Nicolas van Zeebroeck

I am a full-time professor at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (SBS-EM) at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, and currently serve as Adjunct to the President and Rector of the University for IT and digital matters.

My research and teaching cover the economics and strategy of innovation and digitalization. After several years of research on innovation and intellectual property, I now investigate how digital technology affects the performance and organization of firms and industries. My research has appeared in international journals such as Management Science, Research Policy, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Stanford Technology Law Review, Pattern Recognition, or Information Economics and Policy. Next to research and teaching, I am regularly interviewed on digital matters in national media and serve as a consultant and keynote speaker on digital strategy and transformation for private and public organizations.

Since I joined Solvay as a Professor in 2011, I have been academic director of its Master in Business Engineering (from 2011 to 2016) and its Advanced Master in Innovation and Strategic Management (from 2014 to 2016). I also led the EQUIS re-accreditation process of the School in 2013 and 2016.

My education includes a Master in Business Engineering (2001) and a PhD in Economics and Management (2008), both from SBS-EM, and I have been a postdoctoral research fellow at FNRS (from 2009 to 2011) and at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta (in 2009). Prior to joining Solvay for my PhD, I started my career as a consultant at Capgemini.

Areas of expertise

• Economics of information and digital technology
• Knowledge diffusion
• Business process innovation
• Digital business strategy
• Digital transformation

Courses taught

• Introduction to computer science
• Multidisciplinary seminar of science & technology
• The digital firm
• Management information systems
• Digital innovation

Selected publications

• Forman, C. C., & van Zeebroeck, N. (2019, October 01). Digital technology adoption and knowledge flows within firms: Can the Internet overcome geographic and technological distance? Research policy, 48(8), 1-16. [Access: Source / ULB Repository]
• Venturini, R., Ceccagnoli, M. M., & van Zeebroeck, N. (2019, February 01). Knowledge integration in the shadow of tacit spillovers: Empirical evidence from U.S. R&D labs. Research policy, 48(1), 180-205. [Access: Source / ULB Repository]
• Bughin, J., & van Zeebroeck, N. (2017, April 06). The best response to digital disruption. MIT Sloan management review, 58(4), 58479. [Access: Source / ULB Repository]
• Bughin, J., & van Zeebroeck, N. (2017, July 31). 6 Digital Strategies, and Why Some Work Better than Others. Harvard business review. [Access: Source / ULB Repository]
• Forman, C. C., & van Zeebroeck, N. (2012). From wires to partners: How the Internet has fostered R&D collaborations within firms. Management science, 58(8), 1549-1568. [Access: Source / ULB Repository]