director of Nestlé Australia Ltd.; and member of the Advisory Board of Thiess Pty Ltd. and of ecoLegacy.

Previously, Mark worked as a Research Fellow at the Technical Change Centre, London (1983-1985). He was Senior Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex (1985-1993), and was Professor of Management at the Australian National University (1993-2002). He was co-Founder of the National Graduate School of Management at the ANU and was its Executive Director from 1995-1997 and 1999-2001.

Prior to his academic career, Mark was a Marketing Manager for a major hotel chain, a lorry driver and drayman in London for 2 years, and worked on the shop floor for a variety of manufacturing companies producing goods as diverse as animal feeds to sound equipment for rock bands.  

Mark's PhD from Imperial College London studied innovation in small firms. He has an MA in Industrial Relations from Warwick University and a BSc in Society and Technology from Middlesex Polytechnic. Mark is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. 

Mark has published over 100 articles, chapters and reports, and written or edited 18 books, on innovation. Some of his recent books include: The Oxford Handbook of Innovation Management (ed. with David Gann and Nelson Phillips), and Innovation Management: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, four volumes (ed.). Mark has also recently released a book on work in an age of constant change and disruption (with David Gann), entitled: The Playful Entrepreneur: How to adapt and thrive in an uncertain world, published by Yale University Press, and Philanthropy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: An Introduction (with David Gann), published by Palgrave Macmillan.

He has two forthcoming books: China’s Innovation Machine (with Marina Zhang), and Fusion Power: Past, Present and Future (with David Gann).

Mark has been awarded the Eureka Prize, Australia's most prestigious science award, for Leadership in Business Innovation. He continues to teach courses for executives and MBAs on "Innovation Leadership".

As an author, Mark is represented by the Hanbury Agency.

In 2019 Mark was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). This award recognizes ‘distinguished service of a high degree to Australia or to greater humanity’. Mark was awarded the honour for ‘service to education in the field of business innovation strategy, as a researcher, advisor and author’.

Mark has three adult children, Jack, Kate and Rosie, and a grandson, Max.