De Reus van Schimmert: from water tower to data center

The water tower of Schimmert was built in 1926 to cover the needs of water of Schimmert and the surrounding areas as well. This imposing 38 meters high tower dwarfs any nearby buildings, providing a 360° view of the surrounding area and deserves its pseudonym de Reus van Schimmert (the Giant of Schimmert). In the attempt to find a sustainable business model for the iconic building the concept of installing a data center in its core is investigated. The waste heat from the servers will be transferred to the reservoir on the top and from there used to power a district heating system in Schimmert

De Reus van Schimmert: from water tower to data center

The water tower of Schimmert was built in 1926 to cover the needs of water of Schimmert and the surrounding areas as well. This imposing 38 meters high tower dwarfs any nearby buildings, providing a 360° view of the surrounding area and deserves its pseudonym de Reus van Schimmert (the Giant of Schimmert). In the attempt to find a sustainable business model for the iconic building the concept of installing a data center in its core is investigated. The waste heat from the servers will be transferred to the reservoir on the top and from there used to power a district heating system in Schimmert

Some Agents are more Similar than Others:Customer Orientation of Frontline Robots and Employees

Purpose: The impact of frontline robots (FLRs) on customer orientation perceptions remains unclear. This is remarkable because customers may associate FLRs with standardization and cost-cutting, such that they may not fit firms that aim to be customer oriented. Design/methodology/approach: In four experiments, data are collected from customers interacting with frontline employees (FLEs) and FLRs in different settings. Findings: FLEs are perceived as more customer-oriented than FLRs due to higher competence and warmth evaluations. A relational interaction style attenuates the difference in perceived competence between FLRs and FLEs. These agents are also perceived as more similar in competence and warmth when FLRs participate in the customer journey's information and negotiation stages. Switching from FLE to FLR in the journey harms FLR evaluations. Practical implications: The authors recommend firms to place FLRs only in the negotiation stage or in both the information and negotiation stages of the customer journey. Still then customers should not transition from employees to robots (vice versa does no harm). Firms should ensure that FLRs utilize a relational style when interacting with customers for optimal effects. Originality/value: The authors bridge the FLR and sales/marketing literature by drawing on social cognition theory. The authors also identify the product categories for which customers are willing to negotiate with an FLR. Broadly speaking, this study’s findings underline that customers perceive robots as having agency (i.e. the mental capacity for acting with intentionality) and, just as humans, can be customer-oriented.</p

Een empirische toetsing van de Strategietypologie van Miles & Snow

Een empirische toetsing van de Strategietypologie van Miles & Sno

Entrepreneurial Marketing:How to Develop Customer Demand

How do you sell an innovative product to a market that does not yet exist? Entrepreneurial businesses often create products and services based on radically new technology that have the power to change the marketplace. Existing market research data will be largely irrelevant in these cases, making sales and marketing of innovative new products especially challenging to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial Marketing focuses on this challenge. Classic core marketing concepts, such as segmentation, positioning, and the marketing mix undergo an ‘extreme makeover’ in the context of innovative products hitting the market. Edwin J. Nijssen stresses principles of affordable loss, experimentation, and adjustment for emerging opportunities, as well as cooperation with first customers. Containing many marketing examples of successful and cutting-edge innovations (including links to websites and videos), useful lists of key issues, and instructions on how to make a one-page marketing plan, Entrepreneurial Marketing provides a vital guide to successfully developing customer demand and a market for innovative new products. This third edition has been thoroughly expanded, including: Expanded content on leveraging digital technologies and their new business models More practical tools, such as coverage of the Lean Canvas model Updated references, cases, and new examples throughout; and, Updated online resources This book equips advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of marketing strategy, entrepreneurial marketing, and entrepreneurship with the fundamental tools to succeed in marketing

Studying the antecedents and outcome of social media use by salespeople using a MOA framework

The innovative impact of digital technologies on sales forces is largely unexplored. Particularly, the understanding of drivers of social media use by salespeople remains fragmented and scant. Drawing on motivation-opportunity-ability theory, this study develops an integrative framework. The individual’s opportunities to use social media, including perceptions about market readiness, peer influence, and organizational support are considered as important antecedents of individuals’ motivation (perceived usefulness) and ability (perceived ability to integrate social media in the sales tasks) to use social media in their job. Next to a positive effect of social media use on sales performance also a potential negative impact through distraction is accounted for. The framework and hypotheses are tested using a sample of 345 salespeople. The results largely support the model and hypotheses. Market readiness, peer influence, and organizational support positively affect salesperson motivation, and except for organizational support, the individual’s ability to integrate social media in his/her sales job too. Findings further show that motivation and ability together drive social media use in sales, but that a lack of ability shuts down the positive influence of motivation on social media use. Finally, a positive effect of social media use on sales performance is detected, suggesting that social media can be an important tool to enhance sales growth. Support for a dark side effect of social media is not found

How important is alignment of social media use and R&D–Marketing cooperation for innovation success?

