Joachim Henkel

Joachim Henkel joined TUM School of Management in 2004 as a full professor of technology and innovation management. He received a degree in physics from the University of Bonn, a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Mannheim, and his habilitation in innovation management at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. He was a visiting scholar at University College London, MIT Sloan School of Management, and at Harvard Business School, and in 2016 spends a sabbatical at Singapore Management University.

He is regularly invited to give research seminars at international universities and business schools. After his Ph.D., he worked for two years with the consulting firm, Bain & Company. He consults for firms in the ICT industries, in particular on IP litigation matters.

In his research, Joachim Henkel studies how firms balance open and proprietary approaches in their efforts to profit from innovation. Specifically, his topics comprise open innovation, user innovation, markets for technology, modularity, patent management, patent infringements, and profiting from innovation. His work has been published, among others, in Harvard Business Review, Rand Journal of Economics, Research Policy, and Strategic Management Journal. He serves on the editorial review boards of Academy of Management Journal, Industrial and Corporate Change, and Research Policy. Three of his former doctoral and habilitation students hold faculty positions at German universities. Since 2015, Joachim Henkel serves as the TUM School of Management’s Dean of Research.

Selected current research projects

Markets for technology: In joint work with Thomas Rønde (Copenhagen Business School), Dominic Distel, and Jan Paul Stein (both doctoral students at TUM), Joachim Henkel explores markets for technology. Specifically, this research studies the acquisition of young technology firms by incumbents and the stability of the market for IP cores in the semiconductor industry.

Patent validity: What is the probability that a randomly selected patent, if challenged in court, would be invalidated? This question is of high relevance both to patent holders as to potential challengers. Joachim Henkel and Hans Zischka (a former doctoral student at TUM) address it using interviews, a survey, and an econometric analysis of German court decisions.

Areas of interest

• Open innovation
• Markets for technology
• Modularity
• Patent management
• Profiting from innovation

Editorship (2013-2016)

• Academy of Management Journal, Member of the Editorial Review Board
• Industrial and Corporate Change, Associate Editor
• Research Policy, Advisory Editor

Key Publications

• Jell, F.; Henkel, J.; Wallin, M.: Offensive patent portfolio races. Long Range Planning 50 (5), 2017
• Baldwin, C., Henkel, J.: Modularity and intellectual property protection. Strategic Management Journal 36 (11), 2015, 1637-1655
• Block, J., Henkel, J., Schweisfurth, T., Stiegler, A.: Commercializing user innovations by vertical diversification: The user-manufacturer innovator. Research Policy 45, 2015, 244-259
• Fischer, T., Henkel, J.: Complements and substitutes in profiting from innovation – —A choice experimental approach. Research Policy 42 (2), 2012, 326-339
• Henkel, Joachim: The risk-return paradox for strategic management: disentangling true and spurious effects. Strategic management journal 30 (3), 2009, 287-303
• Henkel, Joachim: Selective revealing in open innovation processes: The case of embedded Linux. Research Policy 35 (7), 2006, 953-969
• Henkel, Joachim: The 1.5 th mover advantage. RAND Journal of Economics, 2002, 156-170