Customers form the most important resource of a firm. Without customers, the firm cannot exist. Think about the heading again. The product always obscures the customer. An obsession with products, production processes and routines creates near-sightedness and makes customers invisible. If this indeed is the case, how can firms successfully maintain their customer relationships, and…
Author: Cers Blogs
Why should I give up flying for the environment if almost three billion people in India and China don’t give a damn?
We’ve all heard this line of argumentation. Heck, most of us have gone down that rabbit hole of thought ourselves from time to time. There are many versions of the same line of reasoning and boiled down to its basics, it goes something like this: it does not matter one bit what I do, because…
When start-ups dance with elephants
There are many stories about start-ups. Sometimes they end happily – sometimes not. Obviously, the road to success is all but preset and easily navigated. Rather it takes a great portion of purposeful action, perseverance and passion to succeed. When a start-up introduces technologically advanced solutions that change the rules of the game in an…
My invasion to Slush 2019
Dear readers, in my previous blog post, I discussed my story with service design and design thinking and how I conducted a part of my MSc. study on the understanding and using of design in different businesses in Slush 2013. After 6 years, I plan to come back to Slush 2019 to conduct a similar…
“Innovate or die”
Sometimes attributed to Peter Drucker, “Innovate or die” is a tagline embraced by media, managers and academics alike. But then again, what is innovation? In the simplest form, it boils down to introducing a change (i.e., something new). If you were to take an organisation’s perspective then innovation is a new offering (e.g., a product…
Passion for marketing in everyday life
I fell in love with marketing pretty much exactly 6 years ago, when taking my very first marketing course “Principles of Marketing”. I still remember that huge book by Philip Kotler and hours I spent with it, mostly because I was absolutely fascinated by the content, but also because my English was so poor, I…
“Size matters” – I will be a millionaire, I have the formula
I assume that nobody who has been to Hanken this year has missed that Hanken is celebrating its 110th Anniversary with creativity / ART as the main topic. Art that splits opinions! I will not go into the discussion of what is good or bad, nice or ugly, understandable or completely non-understandable art. No, let…
New measures for societal impact and media hits are needed
One conventional measure or indicator for the societal impact of research has been the number of media hits that a press release about a new piece of research receives in the media. While this indicator continues to have relevance in future, too, it recently stroke me that new versions of the indicator are also needed….
Building the leaders of tomorrow
Last week I was invited as one of the speakers to hold a session on sales and customer experience for a group of talented international participants of the Integration Programme Business Lead, run by Hanken & SSE Executive Education. When I arrived to the classroom, I found a folder with an agenda for the…
Vinyl Records, Craft Beer, and Latent Needs
Emergent and marginal market trends have the potential to teach us something about more general socio-cultural developments which, in turn, may have far-reaching consequences for companies and consumers alike. However, such marginal phenomena are often dismissed as mere flukes not worthy of serious attention. Sometimes such dismissals are, in retrospect, arguably justifiable. In other cases,…