Dr Viktor Dorfler

Senior Lecturer

Management Science

Personal statement

I am a scholar, consultant, teacher, and speaker; my book What Every CEO Should Know About AI has been published by the Cambridge University Press in 2022.  My scholarly research focuses on talent, creativity, intuition, and the grandmaster-apprentice relationship.  I conducted in-depth open-ended interviews with 20 top scientists, including 17 Nobel Laureates and two Eckert-Mauchly Award winners, in order to understand the thinking of scientists at the highest level of mastery.  As a practitioner, 1999-2004 I spearheaded the development of AI software, a knowledge-based expert system shell, compared various AI solutions, and explored the validity of AI.  In my consultancy work, I advise companies on AI implementation to support complex decisions through modelling expert knowledge and on fostering grandmaster-apprentice relationships to improve organizational learning.  I have been appointed member of the British Standard Institution's Artificial Intelligence Committee (BSI ART/001).

I am Associate Professor of AI Strategy at the Department of Management Science, University of Strathclyde Business School, UK.  I hold two Visiting Professor appointments; one at the Management Department, Faculty of Economics & Business, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia since 2009, and at the Doctoral School of Regional and Business Administration Sciences, Széchenyi University, Győr, Hungary since 2021.

My paper ‘Thinking together: What makes Communities of Practice work?’ became an instant classic, and is continuously one of the most read papers in Human Relations.  Another paper ‘Understanding intuition: The case for two forms of intuition’ is one of the most read articles in Management Learning.  To date, I have written 30+ journal papers, three authored books, 15 book chapters, and 100+ conference papers, and recently co-edited the Handbook of Research Methods on Creativity.  I serve on the editorial boards of Management Learning and of Academy of Management Learning & Education.

Over the two and half years before the pandemic, I delivered 20 keynote and public talks on Human Mind and AI in New York, London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Lausanne, Birmingham, and Budapest, as well as a TEDx talk.  My talk at the BSI Conference in London in 2020 is available from my YouTube channel.  Based on my 20+ years of research, consultancy and teaching, I argue that in the areas requiring original thinking, extraordinary achievements will come from smart people being supported by smart technology.

 

 

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Expertise

Has expertise in:

    My research, teaching and knowledge exchange activities are intertwined.  In my teaching I use my research results as well as illustrative examples from my consultancy, my consultancy is informed by my research and also provides data as well as new ideas for further research and also on how to teach particular topics, and so forth in cycles.  In this sense my expertise can be divided into two main areas:

    Knowledge and Knowing

    I have done a great deal of research into the personal as well as transpersonal aspects of knowledge and knowing and also worked with various organisations on making better use of what they know.  I can primarily help organisations in fostering their talents, including grandmaster-apprentice relationships.  Related further topics include creativity and intuition at a personal level and Communities of Practice (CoPs) at the transpersonal level.  These topics have strong links to the following topics on supporting these knowing processes with AI.

    Artificial Intelligence

    My research has served as a basis for developing AI software, the Doctus knowledge-based expert system (KBS); in harmony with the above, the focus is on creating qualitative models of expert-level knowledge.  I was leading the development of AI software 1999-2004, and as knowledge engineer I used it to support knowledge workers in general and C-level decision makers in particular in a wide range of decision situations, including outsourcing, product launch, tendering (both applying for tenders as well as evaluating applications), performance evaluation for knowledge workers, medical diagnosis, R&D decisions, and credit risk evaluation.

Prizes and awards

CIAS SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW GRANT
Recipient
5/5/2023
Strathclyde Medal
Recipient
2/8/2022
Finalist for the Most Inspirational Paper of EURAM 2022
Recipient
15/6/2022
Strathclyde Teaching Excellence Award 2022
Recipient
19/5/2022
Tudor Rickards & Susan Moger Award for the best paper published in the Creativity & Innovation Management journal in 2021
Recipient
10/5/2022
Visting Professor
Recipient
2021

