Dr Aylin Ates
Reader
Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation
Personal statement
Dr Aylin Ates is a Reader in Strategy and Innovation at Strathclyde Business School with an internationally recognised research profile. She is co-leading the University Research Theme “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”. Her research delivers clear academic, policy, and business impact by advancing understanding of how manufacturing ecosystems including SMEs build adaptive and resilient capabilities in response to technological disruption, economic shocks, and sustainability challenges.
Aylin’s work has directly informed international policy and practice, including expert advisory roles for the UNIDO and citations in ILO policy reports on business resilience. Through sustained collaboration with industry and policymakers, her research has shaped debates on SME viability, co-opetition, circular economy and digital transformation within high-value manufacturing ecosystems.
She has secured and led a total of £4.5M external funding from bodies including UKRI, Innovate UK, ESRC, European Space Agency, ERDF, and EU Framework Programmes, with a strong emphasis on knowledge exchange and translational impact. She has delivered multiple high-impact Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) projects resulting in demonstrable organisational transformation, energy and resource efficiency, productivity gains, and new business models.
She is a highly regarded educator, teaching across Master’s and MBA programmes, and brings extensive expertise in strategy, innovation, and growth in dynamic and uncertain environments. With over 80 research outputs and deep industry collaborations, she blends academic rigour with real-world relevance, a hallmark of the Strathclyde MBA/ Exec MBA experience.
She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Strathclyde, and a BSc (Hons) in Industrial Engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Management in Turkiye.
External Roles:
- Expert Evaluator and Rapporteur for the European Commission Horizon programme
- Expert Evaluator for The Swiss National Science Foundation
- Expert Advisor for the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO)
- Expert Evaluator for the National Science Centre Poland
- Co-Editor in Chief, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management
- Editorial Board Member, European Journal of Management & Research-Technology Management
- European Academy of Management – Scientific Council Member, Grants Committee Member, Mentor for Early Career Researchers
- Expert Reviewer for UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships
- British Academy of Management - Member of the Peer Review College, External Reviewer for Grants
Area of Expertise
- Strategic management (with particular reference to manufacturing small and medium enterprises-SMEs)
- Organisational resilience
- Innovation & Digital transformation
- Co-opetition strategies and circular business models in manufacturing ecosystems
I supervise UG, MSc, MBA and PhD/DBA projects in the area of strategic management, performance management, innovation, technology and change management.
Prize And Awards
- Short Listed for The Holland Award 2024 by Research-Technology Management Journal
- Recipient
- 2/4/2025
- Finalist in the 2024 Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) Awards - Best Business Impact and Transformation Award
- Recipient
- 10/7/2024
- Nominee for Strathclyde Business School Teaching Excellence Awards 2023/24 (Category: Student Support and Building a Sense of Community)
- Recipient
- 30/5/2024
- Nominee for Strathclyde Business School Knowledge Exchange Awards (Innovator with Future Impact)
- Recipient
- 1/6/2023
- Best Paper Award at the British Academy of Management Conference 2019
- Recipient
- 5/9/2019
- Nominee for Researcher Development Programme Supervisor of 2017/18 (PGR)
- Recipient
- 2018
Publications
- The sustainability paradox in heritage manufacturing : How institutional complexity undermines environmental goals in SME textile production
- Hyslop-Mavroudis Amy, Ates Aylin, MacBryde Jillian
- 13th EurOMA Sustainable Operations and Supply Chains Forum (2026)
- Advancing innovation ecosystem research : Measurement dynamics and contextual intelligence
- Cetindamar Dilek, Bliemel Martin, Acur Nuran, Ates Aylin, McNabola Aonghus
- IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (2026)
- https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2026.3665869
- Designing, managing and sustaining coopetition : a review of past achievements and future directions
- Konyalıoğlu Aziz Kemal, Ates Aylin, Paton Steve
- Review of Managerial Science (2026)
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-026-00994-2
- Revisiting co-opetition dynamics and key success factors via an intuitionistic fuzzy cognitive mapping approach
- Konyalioglu Aziz Kemal, Ates Aylin, Paton Steve
- BAM 2025: 39th Annual Conference of the British Academy of Management (2025)
- Building business models in complex manufacturing towards the circular economy
- Ates Aylin, Paton Steve, Sminia Harry
- BAM 2025: 39th Annual Conference of the British Academy of Management (2025)
- Prioritising critical success factors in coopetition using an integrated spherical fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (SF-AHP) approach and document coding
- Konyalioglu Aziz Kemal, Ates Aylin, Paton Steve
- EURAM 2025 Conference (2025)
Teaching
Currently, I am the Module Leader for Applied Strategic Management for Stratchlyde MBA/Exec MBA and International Centres.
