Serden Özcan (born 1977) is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

and holder of the Otto Beisheim Endowed Chair of Innovation and Corporate Transformation at the

WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management is a private German business school with campuses in Vallendar and Düsseldorf, Germany. As of September 2024, there are 2,007 students (including doctoral students) at WHU, about 251 employees and 5 ...

in Vallendar near Koblenz. During the 2017/2018 academic year the Chair of Innovation and Corporate Transformation moved from Vallendar to Düsseldorf.

Life

He assumed the Otto Beisheim Endowed Chair of Innovation and Corporate Transformation in July 2014 where he is also a

. In October 2017 he joined the WHU Board of Directors as the

Academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

Director of

Executive Education Executive education (ExEd or Exec. Ed) refers to academic programs at graduate-level business schools for executives, business leaders and managers, globally. These programs are generally non-credit and non-degree-granting, but sometimes lead to ...

. Under his leadership, WHU Executive Education qualified in 2018 for the Financial Times Executive Education Open Program rankings for the first time ever, achieving a ranking of 60. Özcan was Associate

Dean Dean may refer to: People * Dean (given name) * Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin * Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk * Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean * Dean Sw ...

for Corporate Communications and a member of WHU's Executive Committee at the

at the WHU

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

campus in 2019/2020. In 2019 WHU ExecEd open programs ranked 45 overall in the FT Executive Education Open Program rankings and in 2020 WHU Executive Education Open Programs made it into the top 40 of the best executive education providers in the world (#39) according to the FT rankings. Since February 2020, he has been Academic Co-Director of the WHU/

IESE IESE Business School is the Catholic graduate business school of the University of Navarra. It was established in Barcelona in 1958 by Opus Dei. From 1963, in collaboration with Harvard Business School, it offers a two-year Master of Business Adm ...

High-Performance Board Member Program. Özcan teaches at the Kellogg-WHU Executive MBA and WHU MBA and WHU Executive Education. Ozcan is also the director of the Advanced Management Program and CIO Leadership Programs. Prior to this, Özcan was an

assistant professor Assistant professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doct ...

(2007) and then

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...

(2009) at the Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics at the

Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen Business School (Danish'': Handelshøjskolen i København'') often abbreviated and referred to as CBS (also in Danish), is a public university situated in Copenhagen, Denmark and is considered one of the most prestigious business scho ...

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

until 2014. During this time, he was also one of the two Academic Directors of the Entrepreneurship Platform, and a visiting researcher at the

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national university, national Public university, public research university in Singapore. It was officially established in 1980 by the merging of the University of Singapore and Nanyang University ...

NUS Business School The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national public research university in Singapore. It was officially established in 1980 by the merging of the University of Singapore and Nanyang University. The university offers degree programm ...

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and

Sabancı University Sabancı University () is a private research university that adopts a liberal arts education approach, established in 1994 and located on a 1.26 million squaremeter campus which is about 40 km from Istanbul's city center. Its first students ...

Graduate School of Management. Özcan received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

Business Economics Business economics is a field in applied economics which uses economic theory and quantitative methods to analyze business enterprises and the factors contributing to the diversity of organizational structures and the relationships of firms wit ...

from the

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

in February 2007. He received an MSc in International Management from the

University of Southern Denmark The University of Southern Denmark (, SDU) has campuses located in Southern Denmark and on Zealand. It offers a number of joint programmes in co-operation with the University of Flensburg and the University of Kiel. Contacts with regional indu ...

Odense Odense ( , , ) is the third largest city in Denmark (after Copenhagen and Aarhus) and the largest city on the island of Funen. As of 1 January 2025, the city proper had a population of 185,480 while Odense Municipality had a population of 210, ...

in September 2003.

Research

The research focus of Özcan and his staff is on

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or service (economics), services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a n ...

, corporate transformation, including the emergence and diffusion of new business models and organizational forms, growth ecosystems,

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

private equity Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...

, evolution of firms,

competitive strategy Porter's Five Forces Framework is a method of analysing the Competition (economics), competitive environment of a business. It draws from Industrial organization, industrial organization (IO) economics to derive five forces that determine the comp ...

and strategic renewal. Özcan is the author of numerous publications in national and international journals including ''Organization Science'', ''Management Science'', ''Journal of Management Studies'', ''Academy of Management Journal'', ''Strategic Organization'' and ''Industry and Innovation''. He receives regular media coverage on the subject of cross-border M&As, digitalisation, supervisory boards and start-ups. His coverage to date includes

Bloomberg News Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg T ...

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

CIO Magazine ''CIO'' is a magazine related to technology and IT. The magazine was founded in 1987 and is now entirely digital. The name refers to the job title chief information officer. ''CIO'' is part of Boston-based International Data Group's enterprise ...

