It's time to reinvent management by focusing on the aircraft instead of the pilot. Any company will become much more agile and productive when it systematically capitalizes on the intelligence distributed across the entire organization as well as the ecosystem it's part of.

Georges (Sjoerd) Romme is full professor and chair of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His scholarly work focuses on organization design, professionalism, technology entrepreneurship, new business development, and organizational learning and renewal.

Professor Romme’s research and educational work aims to develop a design mindset among management and entrepreneurship scholars. As such, he has been one of the original pioneers who brought the design sciences to the field of management and entrepreneurship, for which he received several awards (e.g. the Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award of the Academy of Management). His fascination with design science is evident from his work on designing circular organizations, educational systems producing deep learning, innovation ecosystems, and incubation environments for deeptech startups.

Together with many TU/e colleagues and professors from other universities, Georges currently supervises a large number of doctoral students working on innovation management projects in the area of the energy transition, circularity of power, innovation ecosystem management, and related topics. He currently also serves as TU/e Ambassador for Entrepreneurship; in this role, Georges supports the Executive Board of TU/e in improving the university's facilities and conditions for student entrepreneurship, academic entrepreneurship and other forms of entrepreneurial behavior.

Georges (Sjoerd) Romme obtained an MSc degree in economics (cum laude) from Tilburg University and a doctoral degree from Maastricht University. He was previously on the staff of Tilburg University and Maastricht University. From 2007 to 2014, Georges served as dean of the TU/e department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences. From 2005 to 2007, he was an International Visiting Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) in the UK. He received several educational and best teaching awards from the European Foundation of Management Development (EFMD) and Maastricht University. Career achievement awards include the 2016 Tjalling C. Koopmans Asset award and the 2019 Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award of the Academy of Management. For his contributions to shaping the Brainport-Eindhoven region into an international hotspot for deep-tech innovation and entrepreneurship, he received the Gerard & Anton HighTech Sparkler Award 2025.

Professor Romme’s publications have appeared in many journals, including Organization Science, Organization Studies, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Technovation, and Research Policy. His monograph ‘The Quest for Professionalism’ (Oxford University Press) received the 2017 Best Book Award from the European Academy of Management as well as the 2017 Responsible Research in Management (RRM) award.