Research themes

We believe that to better understand the digital economy's transformative potential, we need insights that will be developed through rigorous, multi-disciplinary research. Our research sheds light on the social, technological, economic, managerial, organisational, political, and ethical implications of the digital economy.

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Themes

Digital entrepreneurship and innovation

  • Emerging working practices in the digital age
  • Entrepreneurial finance, venture capital and business angel investing for digital ventures
  • Entrepreneurial ecosystems
  • Failure and legitimacy in digital entrepreneurship
  • Gender and digital entrepreneurship
  • Scale-ups in the digital economy
  • Blockchain-driven business model innovation in B2B content trading
  • Conflicting tensions emerging with blockchain technology
  • Blockchain applications in supply chain.

Digital platforms and new business ecosystems

  • Business strategy in the age of digital competition
  • Competition in platform-based ecosystems
  • Digital platform innovation
  • Digital platforms and international development
  • Digital platforms, ecosystems performance and governance
  • Digital value creation and capture, and digital business models
  • Ecosystems emergence and evolution
  • Evolution of digital entrepreneurial ecosystems
  • Two-sided markets.

Digital platforms and sustainability

  • Consumer product returns in omnichannel retail
  • Reducing returns rates across all channels
  • Reducing returns fraud and policy abuse
  • Using AI in ethical, fair and trustworthy ways
  • Towards a more sustainable and circular system.

Digital transformation of government

  • Digital government
  • Open data and digital transformation in the public sector
  • Open data, digital transformation and innovation in the public sector.

Ethics and privacy of big data

  • Artificial intelligence and business decision making
  • Ethics and artificial intelligence
  • Governance and business responsibilities of digitalisation
  • Responsible innovation in the digital economy.

Social media

  • Automation and the digital advertising ecosystem
  • Emotions, communication and interactions in social media platforms
  • Evolution of social media platforms.

Research projects

Circular business models for omnichannel retail

Principal investigator: Dr Regina Frei

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End date:

Affiliated centres

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Surrey Institute for People-Centred Artificial Intelligence

A pan-university institute bringing together Surrey’s core AI-related expertise. We have three fellows affiliated with the Institute; Carla Bonina, Annabelle Gawer and Bahareh Heravi.

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DECADE: Centre for the Decentralised Digital Economy

Exploring what we can do to transform the emerging future economy into one that is fair, that has appropriate governance, and maximises opportunities for everyone to create value.

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Product Returns Research Group

An interdisciplinary team working to address the root causes of product returns and returns fraud, influence customer behaviour, and increase sustainability.