Keith Smith is an Honorary Fellow with the AIRC.  He is Senior Research Fellow in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group, Imperial College Business School, and Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo. He is currently on secondment from Imperial (for 80% of his time) to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in London, where he heads the Science and Innovation Analysis Division within the Science and Research Group.

After training at Cambridge and Sussex universities, Keith Smith has worked extensively on issues in the economics of innovation. From 1990-2000 he was Director of the STEP Group (Studies in Technology and Economic Policy) in Oslo, Norway, and was then at the United Nations University (UNU-INTECH) in Maastricht, working on innovation and development issues. He worked for the European Commission, at the Joint Research Centre in Seville, Spain, on policy issues related to the European Research Area. More recently (2005-8) he was Professor of Innovation at the Australian Innovation Research Centre, University of Tasmania, where he developed and led the world's first innovation census. He has consulted extensively for national governments and international organisations as well as serving on government policy commissions in several countries. His research has concentrated on the nature of innovation processes, on innovation systems theories and public policy, on innovation in low-technology industries and on innovation statistics and indicators. He has published extensively on each of these topics.

Phone: +61 3 6226 7384

Email: Admin.AIRC@utas.edu.au