Innovation, design and strategy play an important role in the age of disruption as we embrace the discomfort of current market conditions. We need to develop new ideas and experiences to support a sustainable lifestyle including not only the technological possibilities but also the social and environmental changes in the global markets. Change in mundane…
Gamification, anti-burglar bulbs and smart buildings
Burglars are getting smarter, unfortunately. It was about a year ago when we were moving to a new neighborhood. We fitted everything in a van and set off for the new home. The driver of the van, for some reason, started to talk about burglaries in Helsinki and Vantaa. Evidently, he did not believe…
MOOCs: A force for good in the world
In recent years, the popularity of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have literally exploded and today over 900 universities in the world offer more than 11.000 MOOCs on every imaginable topic. Equally impressing, over a 100 million students from all around the world are enrolled in these courses. At Hanken, we have joined the…
Is there a future for digital advertising?
Here’s a question: When was the last time you watched an advertisement on Youtube? Really watched it? For me, the strongest impression of these advertisements is one of impatiently hovering over the “skip ad” button. And this is not just me, it’s a part of a larger trend: We don’t want to be advertised to…
Health, happiness and financial well-being
Financial well-being matters Our spending, borrowing and saving habits are important for our quality of life – in all life stages. These habits are main ingredients of our financial well-being and important for us. Financial well-being has been found to be have a strong positive relation to our overall personal well-being. It for example impacts…
The Birth of CERS
Service research in Hanken commenced in 1976. Around 1990, the group of faculty members and doctoral students that were interested in the field of service had grown at the Department of Marketing, and service research dominated the research at the department. Therefore, all faculty and doctoral students in Helsinki and Vaasa, 10–12 persons, were summoned…
Changing in a fluid landscape
Change. What a wonderful but intimidating word with all its underlying implications. All of us who have faced a new circumstance know that going outside our comfort zone is never easy. Certainly not in personal life, but even changing behavior collectively in an organization is a resource-consuming process. Still transformation in business settings is expected…
A tripartite interactive system of well-being for individuals with disability
I recently visited my home country, Bangladesh, for some research-related purposes. During my trip, I visited an organization that deals with treatment and wellness of disabled individuals. The organization – Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) – is the leading organization of the country and located on the outskirt of the capital city,…
The (sweet) prize of working from home
Oops – I did it again. I count that during my workday, I have eaten five (or perhaps six?) Jaffa biscuits, some dark chocolate, some very nice small carelian pies, mints, and all butter cheese straws – all in addition to breakfast and lunch. Neither my dentist nor my physician will be happy – nor…
Self-help gurus in the business world and academia
The self-help industry is usually quoted being a ten-billion-dollar industry. Arguably, most of it is nonsense – or at the very least non-scientific. Modern gurus such as the notorious life-coach-billionaire Tony Robbins, the alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra, and the author of The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, have sold millions of products to solve all of…