In 1996 he returned to academia as associate professor in operations and technology management at the Royal Holloway, University of London, where he stayed until September 2013.
His research interests also cover the fields of innovation, particularly new product development outsourcing for the alternative fuel vehicle, enterprise engineering, and the early startup company.
Using studies based on citation and co-citation tools, Pilkington has made contributions to understanding the development and diffusion of disciplines, particularly in the fields of operations management and innovation.
[9] Pilkington's approach to innovation concerned "product of individual, organisational and knowledge trajectories".
His idea was that "modelling the relationships between observed typologies within each of these spheres, conditions for successful innovation can be identified and failures explained.