Dr Rebecca DeCoster

Rebecca De Coster is a Lecturer in Innovation in the AMEE group and is Course Director for the new MSc Enterprise Engineering. Her background is twelve years in the telecoms industry in a variety of roles including new product development, sales engineering and consultancy. She holds a BEng (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Birmingham University and an MBA from Kingston University. Whilst at Brunel she has completed her Higher Education teaching qualification and a PhD on “Innovation Strategies in Mobile Networking Firms – A Study of Enterprise Realignment.” She previously worked for Ovum (a telecoms research and consultancy firm) where she co-authored two reports into the European telecoms market. Since joining Brunel she has co-authored an article on new technology ventures and presented at three international conferences in this area.

Her research interests are Technology and Innovation Management. This involves identifying the role and content of innovation strategies in enterprise engineering organisations. Emerging technologies for high technology firms are examined from two perspectives: the vendor and the user (the application provider). Innovation strategies for the vendor concern the technological and product innovation needed to address the positioning of the firm in the sector (the industry position), what it is providing to the market (the application provision) and the direction of the firm’s products (the technology development). Innovation strategies for the user concern the utilisation of e&m-business technologies in key business operations. Current research includes:

• The ways in which the use of mobile devices has transformed the practices of enterprise engineering organisations
• The extent to which mobile devices have helped improve the efficiency of enterprise engineering organisations

Rebecca is a Lecturer in Innovation with research interests based on her PhD research into Innovation Strategies for Mobile Networking Firms which comprised a study of Enterprise Realignment. Rebecca joined Brunel University in October 2002 after twelve years in the high technology telecoms sector including product development and business planning roles followed by technical consultancy. At Brunel University she is actively involved leading and teaching business and management modules in the School of Engineering and Design primarily to postgraduate students studying on the programme MSc Engineering Management.

Publications

Journal Papers

(2011) Plant, AVC., Harrison, DJ., Griffiths, BJ. and De Coster, R., Design for life (and beyond), Journal of the Institution of Engineering Designers March/April 2011 16- 21 Download publication

(2011) De Coster, R., A collaborative approach to forecasting product-service systems (PSS), International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology 52 (9-12) : 1251- 1260 Download publication

(2005) De Coster, R. and Butler, C., Assessment of proposals for new technology ventures in the UK: characteristics of university spin-off companies, Technovation 25 (5) : 535- 543

Conference Papers

(2010) Plant, AVC., Harrison, DJ., Griffiths, BJ. and De Coster, R., Design for manufacture and sustainability in new product development, 15th Cambridge International Manufacturing Symposium: Innovation in global manufacturing - New models for sustainable value capture Download publication

(2010) De Coster, R., Bateman, R. and Plant, A., Sustainable development strategies for product provision and manufacturing approaches, 15th Cambridge International Manufacturing Symposium: Innovation in global manufacturing - New models for sustainable value capture Download publication

(2008) De Coster, R., Differences in forecasting approaches between product frims and product-service systems (PSS), 6th International Conference on Manufacturing Research (ICMR 2008) Download publication

(2005) De Coster, R., Technology innovation trends affecting high technology development in emerging sectors, Challenges of Organisations in Global Markets Conference

(2004) De Coster, R., Factors affecting innovation in technology based small firms, DRUID Academy Winter 2004 PhD Conference

(2003) De Coster, R., An application of technology assessment in the UK, PICMET '03: Proceedings of the Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology

Book Chapters

(2010) De Coster, R., Business model renewal: the TIA-MARIA framework for enterprise realignment. In: Lee, I. ed. Encyclopaedia of E-Business Development and Management in the Global Economy. Hershey PA : Business Science Reference (2) : 388- 398

(2009) De Coster, R., A business planning framework for WiMAX applications. In: Lee, I. ed. Handbook of Research on Telecommunications Planning and Management for Business. (Section III: Telecommunications Business Management)