Professor Jan ReckerWoolworths and Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, QLD), have commenced a collaboration termed the 'Woolworths Chair of Retail Innovation' initiative. This initiative is funded by Woolworths for the timeframe 2012-2014.
Under this arrangement, Woolworths and QUT will collaborate to deliver and drive innovation research throughout the Woolworths business.
The initiative's objective is to conduct applied research on innovations in business, processes and technology-based systems, and the management of innovation processes at Woolworths. The domain of the initiative is especially on supermarket operations. Topics will address a variety of business, management, process, service and IT-components, and thus require holistic and multi-disciplinary approaches to research.
The project is driven by a demand to deliver innovative transformations to retail operations, processes and business models, with a focus on customer-centric value provision. At the core of this demand are the two foci of (a) exploring and exploiting innovation potential in the retail sector, and (b) creating a culture of innovation within retail organisations.