, along with international business and economics publications such as

Handelsblatt The ''Handelsblatt'' (literally "commerce paper" in English) is a German-language business newspaper published in Düsseldorf by Handelsblatt Media Group, formerly known as Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt. History and profile ''Handelsblatt'' was es ...

WirtschaftsWoche ''Wirtschaftswoche'' is a German weekly business news magazine published in Germany. ''Wirtschaft'' means “economy” (including business), and ''Woche'' is “week”. History and profile For many years, ''Wirtschaftswoche'' was published ...

Manager Magazin ''Manager Magazin'' (stylized as ''manager magazin'') is a German monthly business magazine focusing on business, finance and management based in Hamburg. History and profile ''Manager Magazin'' was first published on 1 November 1971. It is ...

Die Welt (, ) is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE. is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group and it is considered a newspaper of record in Germany. Its leading competitors are the ...

Focus (German magazine) ''Focus'' (stylized in all caps) is a German-language news magazine published by Hubert Burda Media. Established in 1993 as an alternative to the ''Der Spiegel'' weekly news magazine, since 2015 the editorial staff has been headquartered in Germ ...

Online,

ARD (broadcaster) ARD is a joint organisation of Germany's regional Public broadcasting, public-service broadcasters. It was founded in 1950 in West Germany to represent the common interests of the new, decentralised, post-war broadcasting services—in particular ...

, Økonomist Ugebrevand and Gruenderszene. Together with his colleague Professor Dr. Christophe Boone, Özcan was a recipient of a research grant by the

Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) The Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO; ) is a Belgian public research council, based in Brussels. The Flemish research council aims to sponsor ground-breaking research and innovation. Much of this work involves supporting researchers and und ...

for their research into Islamic banking.

WHU Campus for Corporate Transformation

Özcan is the founder of the annual WHU Campus for Corporate Transformation conference.

Journal articles

*M Feldman, S Özcan, T Reichstein 2020. Variation in Organizational Practices: Are Startups Really Different?, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, forthcoming. *A Karaevli, S Özcan, A Wintermeyer 2020. The Four IT Competencies Every IT Workforce Needs, MIT Sloan Management Review, to be published in Winter 2021 edition. *C Boone, S Özcan 2019. Oppositional logics and the antecedents of hybridization: A country-level study of the diffusion of Islamic banking windows, 1975–2017, Organization Science, published online April 1, 2020. *Feldman, M., S Özcan, T Reichstein 2019. Falling not far from the tree: Entrepreneurs' prior employment and the transfer of organizational practices, Organization Science 30(2): 1047–7039. *S Özcan, D Sassmannshausen 2018. The China Gambit: When Chinese VCs knock on a German start-up's door. The Case Center Reference No: 818-0019-1. *C Boone, S Özcan 2016. The ideological purity vs. hybridization trade-off: When do Islamic banks hire managers from conventional banking, Organization Science, 27(6): 1380–1396. *C Boone, S Özcan 2016. Strategic choices at entry and relative survival advantage of cooperatives vs. corporations in the US bio-ethanol industry, 1978–2015, Journal of Management Studies, 53(7): 1109–1255. *C Boone, S Özcan 2014. Why do cooperatives emerge in a world dominated by corporations? The diffusion of cooperatives in the US bio-ethanol industry, 1978–2013, Academy of Management Journal, 57(4): 990–1012. *Ö Koçak, S Özcan, 2013. How does rivals' presence affect firms' decision to enter new markets? Economic and sociological explanations, Management Science, 59(11): 2586–2603. *S Özcan, T Reichstein, 2009. Transition to entrepreneurship from the public sector: Predispositional and contextual effects, Management Science, 55(4): 604–618. * *V Mahnke, S Özcan, ML Overby. 2006. Outsourcing innovative capabilities for IT‐enabled services, Industry and Innovation, 13(2): 189–207.

Awards

He has received several awards for his scientific work including the Best Paper Runner Up Prize, Coller Institute of Venture, Israel (2017), Best Paper Finalist, Strategic Management Society (SMS), United States of America (2009), Best Paper Finalist, Israel Strategic Management Conference, Be'er Sheva, Israel (December 27–29, 2009), Winner of Robert J. Litschert - Best Doctoral Student Paper at Business Policy Division, Academy of Management, United States of America (2009). For his teaching, Özcan has received Best Teacher award from WHU's Full-Time MBA II Class (2018), The Danish Society for the Advancement of Business Education (FUHU) Prize for Excellence in Teaching in Denmark (2012), Recognition for “outstanding” teaching and course coordination, Asian Studies Program, Copenhagen Business School (2007).

References

External links

Chair of Innovation and Corporate Transformation at WHU
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ozcan, Serden 1977 births Copenhagen Business School alumni University of Southern Denmark alumni Academic staff of the University of Southern Denmark Living people