KISS SIG > SIG Leadership Team

Ian Miles

Professor of Technological Innovation and Social Change

University of Manchester, UK

Ian Miles graduated in psychology from the University of Manchester. After working at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at Sussex University for eighteen years, he joined PREST in 1990. His research interests and methods are wide-ranging.

Much of his work on technological innovation has concerned new Information Technologies, and he has been particularly interested in service industries as users and sources of innovation. IT is especially important for these industries, but other technological and organisational innovations are also highly relevant. Apart from analyses of services in general, Miles is particularly associated with Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS), pioneering research into these industries. Research covers both magaerial and policy dimensions of these issues, and uses tools such as case studies and survey analysis.

Broader interests concern the social and employment implications of changing technology, and the social shaping of technologies; the evaluation of social science and other research programmes; social and other indicators; and foresight methods and practice. (In connection with the latter, he is on the editorial board of several leading journals such as Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Foresight, and the International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy, as well as journals focusing more on services and innovation issues.). He was a director of PREST and a founding director of CRIC, the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition - both now assimilated into Manchester Institute of Innovation Research.

His work has been carried out for many sponsors, including the Economic and Social Research Council, UK government departments (DTI, DEFRA), foreign government departments (in, for example, Brazil, Finland,and Switzerland), international organisations (e.g. the EC's DG Research and DG Enterprise, World Bank, UNCTAD, UNIDO) and private companies (e.g. BT, BNFL). As well as producing numerous reports, he has written over 110 book chapters, over 80 journal articles, and authored and co-authored twelve books, and co-edited eight; not to mention numerous reports. Much of this material (and more by way of presentations, etc.) can be located online.