Carisma Research Consulting and Training

The Big Idea

Our original big idea was that we could and should learn how to do research which has the potential to influence how people live and work. We started from the realisation that, as management researchers and practitioners, we are not doing nearly enough to advance the management practice and body of knowledge. Universities and university research is lagging far behind what happens in practice, rather than leading the way to innovation. We did something nobody else have done before us and which many thought was a crazy idea. We tried to learn how we could do more meaningful research in management by looking cross-disciplinary at fields like astrophysics, medicine, physics, music, journalism, etc.

The approach

We interviewed four Nobel Laureates, ten of the world’s top-50 management thinkers and one astrophysicist. To complement the interviews, we used information available from other sources, such as the Nobel Foundation, Universities’ websites, scholarly and managerial literature, studying numerous biographical notes, interviews, newspaper and magazine articles. In addition, we talked with two-dozen academic colleagues.

2011 Winner of Emerald Excellence Award - Best New Journal

SOIJ is the first and only journal publishing scientific research and industry experience related to all aspects of the sourcing decision and process. It was founded by Dr. Marco Busi, who is also acting as editor-in-chief, and it is published by Emerald Group Publishing Limited, the world's leading publisher of management research.

SOIJ's mission is to foster and lead the international debate on Strategic Outsourcing by providing a central, authoritative and independent forum for the critical evaluation and dissemination of research and development, applications, processes and current practices relating to the design, implementation and undertaking of initiatives related to sourcing, procurement and purchasing of goods and services and the design and management of global enterprise networks.

We see two roles for SOIJ to span the boundaries across academic disciplines and across academia and industry. For a fuller understanding of what SOIJ is about, please read the editorial to the first issue.

The Client

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE). The Regional Development Agencies for the North of Scotland.

The project was commissioned by the Life Sciences section within HIE.

The Project

In order to inform the key sectors’ development strategy, HIE has initiated a number of studies aimed at identifying gaps and opportunities in each sector.

The project was to develop a mapping methodology that could enable HIE to easily and economically map the industry supply chains of all of the key sectors. This methodology had to be replicable, i.e. could be adopted regardless of the sector under study.

The project was to pilot the methodology on the Life Sciences sector.

The Client

This was a research and development project run internally in collaboration with the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) in Thurso (Scotland) and with the support of HI-LINKS and UHI.

The Project

A large commercial opportunity lies in the marine energy industry and related to making the industry supply chain and project management processes more effective and efficient.

The project was to assess the feasibility of developing a commercial product to be used by companies operating in the wave and tidal energy sector to planning the set-up (and start-up) of their wave/tidal energy devices.