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Tony Morgan

Tony Morgan

  • Position: Associate Professor in Innovation Management Practice
  • Areas of expertise: Innovation; Innovation Management; Design Thinking; Exploitation of New and Emerging Technologies
  • Email: T.Morgan@leeds.ac.uk
  • Phone: +44(0)113 343 4483
  • Location: 2.20 Charles Thackrah Building

Profile

Tony is an Associate Professor in Innovation Management at Leeds University Business School. He joined the University in 2019 following a successful career in technology and innovation at IBM and a highly successful three-year Visiting Professorship sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering at the University of Leeds.

Tony is an inspiring educator who takes a practical hands-on approach to teaching and learning. 

He developed and leads the flagship "LUBS3990 Innovation Thinking and Practice" module, where students from multiple Schools and Faculties develop key innovation and employability skills with extensive input from external experts from industry. In addition, Tony also co-developed and leads the "LUBS5980M Innovation Management in Practice" MSc module and co-developed and teaches the Emerging and Disruptive Technologies module (part of the university’s online Engineering Management MSc). In addition, he is one of the academic leads for the University's "Innovation Management: Winning in the Age of Disruption" continued professional development online course.

One of his additional focus areas is connecting industry and academia.

During his IBM career, Tony’s roles included Global Technology Services Chief Innovation Officer for the UK & Ireland, Value Creation Centre Innovation Leader and Client Chief Architect. He also led the creation and delivery of a series of education modules for teaching innovation management to experienced IBM technical and business professionals. Tony has led education sessions across many countries in Europe, the USA and in China. In 2018 Tony led the development of teaching materials for innovation and project related skills for the new IBM Digital Skills Academy targeted at early career professionals (including graduates, interns and apprentices). Tony’s focus areas included creative problem solving, commercial awareness, collaboration, communication and story-telling skills and the delivery of short sharp client innovation projects where early career professionals were given the opportunity to use technology to address real world innovation problems in multiple industries.

Tony is the author of the book “Collaborative Innovation: How Clients and Service Providers Can Work by Design to Achieve It” and co-author of the student textbook “Design Thinking for Student Projects” which has been adopted by a number of universities. He is one of the founders of the University of Leeds’ design thinking community.

Research interests

Tony’s research interests include innovation management, design thinking, employability skills and interdisciplinary and team-based learning.

Current research projects include:

  • The ‘I-DE-ES LITE’ fellowship project, which includes a focus on interdiscipiinary and team-based learning.. Find out more details here: https://teachingexcellence.leeds.ac.uk/i-de-es-project/
  • The ‘Design Thinking for Higher Education (DT4HE) project, a collaborative project between the University of Leeds, University of Manchester and Lancaster University exploring how design thinking can be applied in higher education, including use of Advance HE’s Professional Skills Framework. Find out more details here: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/dt4he/

Research groups and institutes

  • Centre for Technology Innovation and Engagement