Advisor - Innovation
Sally Davenport, Ph.D.
Professor Sally Davenport has had an outstanding three-decade long career as an internationally regarded technology and innovation strategy specialist. Now an emeritus professor of Management at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), in Wellington, New Zealand, she is also a Fellow of the International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM). Sally has a background in the physical sciences with a doctorate in Chemistry, specifically nuclear magnetic resonance. She was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Physical Chemistry Laboratory. Upon returning to New Zealand, she developed research interests centered on that science heritage: the commercialization and impact of scientific research, science-based entrepreneurship and the growth of high-tech firms as well as innovation strategy and policy. For the last eight years Sally was Director of ‘Science for Technological Innovation’, a NZ$106m mission-led National Science Challenge, which was charged with “enhancing the capacity of New Zealand to use physical sciences and engineering for economic benefit”. Major mission-led projects included several med-tech technologies. She has published in journals such as Research Policy, Organization Studies, Human Relations, Technovation and Science & Public Policy. She was also a Commissioner with the NZ Productivity Commission for nine years and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2018 for ‘services to science’.