Wim is Professorial Fellow at UNU-MERIT in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and Visiting Professor in the Technology, Innovation, Marketing and Entrepreneurship research area at RWTH Aachen University in Germany.
He is also Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn (the leading economics research institute in Germany) and Research Affiliate at the ISDC – International Security and Development Centre in Berlin.
For the 2018-2019 academic year, Wim was Visiting Professor at Saïd Business School at University of Oxford. Wim is one of the world’s leading scholars in entrepreneurship, technological innovation and economic transformation. He has been a policy advisor and contributor to virtual all global development organizations including the WTO, OECD, United Nations organizations, EU, World Bank, IFC, and many more. His is a regular keynote speaker and corporate lecturer.
In the area of trade, he has published widely on the impacts of geography, technological innovation and entrepreneurship on exports and FDI and has most recently been a contributor to the 2018 World Trade Organization’s (WTO) World Trade Report, on digital technologies and trade. His books are available on Amazon and Oxford Scholarship online.
His current work is on artificial intelligence, digitization, and the future of (smart) manufacturing, and how trade impact on these. He regularly writes for The Conversation and The Broker in order to popularize and share his work with a larger audience.
Past appointments include Maastricht University in the Netherlands; Affiliate Professor at CENTRUM Graduate School of Business in Peru; the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER) in Finland; at Oxford University, UK; and at North-West University in South Africa, where he was the founding Director of its WorkWell Research and steered as founding chairman the creation of the spin-off company Afriforte (Pty). Between 2005 and 2007 Wim served on the Council of Statistics South Africa, appointed by the then Minister of Finance, Mr. Trevor Manuel.
He holds a Ph.D in Economics from the North-West University and a M.Sc in Quantitative Development Economics from the University of Warwick.
