Technology Innovation Management Review Turns 10

By Joseph Mathieu, Carleton Newsroom

Now 10 years old, Carleton University’s Technology Innovation Management Review (TIM Review) planned to go global from its very first issue.

Launched in July 2007 as the Open Source Business Resource (OSBR), founding editor-in-chief Dru Lavigne wrote in her inaugural editorial: “Initially, the scope of the OSBR will be the province of Ontario, then Canada, and eventually the world.”

At first part of a provincial government-funded project to encourage Ontario’s small and large tech companies, the TIM Review has always emphasized practicality in its 120 issues. The practical applications of research commercialization and knowledge transfer, as well as a large pool of international contributors, has allowed the journal to expand its influence to the rest of Canada and ultimately worldwide.

Published from Carleton’s Technology Innovation Management (TIM) Program, the journal was relaunched as the TIM Review in 2011.  It has grown in global relevance thanks to more than 800 contributors in industry, academia and the public sector from 33 different countries, as well as partnerships with like-minded organizations over the years.

“The TIM program built something that is not only still going after 10 years, but has actually grown massively and is making a real international impact,” says current Editor-in-Chief Chris McPhee. “It’s a product of an ecosystem of people and organizations coming together to build something of value to many.”

Ranked one of North America’s best university business incubators, Carleton’s entrepreneur boot camp Lead To Win has sponsored many themed issues and offered contributions from entrepreneurs and mentors of the program. The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) has published 11 TIM Review themed issues on conferences and other events, and has been an instrumental organization for many co-authored articles. And the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) has added to the theme of living labs in the TIM Review.

Over the decade, the rigorously peer-reviewed journal has brought together many diverse perspectives on issues and trends relevant to technology businesses. Today the journal reaches an average of 25,000 monthly readers, its website has attracted more than one million visitors, and its publications have generated almost 2,900 citations. Nearly a third of its readers are from Asia (31 per cent), 30 per cent are from the Americas and 26 per cent are from Europe.

In an article commemorating the 10-year anniversary called “Reflecting on 10 Years of the TIM Review,” co-authors McPhee, Teemu Santonen of Finland’s Laurea University of Applied Sciences, and Carleton’s Ahmed Shah and Ali Nazari identified its most prominent themes using topic modelling, which is a text-mining technique.

The themes are open source business, technology entrepreneurship, growing a business, research approaches, social innovation, living labs and cybersecurity.

McPhee and his co-authors also looked ahead to the next 10 years of the journal, stating that the TIM Review will continue to provide benefits to its readers, contributors and stakeholders through innovative technologies, community building and even higher growth than in its first 10 years.