University of Warwick

Faculty Member, WMG

Professor of Marketing and Service Systems

About

Irene Ng is a Professor of Marketing and Service Systems at the University of Warwick leading the Business+ research theme within the Warwick Manufacturing Group as well as the Director of the International Institute of Product and Service Innovation.

Practice years:
Irene studied Physics, Applied Physics and Computer Programming in her undergraduate degree and became an entrepreneur and practitioner for 16 years before switching to an academic career. During her time in industry she occupied a number of senior positions rising to become CEO of SA Tours and Travel group of companies (Singapore, Malaysia, China and UK), a group of extensive service and hospitality concerns in South-east Asia. She served one term as the Honorary Secretary General of the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents in 1991/92. In 1994, Irene founded Empress Cruise Lines (ECL), and built ECL cruise business into an annual turnover of USD250m. Irene sold Empress Cruise Line to Metroplex Bhd in 1996 and stepped down as CEO but remained with the SA Tours group as the Group Vice Chairman (non-executive). She also served as the ICSA Chartered Company Secretary for the group from 1989-2003. As a pioneer of the cruise business in South-East Asia, Irene was an active lobbyist for governmental investments into cruising infrastructure in Malaysia from 1992-1997. Her championing efforts through dialogues, conferences and various thought-leading articles earned her the nomination of being one of the top 500 visionaries of Malaysia for the two years of 1996 and 1997.

Academic years:
Irene' doctoral training (beginning 1997 after she sold ECL) was as in Business Economics and Marketing Science at the National University of Singapore and her research lies in the trans-disciplinary understanding of value; understanding, creating, designing, pricing, contracting and innovating based on value, as well as new economic and business models in complex service systems. Starting off as an MSC Research student, the National University of Singapore upgraded her candidature to PhD after the publication of two notable international papers. Irene moved to the UK to take on the lectureship in marketing at the University of Exeter in 2003 and completed her PhD in 2005. Since then, she has published more than 22 international journal articles, 50 conference proceeding, 2 books in the domain of engineering, management, marketing, information systems, economics, education and sociology, She is the author of the book The Pricing & Revenue Management of Services: A Strategic Approach and lead editor of the edited book Complex Engineering Service Systems: Concepts and Research. She was became Senior Lecturer in 2007, Associate Professor in 2008 and obtained her Chair Professorship in 2009. Irene was appointed one of the 6 UK ESRC Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) research Services Fellow in 2008, ESRC/NIHR Placement Fellow and academic advisor to the Cambridge Universty Health Partners in 2009. She was also appointed a Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge the same year. Specialising in service systems and new economic/business models, she is a Principal and Co-Investigator of 3 KTPs, 9 EU, EPSRC and ESRC trans-disciplinary grants totalling £7.9m.

Irene joined WMG, University of Warwick in September 2011, tasked to grow WMG's capability of impactful and cutting edge research and leading practice in the business and management of service systems and digital innovation. She advises and works with Rolls Royce, MoD on new business model of outcome-based contracts and advises various startups on new revenue and economic  models in the digital economy. Her full team’s research can be viewed at http://bit.ly/sswmg and her academic papers at www.ireneng.com

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