3. My background
For anyone interested in my background, here it is. I started reading philosophy as a hobby when I was 13, but it did not seem like a profession. After Latin school I read mathematics at Leyden University, with as a field of applied mathematics econometrics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. After my studies I did military service, constructing an automated war game for the army staff college in The Hague. My first job was with Shell International, first in The Hague and then in London.
Soon, when Shell tried to push me into a management career, I decided that I would rather do research. At that time I had a wife and two daughters, and my wife could not make headway with her work as a ballet teacher in England, so we returned to the Netherlands, where I joined an institute for applied policy research on small business. From there I obtained a PhD in econometrics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Soon after I was appointed scientific director of the institute, and there I was: manager after all.
So I accepted when I was asked for a full professorship at the business faculty at Groningen University, where I stayed for 13 years. It was a professorship of marketing but soon I managed to change my chair into one on ‘industrial economics’: the economics of industries. I was appointed director of a research institute cum PhD school, with the task to bring together economics, business studies and regional science. I thought the time was right to achieve that integration but it was blocked by fundamental differences in scientific outlook between economics and business. This led to much conflict and while we managed to put up a facade in fact we failed.
So I left for a chair in ‘organizational dynamics’ at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. From there I took early retirement and shifted to a part time job as professor in ‘innovation policy’ at Tilburg University, which I held until I turned 70 in 2012.
Over the years my research was on entrepreneurship, innovation, collaboration between firms, networks of firms, and trust. Over the years I kept reading philosophy and in the past few years I finally turned to writing books on it.
My wife died recently, in 2012, and as a diversion I started this blog.
Soon, when Shell tried to push me into a management career, I decided that I would rather do research. At that time I had a wife and two daughters, and my wife could not make headway with her work as a ballet teacher in England, so we returned to the Netherlands, where I joined an institute for applied policy research on small business. From there I obtained a PhD in econometrics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Soon after I was appointed scientific director of the institute, and there I was: manager after all.
So I accepted when I was asked for a full professorship at the business faculty at Groningen University, where I stayed for 13 years. It was a professorship of marketing but soon I managed to change my chair into one on ‘industrial economics’: the economics of industries. I was appointed director of a research institute cum PhD school, with the task to bring together economics, business studies and regional science. I thought the time was right to achieve that integration but it was blocked by fundamental differences in scientific outlook between economics and business. This led to much conflict and while we managed to put up a facade in fact we failed.
So I left for a chair in ‘organizational dynamics’ at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. From there I took early retirement and shifted to a part time job as professor in ‘innovation policy’ at Tilburg University, which I held until I turned 70 in 2012.
Over the years my research was on entrepreneurship, innovation, collaboration between firms, networks of firms, and trust. Over the years I kept reading philosophy and in the past few years I finally turned to writing books on it.
My wife died recently, in 2012, and as a diversion I started this blog.
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