The weakest link in innovation theories often is their applicability.

Fred Langerak is Full Professor and chair of Product Development & Management in the Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship & Marketing (ITEM) group of the department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences (IE&IS) at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

Fred also serves as vice-dean of the department IE&IS and in the past, among others, as chairman of the ITEM group, as member of the interdepartmental tenure and promotion committee, as vice-chair of the research committee and as acting vice-dean.

Fred’s research, educational and valorization activities focus on means of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the process of conceiving, designing, developing and bringing new products to market, and managing the product post-launch. Topics of particular interest include fuzzy front end management, portfolio management, accelerated product development, lead user involvement, launch strategies and tactics, and capturing market rewards of new product development.

Fred Langerak holds an MSc (1993) and a PhD (1997) from the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam. Before joining TU/e in 2008 he worked first as Assistant and then as Associate Professor of Marketing Strategy and Innovation in the Erasmus School of Economics and the Rotterdam School of Management respectively.

Since 2004 Fred serves as editorial board member of the Journal of Product Innovation Management. In 2005 he co-founded the Dutch chapter of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), acting as board member until 2012. He was ranked number 18 (out of 1718) in the 2012 list of the world’s most active innovation management scholars. He also served as co-chair for the 2014 PDMA's Annual Research Forum in Denver, which is the premier conference for discourse on new product development and innovation research worldwide. In 2015 he received the prestigious best reviewer award for his dedicated service to the Journal of Product Innovation Management and in 2017, as co-author, he received the renowned Christer Karlsson Best Paper Award at the International Product Development Management Conference held in Reykjavik. In 2018 he received a bronze listing in the Journal of Product Innovation Management’s Hall of Fame and one of his co-authored articles was finalist for the 2018 Thomas P. Hustad Best Paper Award. In 2021 he acted as national representative for the PDMA’s best practices research on new product development in the Netherlands.

Besides Fred is also a longtime member of the editorial boards of the Dutch journals M&O, Tijdschrift voor Management en Organisatie and Holland Management Review.

• Product Development & Management Association-Netherlands.
• Product Development & Management Association-USA.