Anthony Di Benedetto, professor of marketing and supply chain management and Senior Washburn Research Fellow, has been ranked sixth globally among innovation management scholars.

Temple University was also highlighted as one of the top 10 innovation management universities in the world, ranked 10th. Temple and the University of Pennsylvania are the only universities in Greater Philadelphia to be ranked.

“I’ve been very fortunate,” Di Benedetto said. “You want to get semi-famous. You’re not going to be American Idol famous, but you are going to get known in your area.”

Researchers Pianpian Yang and Lei Tao, of Xi’an Jiaotong University in China, collected articles published in the two leading innovation management journals, one of which Di Benedetto has edited for nine years — the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM) —and the top five management journals, determining if the published articles pertained to innovation management.

A count of published articles – totaling 1,229 between 1991 and 2010 – was used to determine the ranking. Scholars were ranked according to the amount of articles they published in that set, with the scholar with the most articles being ranked the highest. Di Benedetto published 16 articles.

In addition to JPIM, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management was the other leading innovation management journal. The top five management journals included Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review and Academy of Management Journal.

When Di Benedetto was a junior professor in the early ’80s, he discovered that there was little research on new product innovation. Most of the work was done in fields such as advertising and sales force management, but there were not many studies where researchers gathered hundreds of products, both successful and unsuccessful, and distinguished the differences between them.

“My supervisor at that time said, ‘If you stick with innovation, you could really make a difference and be a leader, because there are few people and a lot of unanswered research questions,’” Di Benedetto said.

Di Benedetto followed that advice and looked for ways to tap into under-researched fields. One of his most recent publications involved researching the timing of launch, which had not been well addressed by academics. The study drew from the supply chain literature, and it found that completing a lean launch was most efficient. A lean launch would allow a company to buy an option of either releasing their product immediately or delaying it until the timing improved.

Di Benedetto has also received the Research Publication Award for 2014 from the International Association for Management of Technology. He was one of the top 50 researchers in management of technology worldwide, based on publications during the last five years. Di Benedetto also received this award in 2009.

“I’ve always felt that they’ve supported my research here,” Di Benedetto said. “So it’s always been a good place to do research in this area. I don’t want to stop contributing. I’ve got a long way to go at Temple.” –Alexis Wright-Whitley