Sally Davenport

Biography

Professor Sally Davenport has a background in the physical sciences with a PhD in chemistry (solid state NMR) and a year as a post-doctoral fellow with Professor Ray Freeman at Oxford University’s Physical Chemistry Laboratory. She moved into the business world while working as a consultant in Britain in the late 1980s and returned to Victoria take up a position teaching the management of science, technology and innovation in 1991. She has been an investigator with, and more recently leader of, three major FRST grants, focused on the growth of high-tech firms especially in the biotechnology sector.  The most recent project looked at firm–level productivity processes and, on the basis of this research, she was appointed as a Commissioner with the New Zealand Productivity Commission, in 2011.

Research Interest

Sally’s research interests range from commericalisation processes in research organisations, business models in high-tech firms, public-private sector stakeholder interactions in the science system, discourses employed by research agents and, being in Wellington, policy issues in science and innovation. Sally has authored a range of refereed publications covering topics from technology management to strategic discourse, and her papers have appeared in journals such as British Journal of Management, Organization Studies, Human Relations, European Journal of marketing, Research Policy, R&D Management, Science & Public Policy, Discourse Studies, European Planning Studies and Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice.