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Prestigious Award for Innovative Paper

  • Awards

Great success for Miriam Bird, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at the TUM School of Management (MGT) on the Campus Heilbronn, and her doctoral student Sidney Hribersek: The two researchers have been awarded the prestigious “FGF Norbert Szyperski Technology and Innovation Management Award 2024” for their innovative research article “Uncovering the Influence of CEO Curiosity on Eco-Innovations: Insights from German SMEs”.

In their award-winning article, which Bird and Hribersek presented at the G-Forum in Ingolstadt at the end of September, they discuss the role of CEO curiosity in implementing eco-innovations in German Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). One key finding: CEO curiosity is an important prerequisite for the introduction of eco-innovations.

Based on the Upper Echelons Theory, according to which the characteristics and decisions of executives have a significant influence on corporate success, the authors conducted a large-scale survey among CEOs of German SMEs. The results show that the curiosity of CEOs is a decisive factor for the introduction of eco-innovations to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The study thus offers valuable practical insights for top management teams when selecting CEOs.