Dr Joachim Timlon

Dr Joachim Timlon

The Department of Strategy and International Business
Assistant Professor of Strategy and International Business

Contact details

Address
Department of Strategy & International Business
Birmingham Business School
University House
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TY
UK

Dr Joachim Timlon is an Assistant Professor of Strategy & International Business (SIB), Birmingham Business School (BBS) at the University of Birmingham.

Leads the SIB Department Corporate Governance modules in Birmingham, Dubai, and Singapore with a focus on how the board can contribute to firm value by taking strategic initiatives in innovation, sustainability, and digitalization. Prior he was Lead SIB Seminar (Teaching), Web Lead for the Research Excellence Framework (REF), SIB ED&I Representative, and Director, M.Sc. Advanced Engineering Management Program (AEMP) where he successfully promoted the integration of business-related knowledge and that of advanced engineering in the learning experience of the students, including the incorporation of AI into the syllabus.

Expertise:

  • Corporate Governance & Strategy
  • Innovation Strategy & Creativity
  • Sustainable Growth & Inclusion
  • Green Unicorns

Joachim has a rare track record which combines academic teaching and research with high-level management consulting and managerial responsibilities. Over the course of two decades, Joachim’s teaching and research has centered around organizations as dynamic innovation systems in state of creating value through continuous learning, adaptations, and improvements, bringing innovations to global dynamic markets. As a researcher, Joachim co-founded SOL (Society for Organizational Learning) in Sweden and the European Centre, engaging in sharing ideas and helping corporations to tackle common issues related to change and sustainability. He has an industry background with many years in management consulting, assisting CEOs to refine and renew their companies’ business models and supporting the transformation process required to develop and implement business strategies in practice with sustainable results. Joachim is also an experienced interim manager with recognized skills for co-creating strategies and action plans for bottom-line impact.

Joachim drives the development of the Corporate Governance discipline through disciplinary and pedagogic research. This amalgamated initiative seeks a better understanding of strategies that boards can use and resource allocations to be made with important trad-offs between cost efficiencies and differentiation as well as being right and being fast to create firm value. A special focus is on sustainable growth and long-term development in start-up tech companies, many of which are Unicorns, in the global climate tech ecosystem with explicit focus on reducing GHG emissions or addressing the impact of global warming; applying an institutional lens for how Unicorn companies shape and are shaped by institutions in different ecosystems. It is a careful selection with a variety of aspects including resilience, digital technology, ethics, scale, and inclusion. His practice-based research has been published as highly regarded peer-reviewed teaching cases that come with teaching instructions to ensure maximum learning impact.

With a lifelong love for learning, Joachim’s preferred teaching approach is one of full class member engagement in discussion and reflection by using case studies and other empirical material that has value in real-world learning. His teaching is informed by his own research and the use of the teaching cases. He is an effective, multi-lingual teacher, highly skilled in communication, listening, collaboration and cultural awareness with extensive experience of teaching undergraduate, postgraduate and executive classes in all continents of the world.

By bridging theory and practice, he seeks opportunities to collaborate nationally and internationally with partners to co-create work within his research areas that has significant value, is intellectually stimulating and relevant for the communities of practice engaged in research and business. The central aim of his teaching and research is to impact on and improve human condition in business and society, contributing to making the world a better place to live in.

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.),Gothenburg School of Economics, Department of Business Administration, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2005

Licentiate of Philosophy (Licentiate), Gothenburg School of Economics, Department of Business Administration, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1997

Master of Social Sciences (M.Sc.), Uppsala University, Department of International Business, Uppsala, Sweden, 1994.

Bachelor (BA), Lund University, Department of Business Administration, Lund, Sweden, 1992

Biography

Joachim is a Swedish national with experience from various academic positions, broad knowledge of program management principles and a strategic mindset to lead and develop educational programs. He has taught on Bachelor, Master, M.B.A. and Executive levels at higher education institutions in Europe, Middle East, India, China, South- and North America. He has been an official visiting scholar at fourteen educational institutions (some of the them repeatedly) in nine different countries. His background is in the industry as a management consultant in Strategy and Operations practices with direct experience from a variety of industries, and manager at IKEA Retailing in Rome, Italy. He has international work and living experience from seven countries, is fluent in English, German and Italian, basic knowledge of French and Spanish with Swedish mother tough. At the heart of his works resides an aspiration to contribute to a world we want to live in.

Teaching

Joachim has more than 8000 hours of teaching experience from Bachelor, Master, M.B.A. and Executive levels at higher education institutions in nine different countries in Europe, Middle East, India, China, South- and North America. He has taught marketing (B2B and B2C), sales and export management, strategy (corporate, business and functional) strategic management, sustainability, entrepreneurship, human resource management, international business, cross-culture management. His everyday teaching activities are guided and supported by his pedagogic philosophy, which emulates from the pioneering works of Malcom Knowles on adult learning (Knowles, 1973). This approach is used to develop effective learning environments and approaches to student support and guidance. His teaching role focuses on being a cognitive coach, highlighting the facilitative nature of the educator-student relationship (Biddulph & Osborne, 1984). To meet students’ learning needs, as a mental coach, he uses student centered, collaborative and interactive teaching strategies (Lea et al., 2003; Cooper et al., 1994; Bruffee, 1993).

During the years he has had many opportunities to design, plan and modify learning activities and programs of study for different cohorts of students in the role of program director and module leaders. He incorporates subject and pedagogic research (such as his own) within his professional practice as a teacher to support learning. Recently he was awarded a Fellowship at Higher Education Futures Institutes (HEFi): an academic qualification taken in England that demonstrates a personal and institutional commitment to professionalism in learning and teaching in higher education.

Research

His research is in the intersection of strategy, innovation, digitalization and people in a global context. He is interested in how organizations and individuals in them respond to change in relation to strategies and competitive advantage. In particular he focuses on how new technology (such as artificial intelligence), organizational culture, mind-sets and personality traits (such as novelty seeking) may lead to greater creativity and innovative performance to cope with change in global industries. He uses an interdisciplinary approach, which is needed to analyse, evaluate and improve dynamic processes of embedded and embedding innovative responses. His research is evidence-based with focus on understanding, critically analyzing and improving sustainable implementation, addressing different national and organizational contexts by identifying generalisable aspects and mechanisms of the way such innovations are adopted, adapted and embedded across different contexts. His research is applied in industries, such as Automotive (Ford, Honda and EV), Health Care (Smart Hospitals), French Haute Couture (Guo Pei, Iris van Herpen) and Luxury (Stella McCartney, Tiffany & Co, Van Cleef & Arpels).

’Innovation Strategies to Control and Grow a Global Market Niche - A Case of China's Design Queen Guo Pei in the French Haute Couture Industry’ has been accepted to be published by SAGE Business Cases in June 2020 with clips from the interview when he was filmed by SAGE last year. In progress are another 9 teaching cases on Innovation Strategies in a Global Context that span different industries, from the very high-end haute couture to the deprived and poor at the base of the pyramid.

Publications

Recent publications

Conference contribution

Timlon, J 2020, Innovation Strategy to Control and Grow a Global Market Niche – A Case on China’s Design Queen Guo Pei in the French Haute Couture Industry. in Innovation Strategy to Control and Grow a Global Market Niche – A Case on China’s Design Queen Guo Pei in the French Haute Couture Industry. SAGE Publications.

View all publications in research portal