Europe’s leading experts on continuous improvement and innovation visited Rockhampton last week to address research students at CQU and local managers at a business luncheon.

Visit organiser Professor Paul Hyland, from CQU’s Faculty of Business & Law, said Professor Harry Boer and Professor John Bessant had worked extensively with small and medium-sized enterprises.

Professor Boer, based in Denmark and The Netherlands, is chairman of the global Continuous Innovation Network and author of numerous articles and books.

He has been involved in several European Union-funded programs involving networks of companies and universities.

The Professor’s main research interest is resourcing, organising and managing the link between day-to-day operations, continuous improvement/learning and radical innovation, so as to improve both the short-term and long-term performance of industrial companies.

Dr Bessant, also a much-published author, is based in the United Kingdom where his areas of interest include the management of discontinuous innovation, strategies for developing high involvement innovation and enabling effective inter-firm collaboration and learning in product and process innovation.

He has acted as advisor to various national governments and to international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank and the OECD.

Professor Bessant is also visiting the University of Queensland, where he is innovator in residence.

The visiting experts addressed a luncheon hosted by the Queensland Government’s State Development and Innovation Department and the Australian Institute of Management.

Photo: Visiting professors Harry Boer and John Bessant with CQU\\\'s Professor Paul Hyland.