Wim Naudé is Professor of Economics at Cork University Business School, University College Cork, Ireland as well as Visiting Professor in the research area Technology, Innovation, Marketing and Entrepreneurship at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He is also a Fellow of the African Studies Center, Leiden University, the Netherlands, and co-directs the Research Unit for the Diffusion of Quality AI, a project based at Paderborn University, Germany, and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Previous positions include Professor in Business and Entrepreneurship at Maastricht University, the Netherlands; Visiting Professor Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, UK; Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, Finland; and Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Oxford, UK.

His research is concerned with entrepreneurship, technological innovation and trade as determinants and outcomes of sustainable development and growth. Current work deals with the economics of artificial intelligence; industrialisation and smart manufacturing; technology and inequality; digital entrepreneurship and trade; and the decline in entrepreneurship in the West.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in January 2013.