Marius Meeus, born in Made en Drimmelen, the Netherlands, in 1957. Ph.D. from Tilburg University. Associate Professor of Sociology at Eindhoven University of Technology.
Fellow (1 September 1998 – 30 June 1999)
Our research agenda of the last ten years builds on two basic notions: on one hand on Patel and Pavitt’s critique that innovation studies do not make the theoretical progress it could make, because there is too many numbers without theory, and too much theory without numbers. On the other hand our research agenda builds on the notion that the research strategy of many innovation scholars does not allow for a systematic comparison of the explanatory power of different theoretical frameworks. This implies that every researcher uses his own theoretical framework and comes up with distinct confirmations for the same phenomenon. However an explanation will always be partial and uncertain without ascertaining whether the inferences derived from a singular explanation still hold if the model were to be extended with other variables derived from competing or complementary theoretical perspectives. Hence, in our research we pursue theory driven empirical research which aims at the identification of complementarity of theories or competition between theories by means of empirical exploration and testing of distinct aspects of innovative firm behaviour.
Our findings – published in five separate papers – revealed that our research strategy is indeed productive and makes headway for a new approach of theoretical development in innovation studies.