I design and deliver modules on Strategic Management, Technology and Organisational Change and Consulting within post-graduate MSc and MBA levels as well as post-experience corporate education programmes.
Research Interests
My research interests cover the areas of strategic management, innovation, digital transformation, circular business models, and manufacturing ecosystems mainly in small and medium enterprise (SME) context. I use qualitative data analysis techniques and happy to consider PhD applications in these fields.
Professional Activities
- APMS 2027 Advances in Production Management Systems Conference
- Organiser
- 5/9/2027
- Internal Examiner for PhD Viva (Giovanni Caccavello)
- Examiner
- 12/2026
- Internal Examiner for PhD Viva (Georgia Yolanda Achlada)
- Examiner
- 16/1/2026
- Circular Business Models Skills Development Workshop
- Speaker
- 9/12/2025
- IRI Workshop: Innovation in Action: A Case Study Workshop on Disciplined Innovation
- Speaker
- 30/9/2025
- Expert Evaluator & Rapporteur for the European Commission Horizon Europe Programme
- External Examiner
- 23/9/2025
Projects
- Solvias Executive Leadership Development Programme
- Ates, Aylin (Principal Investigator)
- Dr Ates delivered executive education in strategic management for over 30 Solvias business leaders (located in the US, France, Germany, Switzerland, UK and the Netherlands) in Colmar, France, 19-20 January 2026.
- 19-Jan-2026 - 20-Jan-2026
- Made Smarter Innovation - Amplifying the Impact of Ingeract
- MacBryde, Jillian (Principal Investigator) Ates, Aylin (Co-investigator) Lindsay, Colin (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2025 - 31-Jan-2026
- Student Excellence Award (SEA) - £119,613 (2024-27)
- Ates, Aylin (Principal Investigator) Paton, Steve (Co-investigator)
- Understanding the dynamics of co-opetition to enable space data-as-a-service business models
- 01-Jan-2024 - 01-Jan-2027
- Innovate UK, Interface Standard Innovation Voucher - Innovative Business Model for CASKFILL and CASKLOG - £5,000
- Paton, Steve (Principal Investigator) Ates, Aylin (Co-investigator)
- £5000 budget
- 13-Jan-2024 - 30-Jan-2024
- SBS KE Fund - New business models for Net Zero Carbon Neighbourhoods at Anderson Bell & Christie Towards Net Zero - £5,000
- Ates, Aylin (Principal Investigator) Paton, Steve (Co-investigator)
- Awarded through internal funding at Strathclyde Business School.
Anderson Bell Christie is a Limited Company and Employee-Owned Business based in Glasgow. The company transitioned to Employee Owned in May 2019, and is 100% owned by an Employee Trust.
The projects will focus on facilitating a series of workshops to assist with the development of the strategy to consider a suitable servitised business model for the delivery of the new Zero Carbon Neighbourhoods service offering. - 01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2024
- ReMake Glasgow Innovation Accelerator: Circular Business Models - SBS Budget £57,000
- Ates, Aylin (Co-investigator) Paton, Steve (Co-investigator) Sminia, Harry (Co-investigator)
- This project is part-funded by the Glasgow City Region Innovation Accelerator programme.
Led by Innovate UK on behalf of UK Research and Innovation, the pilot Innovation Accelerator programme is investing £100m in 26 transformative R&D projects to accelerate the growth of three high-potential innovation clusters – Glasgow City Region, Greater Manchester and West Midlands.
The ReMake Glasgow project (Innovation Accelerator Programme) is developing a first-of-its-kind national ReMake hub within the NMIS Digital Factory. The hub will provide the skills and technologies needed to support ambitious manufacturers of all sizes to adopt circularity and extend the life of products and parts.
The aim is to achieve a 99% reduction in CO2 compared to manufacturing from new through processes such as remanufacturing, refurbishing and repairs.
With under 2% of products manufactured in the UK currently designed and reused in this way, the ReMake hub is set to advance sustainable manufacturing by supporting companies to move towards a circular economy.
SBS team supported WP5 - Innovation Support Package. This investigates the potential of value retention innovation support packages that would aid organisations adopt ReMake technologies and practices, such as Circular Business Models, LCA, Design and Cost modelling for ReX and exploitable CPD activities. The results are anticipated to have relevance for the general manufacturing industry, aviation industry, hydrocarbon industry, wind energy industry, academia, and beyond.
The work package 5 lead is Daniel McDaid, from NMIS who is working in collaboration with Scottish Institute for Remanufacture and Strathclyde Business School (Dr Aylin Ates, Dr Steve Paton and Prof Harry Sminia) as the project partners. SBS team had a budget (DI) of £57,000. - 01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2025
Contact
Dr
Aylin
Ates
Reader
Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation
Email: aylin.ates@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 553 6122