Efforts to use social media as a network tool for open innovations have not met expectations, or utilized its potential adequately. Recent research on identifying firms’ social media skill has not addressed the complex underlying mechanisms and calibration of social media capabilities. We explore how, why, and which resources an organization should integrate. Social media in NPD should be accompanied by carefully aligned R&D – marketing cooperation. Alignment results in efficient knowledge integration, but dis-alignment fails to tap enough ideas, or can lack information processing capacity. The alignment and disalignment hypotheses are tested using survey data of a sample of 101 innovative SMEs. In a second, configurational study we extend findings from Study 1 to determine micro level social media capabilities required. Results show that social media can be used for both radical and incremental innovation, but are more useful for service than for product innovation

Awareness, use and effectiveness of models and methods for new product development

The objectives of RIBES are: to initiate and coordinate research programs in the field of business economics (accounting, marketing, organisation, business finance and portfolio investment, auditing and management information systems; to serve research projects of individual departments and individual research groups. RIBES publishes a series of reports, discussion papers and reprints. A report gives account of finished research which contains some original results. In a discussion paper are laid down the preliminary findings of unfinished research. CIP-GEGEVENS KONINKLIJ.KE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Nijssen, E. Awareness, use and effectiveness of models and methods for new product development I E. Nijssen and K. Lieshout. ABSTRACT Despite the large number of new product models and methods available to improve the success rate of new products, empirical evidence proves that only very few companies actually&apos; use them. This seems rather strange since today the pressure on companies to improve their NPD is high. A bottle-neck may be the extent to which companies are aware of these models and methods, or companies may have abandoned already their use. To investigate this, empirical data were gathered from 75 industrial companies in The Netherlands. The results show that many companies are actually aware of these models and methods, but often do not know them by name. The average penetration level is about 30% and the models and methods are used in a less focused and probably less formal manner. The level of satisfaction with the performance of most models and methods is high. A positive relationship was also found between the degree of use of models/methods and company&apos;s gross profits. Awareness, Use and effectiveness of Models and Methods for New Product Development Ed J. Nijssen and Karin Lieshout 1. The importance of NPD and new product models and methods A large number of models and methods have been introduced to improve a company&apos;s performance of New Product Development (NPD) Although the use of new product models and methods in themselves will not guarantee success, their use may complement a company&apos;s NPD-efforts and may assist them to become more successful (Cooper and Kleinschmidt, 1986; Schelker, 1978). New product models and methods may help to identify problems at an early stage and assist in directing the NPD-effort in the right direction. However, despite the positive influences these models and methods may have companies&apos; _. ~ efforts are unaware of the existence of. these models and m~lVM~,_tl.!.ey experience an ,., &apos;.------~~ uns~pportive organizational culture for their use, or -used-them-for-a-while-but-then decided to abandon their use (Feldm~_ and Page, 1984). If, indeed, awareness is the bottle-neck, then there is a job for universities, polytechnics, and consulting firms to fill this gap. If, on the other hand, the use is low due to shortcomings of the models, researchers should try to improve their quality. For these reasons, we decided to examine this subject in greater detail. Several questions were raised: To what extent are companies aware of the existence of new product models and methods and do they use them? Why do they use them and in which stages of the NPD-process? What are the companies&apos; experiences with these models and methods, and do they contribute to company performance? The first section of this article focuses on current literature and the empirical evidence available on the use of new product models and methods. A classification scheme for the different models and methods is included. In the second section the research questions are specified. In the third section we discuss the methodology of the empirical study, and the fourth section contains the results. The final section contains the conclusions and discussion. The results are compared to the exploratory findings of Empirical evicence on the role of models and methods NPD is a complex and sizable activity with only a low rate of commercial success (Clark and Wheelright, 1993; idea generation, screening/evaluation, concept development and testing, marketing strategy development, business analysis, product development, mMket&quot; testing and commercialization (Kotler, 1991:310). However, recently more emphasis has been placed on the fact that, at least to some extent, these phases are best performed simultaneously. It may help to reduce the time to market of the new product. Multifunctional teams have been put forward as an important way to enhance the commercial success of the new product (Millson et ai, 1992; If one considers all l!Q~sible versions and modifications of the new product models and methods, over 600 different types can be Research questions Looking at the earlier studies and the results from A possible explanation is that Mahajan and Wind focused on Fortune 500 firms while Schelker also included small firms in his research. Possibly, large firms have already tries and 4 abandoned the use of these new product models and methods. This appears to be the case for instance with PIMS and BCG-models. However, there are alternative explanations. Potential users may experience an un supportive organizational climate as To obtain further insight into the awareness, use, and effectiveness of the new product models and methods, we formulated six research questions: To what extent are companies aware of the existence of new product models and methods? (b) To what extent do they use them? (c) At which stages of the NPD-process do they use them? (d) Why do they use them? (e) Are they satisfied using them, and what are the main shortcomings? Does their use relate to company&apos;s performance? We focused on these questions to obtain a better understanding of the role of new product models and methods in the NPD-process. The questions integrate a number of issues addressed in previous research and extend the research to the area of the link between the use of models/methods and performance. To answer these research questions both qualitative and quantitative research was conducted. in, and part of, the process itself. Therefore, the extent to which the NPD-stages are Mainly. marketing manag~~ ~slX?nded to our :the&quot;:sa~PI; c;~~ri~ four &apos;-~?indusiries -(electronics, macfiineit~&quot;&apos; metal and paper) and a group of miscellaneous companies (see The data were gathered using a computerized questionnaire and telephone interviews. It allowed for a nested approach of questioning, first asking for awareness by name before providing a definition of the model/method. The questionnaire was pre-tested on a limited scale. This resulted in a few minor changes. I To limit the length of the questionnaire the research was limited to eleven models and I methods (see Appendix A). Only models and methods which had at least shown some degree of use by companies in previous research and some level of awareness within the focus group were selected. Market forecast models were excluded, for most of them are specific computer programs with a level of use/awareness below 5% in the U.S .. Furthermore, the research focused on new-to-the-world products, new product lines and additions to existing product lines, for new product models and methods appear especially useful to support innovative new products The variables were operationalized in the following way. Awareness by name and content as well as use and degree of use were asked for each model/method usin