Joachim Timlon is an Asst Professor of Strategy & International Business (SIB), Birmingham Business School (BBS) at the University of Birmingham (UoB) where he teaches strategy, sustainability, and innovation. A specialty and uniqueness of his teaching is strategic board governance in start-up Unicorn companies, how boards actively can take strategic initiatives in sustainability, innovation, and digital transformation (DT) to contribute to value creation and corporate performance; and entrepreneurial venture scaling of management practices not only what but also how, where and when.
His research studies strategic choices and practices to grow and sustain rapid growth at scale, AI in strategy, and how to responsibly use generative as well as other forms of AI in start-up Unicorn companies in the global green tech (Greentech) and digital native businesses (DNBs). He has served as Program Director, and currently as module leader of FT MBA Strategy, designed and developed for the campuses in Birmingham, Dubai, and Singapore.
He is an often-invited visiting professor with extensive teaching experience from different levels, such as MBA and EMBA, from a variety of academic teaching institutions around the globe, such as University of the Arts, London; Toulouse Business School (TBS) in France, Luiss Guido Carli in Rome, Italy; Indian Institute of Finance, New Delhi; Seminole State College of Florida; and University of Hawaii at Mano, Shidler College of Business, Honolulu; and key note expert speaker invited, for instance, by the Chinese Government to the Top One Hundred Excellent Female Entrepreneurs Meeting and Exchange Forum in Beijing. Prior to joining the Business School, he was a management consultant at Alexander Proudfoot in London, member of a fast-growing start-up company in Sweden, and interim manager at IKEA in Rome, Italy. He holds a PhD and PhLic from Gothenburg School of Economics and Law, Sweden, and been awarded a Senior Fellowship of HEA (SFHEA).
His teaching is informed by his pedagogic research and published as teaching cases used by himself as well as by many academic institutions around the world. One of his teaching cases - Why You Need an Innovation Strategy: Ford Motor Company tries to turn around with electric vehicles in China – has been used more than 500 times in almost 50 different academic institutions globally. The most recently published cases is a careful selection of different kinds of tech start-up Unicorn companies in Climate Technology (Greentechs), and Data Native Businesses (DNBs).
The cases capture a variety of aspects of sustainable growth and long-term development, such as why digital and AI leaders leave the rest behind, the rise of the AI powered company with AI automation in core processes at scale, not only marketing and innovation but also strategy, ethics from responsibly using generative and other kinds of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (ED&I) in Black Unicorns Founded and Lead by Black Women.
The cases provide students an opportunity to critically analyse how to build a business at scale in different industries, critically reflect on tech-enabling strategic building blocks used, and design and create a model to govern the launch and scale with value while accelerating towards Net Zero; and for teachers, to introduce strategic governance and provide arguments for why and how boards should actively engage in strategy, teach strategic governance with focus on how to evaluate the board’s strategic potential, that is, their engagement and debate of strategy based on their understanding of industry dynamics, and suggest how to spur high-quality engagement as well as assess the strength of the strategy by ‘pressure-testing’ the strategy itself, pinpointing more precisely where the strategy needs work, while generating deeper and more fruitful strategic dialogue.
Expertise:
- Strategy
- Strategic Board Governance in Start-up Unicorn Companies
- Entrepreneurship Venture Scaling (what, how, where, and when to scale)
- AI in Strategy
- AI and Ethics
- Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I)