More prizes and awards

Publications

Thinking together : what makes communities of practice work?
Pyrko Igor, Dörfler Viktor, Eden Colin
Human Relations Vol 70, pp. 389-409 (2017)
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726716661040
The role of intuition in the creative process of expert chefs
Stierand Marc, Dörfler Viktor
The Journal of Creative Behavior Vol 50, pp. 178–185 (2016)
https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.100
Mashup content for passionate learners : bridge between formal and informal learning
Dörfler Viktor, Baracskai Zoltán, Velencei Jolán
Economics of Communication ICT DrivenDriven Sustainability (2015) (2015)
Creativity and innovation in haute cuisine : towards a systemic model
Stierand Marc, Dörfler Viktor, MacBryde Jillian
Creativity and Innovation Management Vol 23, pp. 15-28 (2014)
https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12050
Understanding intuition : the case for two forms of intuition
Dörfler Viktor, Ackermann Fran
Management Learning Vol 43, pp. 545–564 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507611434686
Performance measurement : challenges for tomorrow
Bititci Umit, Garengo Patrizia, Dörfler Viktor, Nudurupati Sai
International Journal of Management Reviews Vol 14, pp. 305–327 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2011.00318.x

More publications

Teaching

Knowledge & Innovation Management (UG, MOOC)

I have recently developed a new knowledge and innovation management course organised around four themes: the structure of personal knowledge, the processes of personal knowing, the organisational aspects of knowledge management, and innovation in organisations.  This topic also served as the starting point for developing my first MOOC ‘Understanding Modern Business & Organisations’.

Artificial Intelligence (UG, MSc, MBA, MOOC)

Teaching information systems from a managerial perspective in organisational context, my focus in Information Management is on the human-computer connection; i.e. what should be computerised and what left to humans.  The covered technologies range from databases through expert systems, corporate portals and social media and collaboration tools to smart technologies and artificial intelligence.  The most recent development of this topic is embodied in my second MOOC ‘Understanding Information & Technology Today’.

Making Strategy (MBA)

This class originally developed by Prof Colin Eden at Strathclyde, focuses on the process of strategy making using causal maps as transitional objects.  The process is formalised, governed by procedural justice and procedural rationality.  In this class ‘strategy’ is about agreeing where to focus energy, cash, effort, and emotion.  Making Strategy is rooted in the personal construct theory, the resource-based view, competence-based management, emergent strategising, and solving messy problems.

Research Philosophy (doctoral level)

This is a compulsory module for all the research students at the University of Strathclyde Business School. A 5-day intensive classroom-based course is followed by a prolonged online collaborative learning in a virtual learning environment. I encourage students to develop their philosophical stance through independent thinking rather than finding their boxes.

Research interests

My ambitious aim is to develop a dynamic model and possibly theory of cognition.  I have developed, with my collaborators, a model of knowledge levels which serves as a conceptual framework for the empirical investigation into the highest ‘grandmaster’ level of knowledge.  To this end I conducted 20 in-depth unstructured interviews with grandmasters (17 with Nobel Laureates).

My research in knowledge modelling underlies the development of the Doctus knowledge-based expert system (KBS); resulting in new algorithms, software design, etc.  Conversely, I use Doctus as a modelling tool in various other research topics.  The process of knowledge engineering is also a research topic on its own right.

Towards a Dynamic Theory of Knowledge

Models of Personal Knowledge

  • Types of personal knowledge
  • Levels of personal knowledge
  • Personal intuition

Models of Personal Knowing Processes

  • Intuitive and integrated rationality
  • Personal learning
  • Personal creativity

Models of Trans-Personal Knowing Processes

  • Knowledge sharing
  • Master-apprentice relationship
  • Executive coaching

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Philosophy of AI

  • The future of AI
  • Validation in expert systems
  • Reductive reasoning in expert systems

Developing AI

  • Hybrid AI
  • Human + AI
  • 3D concept mapping: Doctus Knowledge Galaxy

Using AI

  • Coaching and kb-DSS
  • Knowledge engineering and facilitating
  • Modelling with Doctus KBS

Knowledge-based Strategizing

Managing innovation and knowledge

  • Knowledge management
  • Innovation management
  • Gamification

Knowledge-based decision making

  • Personal decisions
  • Communities and practice
  • Performance and quality

Research Philosophy and Methods

Philosophical approaches and frameworks

  • Process philosophy
  • Transdisciplinarity
  • Investigating the extraordinary

Methodological approaches and frameworks

  • Reflection and reflexivity
  • Against methods
  • Generalizability through iterative learning

