The seminar will take place on Tuesday, February 17th, from 12:00 to 13:00 (HG-05A37).
This is a lunch seminar; please register your attendance by accepting/declining your emailed invitation by Friday, February 13th, at 10 AM at the latest (for catering).
Abstract
A nation’s competitiveness strongly depends on its industry and firms to innovate and improve. Nevertheless, the geopolitical dimension of competitive advantage has been far less visible in strategic management and innovation studies literature. In the last few years, however, intensifying geopolitical and geo-economic competition have triggered debates among national governments how they can preserve their ability to act strategically and autonomously (i.e. strategic autonomy) and produce and use technological knowledge (i.e. technological sovereignty). Against this background, we aim to further the debate by introducing the concept of ‘control points’ - or unique and valuable firm activities for a state’s capacity to act, upon which others in the geopolitical context are dependent. Control points, we argue, thus mix firm-level strategic management concerns with state-level policy concerns. As such, control points not only include classical competitiveness characteristics such as a unique or leading position and a certain degree of dependency. Rather, they also concern an element of positioning from a geopolitical and geo-economic point of view to sustain competitiveness in times of open strategic autonomy and technological sovereignty. In this theoretical paper, we conceptualize the concept and its implications further, and provide future research avenues in line with our conceptual approach.
ABRI Lunch Seminar Amber Geurts 17 February 2026 12:00 - 13:00
About ABRI Lunch Seminar Amber Geurts
Starting date
- 17 February 2026
Time
- 12:00 - 13:00
Location
- VU Main Building
- HG-05A37
Address
- De Boelelaan 1105
- 1081 HV Amsterdam
Organised by
- ABRI and the KIN Center for Digital Innovation
Language
- English
Short Biography
Dr. Amber Geurts is a senior researcher in Innovation Studies at TNO Vector, Center for Societal Innovation and Strategy. At TNO Vector, Amber is spearheading the Transformative Innovation Systems team, and leading the cross-cutting initiative on strategic intelligence for transformative STI policy. In light of recent geopolitical and -economic development, she leads a new proposition that leverages ‘control points’ to address a wide range of public policy challenges surrounding open strategic autonomy and technological sovereignty.
Originally trained as a sociologist, Amber holds a PhD in innovation management and strategy. Her PhD research on firm responses to disruptive innovations in the music industry has won the 2018 ISPIM Best Dissertation Award. Amber also currently serves the European Commission as expert in the high-level DG RTD expert groups on ‘Economic & Societal Impact of R&I’ and ‘Directional Initiatives’.