Research Professor

Douglas Wegner

Douglas Wegner holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil (2011). He joined Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC) in 2021 and currently serves as a Full-time Professor, engaged in both research projects and the teaching of collaborative strategies.

He has held international research appointments as a Visiting Researcher at TU Dortmund University (2019), the University of Seville (2016), and the College for Social Sciences and Humanities of the University Alliance Ruhr, Germany (2024). Douglas is a Research Productivity Fellow of Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). By August 2025, he had supervised four doctoral dissertations and 22 master's theses. He has also coordinated research projects funded by Brazilian agencies on topics such as collaborative governance and strategy.

He is a member of Collab4Good, FDC’s research group focused on grand societal challenges, collaborative governance, innovation ecosystems, and collaborative strategies. He also leads the “Business Ecosystems, Platforms, Networks, and Clusters” track at EnANPAD.

His research has been published in leading international journals, including Industrial Marketing Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Technology Management and Innovation, Journal of Knowledge Management, Creativity and Innovation Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, International Review of Applied Economics, and Journal of Rural Studies.

His research interests broadly focus on the role of collaboration in improving business and society. Over the years, this broad perspective has enabled him to work on a variety of topics and empirical contexts, including small business networks, collaborative governance, networks for social innovation, networking capabilities, paradoxes and tensions in collaborative networks, open innovation, innovation networks, and collaboration to address grand societal challenges. More recently, his work has focused on strategies for developing collaborative digital platforms and digital ecosystems. The intersection of his previous expertise and these emerging themes aims to generate original and relevant knowledge to help society address complex challenges.

His main research topics include:

  • Collaborative strategies, including collaborative governance, networks, alliances, and partnerships.

  • Digital platforms and digital innovation ecosystems, with a focus on their creation and development.

  • Collaboration to address major societal challenges, including circular ecosystems, collaboration, and coopetition to promote sustainable development.

  • Social innovation and social innovation ecosystems, integrating multiple stakeholders to generate innovations with social and environmental objectives.