Paul Lillrank

Paul Lillrank has been Professor of Quality and Service Management at Aalto University since 1994. He has served as the Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management for eight years and been Academic Dean of the school’s MBA program.

Paul Lillrank received a Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences at Helsinki University in 1988 after spending six years as a post-graduate student in Japan where he researched quality management in Japanese industry. After graduating he joined The Boston Consulting Group in Tokyo and later in Stockholm, returning to academia in 1992 as Affiliated Professor at the European Institute of Japanese Studies at the Stockholm School of Economics. He has been visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, served as program director at College des Ingenieurs in Paris, and teaches regularly at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. In January 2018 Paul Lillrank was elected chairman of the Aalto Health Platform, a body coordinating health and welfare –related research at the university.

Professor Lillrank has conducted research in several service industries, such as software, telecom, airlines and retailing. For the past fifteen years his focus has been on healthcare. He has been a pioneer in introducing industrial management methods to the study of healthcare service production. He has co-founded the Institute of Healthcare Engineering, Management and Architecture (HEMA) at Aalto, and The Nordic Healthcare Group (NHG), a consultancy. He has been the chief investigator in several research project funded by EU and Finnish national research institutions, and been a frequent speaker and advisor to several healthcare producers and government agencies. His re-search interests are in Health Systems Science, where he has published the first systematic text-book: The Logics of Healthcare in 2018. His current research concerns managerial segmentation principles for analyzing health service production, value-based care, regional service supply systems and frugal innovations in healthcare management.

Education

• Ph.D Helsingin yliopisto (1974 — 1988)
• Doctoral course Sophia University (1982 — 1986)

Companies

• Academician International Academy for Quality (2008)
• Professor Aalto University (1994)
• Founding Partner Nordic 4sight Communities Oy (2011 — 2020)
• Chairman Nordic Healthcare Group (2004 — 2018)
• Affiliated professor The European Institute of Japanese Studies at Stockholm School of Economics (1992 — 1994)
• consultant The Boston Consulting Group (1988 — 1992)