Tom Broekel

Tom Brökel ( 28. June 1978 in Kühlungsborn) is a German regional scientist. He is Professor of Regional Innovation at the UiS Business School.. 
==Life==
After his studies of Economics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, he obtained a PhD in Economics from the same university for the thesis “Knowledge and regional innovativeness – theoretical considerations, measurement, and empirical analyses” in 2008 Knowledge und regional innovativeness : theoretical considerations, measurement, and empirical analyses - Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek. He received his Habilitation in Economic Geography from the Leibniz University of Hannover in 2015 for this thesis “National networks of subsidized R&D collaboration - structures, developments, and effects”. Schriftenverzeichnis : zur Habilitation vorgelegte und genehmigte Arbeiten - Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek
He has been working as a research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute of Economics in Jena. From 2008 to 2011, he was a post-doc in the Department of Economic Geography at Utrecht UniversityUtrecht University | Section of Economic Geography - Academia.edu. Subsequently, he became a Juniorprofessor at Leibniz University Hannover, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography Startseite – Institut für Wirtschafts- und Kulturgeographie in Hannover and held this position from 2011 to 2016. In 2017, joined the Department of Spatial Planning and Human Geography of the Utrecht University as an associate professor in Economic Geography. He became a full professor in regional innovation in August 2019 at the UiS Business School. 
Tom Broekel has been involved in research projects funded by the Ministry of Science and Culture of the federal state of Lower Saxony , the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany) and the European Science Foundation and EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. Currently, he contributes to the POLISS project. 
He serves as a reviewer in most of the leading journals in the fields of Innovation, Economic Geography, and Regional science. His teaching encompasses courses on Economic Geography, Advanced Statistics, Social Network Analysis, and the Geography of Innovation. 
==Scientific Contributions==
In his early career, Tom Broekel explored the possibilities of applying nonparametric efficiency analysis to measure the innovation performance of regions. His subsequent work was strongly inspired by Ron Boschma and concentrated on assessing the roles of proximities for knowledge exchange and innovation. Amongst others, he empirically confirmed the so-called proximity paradox: cognitive proximity helps organizations to establish collaboration and engage in joint learning processes. However, the same process prevents them to select optimal collaboration partners in terms of learning and potential benefits for their innovation processes. 
His work on knowledge networks contributed to popularizing the application of social network analysis tools in the field of Economic Geography and Regional Science in general and with respect to exponential random graph models in particular.
In 2019, using data on patents, he introduced a new measure of technological complexity: structural diversity. This measure has been shown to reflect essential features generally attributed to technological complexity and it has been used to confirm the relevance of regions’ capabilities of engaging in complex technologies, as an explanatory factor for their economic growth.
==Research Areas==
His research is focused on the geography of innovation, technological complexity, knowledge networks, the analysis of R&D policy, methods of social network analysis, regional innovation systems, and the relation between renewable energy and tourism. His publications include a textbook and more than 40 articles in refereed journals Publications. His h-index on Google Scholar is 26 with 2500 citations (October 2020)
Category:German people
Category:German scientists
Category:1978 births