At the Business Transformation Research Group, we study how businesses respond to transformational drivers such as technological innovations, globalization causing market changes, sustainability demands or changes in local conditions such as availability of skilled labor.

The key characteristic of transformational drivers is that businesses need to take changes into account to stay competitive. Responses to external drivers can take different forms: adaptation of new technology (digital transformation), adopting new business models and reorganizing sales or leadership structure (marketing transformation) or changing operations to reduce negative or amplify positive social or environmental impact (sustainability transformation).

Our research is both theoretical/conceptual and empirical:

We develop theories and models to understand and assess current business transformation. In our empirical work, we participate in cross national studies (e.g. under the Erasmus+ programme) but also conduct independent studies to understand the conditions businesses in our vicinity operate under.

Being situated in the northern part of Denmark, an area dominated by clusters of independent SMEs (e.g. wireless communication and green energy), we are interested in understanding, how a dynamic group of SMEs can transform the value creation of a region.

The Business Transformation Research Group is interdisciplinary with expertise in sales, business models, management, finance, and macroeconomics. Our toolkit counts a wide range of scientific methods; from quantitative and qualitative methods to case studies and computational simulations. This enables us to choose horses for courses and focus on our curiosity:

In a world where innovations tend to originate in the US and goods tend to be produced in China, how have small businesses of Northern Denmark kept their competitive edge, and what will it take for them to stay competitive?