Patrick Pollok

Patrick Pollok serves as Assistant Professor at the Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (TIM) at RWTH Aachen University, where he leads the Business Transformation Lab. His research focuses on leveraging external actors—particularly crowds and communities—for corporate innovation and analyzing organizational change processes driven by digitalization and sustainability.

Pollok's primary research interests include Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing Platforms, Digital Transformation, and Business Model Innovation. His work investigates how firms effectively harness external creativity and navigate transformation challenges, with recent studies examining knowledge diversity in teams, platform strategies, and managerial attention allocation in innovation ecosystems. He emphasizes practical applications through industry collaborations.

His publication record demonstrates consistent high-impact output since 2011, with accelerating contributions from 2019-2025. The 15 most recent articles reveal evolving focus areas: early work centered on crowdsourcing mechanics (2015-2019), while recent publications (2021-2025) expand into platform ecosystems, CEO decision-making in cleantech, and attention dynamics in exploratory innovation. Key journals include Research Policy and Journal of Product Innovation Management.

Pollok actively partners with industry to implement innovation methods and develop new business models, translating theoretical insights into practical frameworks. His collaborations with Dirk Lüttgens, Frank Piller, and international researchers highlight strong interdisciplinary networks.

He directs the Business Transformation Lab, which serves as an experimental hub for studying digital and sustainable innovation processes. The lab facilitates industry-academia knowledge exchange through applied projects on crowdsourcing implementation, platform strategy development, and business model transformation.