Applied Research Methods

  • Insider Explanatory Phenomenology
  • Intuitive Cyclic Phenomenology
  • Cognitive and causal mapping

Teaching-Learning-Education

Philosophy and Methods of Teaching and Learning

  • Online teaching and learning
  • Grandmaster-apprentice relationship
  • Post-experiential education

 

Professional activities

The Principle of Subsidiarity from a Transdisciplinary Perspective
Keynote/plenary speaker
8/11/2016
Understanding Modern Business and Organisations - 3rd run
Organiser
22/2/2016
Academy of Management (External organisation)
Chair
17/4/2015
Janders Dean Legal Knowledge Management & Innovation Forum
Keynote/plenary speaker
15/5/2015
ECEL 2013: 12th European Conference on E-Learning
Keynote/plenary speaker
31/10/2013
Corvinus University of Budapest, Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies
Visiting researcher
1/9/2023

More professional activities

Projects

Grandmaster Project 1
Dorfler, Viktor (Principal Investigator) Eden, Colin (Co-investigator)
This project explores the cognitive complexity of people at the highest level of knowledge. The background to the project is a conceptual model of knowledge levels which identifies the highest level of knowledge as 'Grandmaster' level. The underlying assumption of the project is that people who got awarded the highest prize in their respective fields, such as the Nobel Prize, achieved the highest level of knowledge in their discipline - they are grandmasters.
01-Jan-2009 - 30-Jan-2015
ISAIA-A: Increasing SME access to intangible asset audits
Dorfler, Viktor (Principal Investigator)
01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2024
Hydrogen Accelerator
Coffele, Federico (Principal Investigator) Burt, Graeme (Co-investigator) Dorfler, Viktor (Co-investigator) Harrington, Susan (Co-investigator)
SE Grant Administered by St Andrews University - Match funding provided through RKES 211195
04-Jan-2021 - 30-Jan-2023
Questionnaire Processing with Artificial Intelligence
Dorfler, Viktor (Principal Investigator)
07-Jan-2020 - 09-Jan-2020
Threshold Concepts across Knowledge Levels – Insights from How These Occur within Autistic People
Dorfler, Viktor (Principal Investigator) Harrington, Susan (Post Grad Student) Akartunali, Kerem (Research Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2018 - 31-Jan-2022
Knowledge Management with System Thinking
Dorfler, Viktor (Principal Investigator) MacBryde, Jillian (Co-investigator) Shpakova, Agnessa (Post Grad Student)
Knowledge Management (KM) has been extensively researched for more than two decades, however the academic literature is still quite disjoined and fragmented. Companies keep facing repetitive KM-related problems that come at high cost, and the solutions that they find are often reduced to installing a new software package that is expected to facilitate knowledge flow across an organisation.
This research departs from a problem observed in practice – a failed KM project in an innovative company, and aims at understanding the reasons behind this failure. It then investigates KM within some of the most innovative companies in the energy sector in an attempt to address the questions found in practice and not answered by the academic literature. Subsequently it sets the following research goals, which help to address identified gaps in the literature: (1) to understand the KM journey that companies undertake, (2) to define the role of technology in this journey, and (2) to explore gamification as a possible contributing aspect of a developed solution.
The research adopts an iterative approach in a form of continuous dialogue between theory and practice, with multiple case study analysis as the research design of the main part of the empirical investigation. And as a result, it develops an organic roadmap of KM that depicts an evolution of KM in innovative companies at the example of the energy sector.
This research contributes of the body of knowledge by:
1. Describing a KM journey that innovative companies in the energy sector undertake in order to achieve excellence, and that consists of three phases: managing explicit knowledge, knowledge sharing and creating new knowledge.
2. Demonstrating that technological component (document repositories) is central to KM only in the first phase and becomes peripheral (with the most useful tool being wikis) starting from the second phase.
3. Opening a new area of research and suggesting that gamification might have a significant impact on KM that stretches far beyond motivation.
4. Questioning that maturity models are an appropriate framework to study the evolution of KM in an organisation.
The research contributes to practice by demonstrating that KM is a learning process rather than a one-time initiative and by creating realistic expectations from the technological support.
The extent of the contribution was discussed with the companies-participants of this study and the board of directors at Durham Energy Institute, being a validation of the findings.
01-Jan-2013 - 04-Jan-2018

More projects