PhD in Innovation and Development area

[Arogya]

Hello all,

I intend to focus on the innovation and development area with a specific interest in the leveraging the impending green transformation in various sectors for furthering development in emerging economies. I append a brief bio towards the end of the post for more information about my experiences and profile.

My search for fitting PhD programs in the US has so far yielded little results. Most of the programs seem too narrow or focussed to allow for a broader research topic like this (this may be a mistaken notion - but this is what I found). Interestingly, I found some professors within the b-schools looking at similar issues albeit more from a firm's perspective. I am confused as to whether I should apply for both policy (limited as the options might be) and b-schools or just narrow my focus to energy policy (an area I have previously worked in). Just to add, Europe does seem to offer a couple of interesting options in the form of UNU-MERIT and SPRU (but I can always apply to them later, it is the December deadline of the US schools that keeping me awake!).

Any help/guidance/advice would be greatly appreciated - many thanks in advance!

Bio:

Undergrad:

Engineering from IIT Delhi, India - top of the class

Work Experience:

6 months as a technology litigation consultant

1.25 years as a consultant to the Planning Commission of India working on Energy and Technology policy

1.25 years on an international research project funded by the Swedish Riksbanken focussing on technology trajectories in green transformation sectors within India, China and EU (project involves extensive stakeholder liaising and international travel)

GRE:

Q:800, V:700

TOEFL: 117

Publications:

2 Journal publications (Annual Reviews (2nd Author), Innovation and Development (First Author), Magazine articles, one co-authored book chapter, Chapters in Indian Government reports (co-authored), several symposia and workshop presentations

Recommendations:

Boss (former Harvard/MIT guy - presently professor at IIT)

Colleagues (Senior professors at Tsinghua and the German Development Institute)

- All the recommendations should be pretty solid (at least that's the expectation!) :-)