Background
Martin Fransman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Edinburgh. He now lives in north London.
He is currently working on providing free COVID innovation help, and assistance with designing Innovation Ecosystems, to businesses, governments, hospitals and other organisations through his website, www.freecovidinnovationhelp.com
Martin is an international expert in innovation and competitiveness. He has advised companies large and small and governments all over the world. Fortune 500 companies he has worked with include AT&T, France Telecom, Fujitsu, Mastercard, Michelin, NEC, Nokia, NTT, Siemens, Skype, Telefonica, Toyota, and Vodafone. He has advised many international organisations including the European Commission, ILO, OECD, UNCTAD, UNECLA, UNESCAP, UNIDO, and the World Bank.
His books have won three important prizes. The Joseph Schumpeter Prize (Cambridge University Press), the most prestigious prize in the economics of innovation. The Wadsworth Prize (Oxford University Press) for the best business history book published in the UK, and the Japanese Prime Minister’s Ohira Prize (Cambridge University Press).
He has published thirteen books the most recent of which is ‘Innovation Ecosystems – Increasing Competitiveness’, Cambridge University Press. Those who endorsed this book on its cover include Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate in Physics and former Vice President Research at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories; Sir Geoffrey Owen, former editor of the Financial Times; Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times; Lord Alistair Darling, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Richard Nelson, Professor Emeritus at Columbia University and pioneer of Schumpeterian Evolutionary Economics.
He has been visiting professor at several universities around the world and was NTT Professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo.
He was the Founder-Director of the Institute for Japanese-European Technology Studies (JETS) at the University of Edinburgh. JETS was supported by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and the Japanese electronics companies, NEC and Fujitsu. JETS was launched at a reception in the Tokyo residence of the then British Ambassador to Japan, Sir John Whitehead.
In China he was invited by the incoming government of Xi Jinping to join several Fortune 500 companies in preparing a report for the Chinese government on the role of innovation in China’s future development. He was a member of the expert group advising the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) on the UK’s science and technology relationship with China. He regularly gave lectures on innovation to CEOs and other executives from Chinese state-owned enterprises at the China Executive Leadership Programme (CELP) held each year at the University of Cambridge.
