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,…
The Big Question
A recently published report by, among others, researchers at Aalto University and Sitra points to the need for drastic changes in our consumption patterns if we want to meet the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement. The study highlights the magnitude of the required change, calculating a required reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 86-93%…
Are you a member?
Imagine a time when there were no loyalty programs. Imagine also that you were the person who invented the first loyalty program. That is to say, you persuade customers to register by disclosing their names and contact information, and then you build something that captures their purchasing activities over time. As a reward for allowing…
What values does a collaborative solution for environmental issues bring?
Our current world faces problems that are so complicated that not one party, may that party be a company, a university, an NGO, a government and so on, will ever alone solve such problems. One such a problem is global warming, or more broadly environmental crises in form of pollution, extinction of species, a threat…
Looking for true North
As a doctoral student, part of the work is to be comfortable in navigating the intellectual space of academic discourse and conceptual thinking. And for a new student, this isn’t necessarily an easy domain to master, as the terrain is rife with competing philosophical ideas and pre-suppositions. And even when some schools of thought are…