Zabala-Iturriagagoitia, Jon Mikel

Jon Mikel Zabala-Iturriagagoitia (Ermua, 1978) graduated as a technical engineer specialising in systems electronics (1996) and in industrial organisation engineering (2002) from the University of Mondragón. He conducted his final degree project in the IDEKO technology centre, part of the Danobat Group, looking at technology surveillance processes and their integration in processes to stimulate creativity. He gained a PhD in Engineering and Innovation from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (2008), where he carried out research on measuring innovation and assessing innovation policies in the INGENIO institute for innovation and knowledge management (CSIC-Polytechnic University of Valencia). During his pre-doctoral training he was a visiting researcher in the Technical Research Centre (VTT) in Finland, enabling him to use the title European PhD.

In 2009 he took up a post-doctoral research position in CIRCLE (Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy) at Lund University (Sweden), where he later obtained a position as Assistant Professor. In 2012 he was awarded a Marie Curie grant from the European Union, enabling him to join Deusto Business School. In 2018 he was a visiting researcher in HEC Montréal (Canada).

He is currently Professor and Researcher in the Faculty of Economics in Deusto Business School (University of Deusto, Donostia-San Sebastián campus).

His specialist areas include science, technology and innovation policies, innovation management and the use of indicators for defining innovation policies, both for business innovation and territorial innovation. The multidisciplinary nature of his work enables him to combine various fields and scientific disciplines to open up new lines of research with scientific and social reach.

In 2016, as a result of his research on Sweden's low efficiency in innovation, and given the potential of public procurement as an innovation stimulus, the Swedish Government set up the National Innovation Council. This organisation has developed a national innovation strategy in which public procurement plays a central role. In January 2017 he was invited by the European Commission to take part in a Mutual Learning Exercise on innovation policy and innovative public procurement which included the participation of 15 member states who received support to define, implement and assess these types of policies. His research into measuring innovative performance in European countries and regions has had a strong political impact. As a result, in November 2018, he was invited by the European Commission to define the new structure and direction of the European Innovation Scoreboard from 2020. Since July 2018 he has been a member of the 100 de COTEC network of experts on technology and innovation in Spain. In September 2019 he was invited by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) to participate as an expert in a project to define innovation strategies and policies in Georgia. In October 2019 he was invited by the same commission to assess science and technology programmes linked to EU structural funds for the period 2007-2013.

His scientific contributions have attracted several prizes and recognitions. He has also been recognised for his contributions as an assessor in prestigious journals including Technology Forecasting and Social Change, Research Policy and Regional Studies. He has been an assessor for the Ibero-American Programme on Science and Technology for Development (CYTED), the Spanish National Agency for Assessment and Futurology, where he assessed projects for the national research plan, and the European Research Council (ERC), where he assessed proposals for the ERC Consolidator programme.

He is Associate Editor at the Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation and at Research Policy and Strategic Management. He actively shares knowledge through the Ekonomiaren Plaza blog at the Diario Vasco newspaper and the iNNoVaNDiS blog on innovation and entrepreneurship published by the University of Deusto. 

Jon Mikel Zabala is a young corresponding member of JAKIUNDE since November 9th 2019.