Contemporary Views on Business: Partnering for the Future

The Conference where research and practise become one calls for your contribution.

Come and start your life anew with us at Combi2010 in Vantaa, Finland, 7-10 October 2010.

The true power lies in you – let’s build up critical mass at Combi2010 to utilise the wisdom of many.

Contemporary Views on Business: Partnering for the Future" (Combi2010) is an important forum for knowledge co-creation and intellectual exchange emphasising partnering and international knowledge transfer as sources of competitive edge. In Combi2010, you are reserved plenty of time for lively dialogue, responsive thought transference and ideation.

Combi2010 joins the great minds of academics, business executives and other professionals from both private and public sectors to share and co-create knowledge on business-related topics. Furthermore, Combi2010 actively seeks to promote synergies between business and academia. Our international conference programme contains tailor-made modules to satisfy even the most demanding needs of faculty members, executives, entrepreneurs, and post-graduates.

Combi2010 is hosted by four Universities of Applied Sciences from the larger Metropolitan region (HAMK, Helsinki Metropolia, Laurea, LUAS) and being organised in collaboration with partners incl. e.g. ECR Finland, the Regional Organisation of Enterprises in Uusimaa and international scientific journals.



Calls for participation are open from 4 January 2010 onwards. Submit online at www.combi2010.fi your

· competitive paper manuscript not exceeding 20 double-spaced pages and/or

· poster presentation abstract of 1500-5000 characters and/or

· work-in-progress presentation abstract of 1500-5000 characters and/or

· special session proposals of not exceeding 5 double-spaced pages

See the Calls for the various types of submissions on this page.


Combi2010 has 19 Tracks representing the subject fields of Business Studies, Leadership and Entrepreneurship. Please consult the conference website for details. See the draft program, including keynote speakers here.

Best Paper in Conference will be awarded. All the accepted papers will be published in the printed, ISSN/ISBN identified, Conference Proceedings and in an electronic format on a USB drive. In addition to this, the best papers chosen by Track Chairs are eligible for publication as double blind peer reviewed articles at least in the International Journal of Technology Diffusion and International Journal of Management Innovation Systems. The Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce will publish a special issue on Combi2010 Conference Papers.

Keep your eye on the website for the latest developments.

The Calls close by the end of March 2010.


The Combi2010 Organising Committee awaits to see you in Finland next October!

Public Crowdsourcing Portals (PCP*): Harnessing the collective (or rather the individual) intelligence

You are a big or small company and you are confronted with problems like the following: You look for a method of specifically binding DNA, you need urgently a new method for hair root removal or you are desperate to find how to sample leaf tissue**! You do not have the expertise in-house so what do you do? You try to find another company having the solution and make a deal about royalties to use their technology (something that can be quite costly)or you find and hire someone who can find a solution for you, right?

Wrong! You can get tens or hundreds of solutions and choose the best by placing a challenge in the crouwdsourcing site INNOCENTIVE; this will cost you between $ 5.000 to maybe $ 100.000 that is the fee you decide to pay to the one who will find the best solution for you.
Does this work? Just go to the Innocentive site and look for yourself.

This form of crowdsourcing becomes very popular in a fast pace. Next to proprietary crowdsourcing focused on customer creativity an increasing number of Public Crowdsourcing Portals like Innocentive match the supply and demand for very specific technical or non-technical knowledge. Some more examples of this new type of Social Media (I will update my Social Media Strategies model with this new Web 2.0 application soon) are Yet2Come, Innovation Exchange and the Dutch Battle of Concepts targeting creative students that I mentioned in an earlier post.

Is this development good or bad news for professionals? I think both depending how you look to it. I have the idea that this will be soon an issue of more general concern soon. Let's wait and see. *Do not look for this term in Wikipedia, this is a term I thought of it just now!
**All these are real problems of real companies

Distributed co-creation: the next step in Innovation

In a number of my recent research papers, my lectures and also posts in this blog I have tried to underline the importance of using Web 2.0 applications as means for taping into the customer creativity also known as crowdsourcing. This option has two variants, either using the customer creativity in order to create advertising concepts or participate as innovator. An interesting article by professors S. Read and D. Robertson titled " What is the next big Innovation in Innovation ?" was published some time ago in the IMD web site.

Crowdsourcing: utilize the customer's creativity

Taping the Customer Creativity (also known as Crowdsourcing) is one of the elements of my model outlining the main ways that marketers can engage the Social Media as Marketing tools.

Many examples of such initiatives are already known to those who follow what happens in the Social Media space. Most applications ( RedisignMe, Dell, Nokia, Samsung, TomTom, HP, Talpa, Google Android KLM, Starbucks, P&G, Robeco, threadless, LEGO, SAP, Kodak and many others) are focused on utilizing the customer wisdom in order to innovate. Another way to utilize the customer creativity is to ask customers to design advertisements for you or even commercials. A pioneer in this area is Current where amateur videos that appear on TV win money. Here in Holland we have also some interesting examples. A few months ago Nespresso tested two commercials as to the viewers' opinions before one of them appeared on TV (Source: MarketingFacts.nl)

Another nice example of using customer creativity is the Battle of Concepts , a Dutch (at least till this moment) platform allowing companies to organize competitions (mostly among creative business students) for solving real business problems. The site is getting very popular among students who can win up to 5.000 Euro but also among lecturers who can find there real case studies for their students! (I think to try this next year). Last but not least a new site called Creatad offers creative amateurs the possibility to make money by designing advertisements (printed or videos). I wonder if the American Marketing Association will be obliged to come soon with a new Marketing Definition taking into consideration the interactive nature of Marketing today as well as the way the New Marketing is creating value for the customer who becomes slowly marketer himself!

The New Innovation Wisdom

An interesting article (also in videocast) from Google's chief economist Hal Varian in the McKinsey Quarterly. Varian explains the many effects the web has on industries and calls managers to re-think of conventional thinking. Useful note for everyone involved in innovation today

Venture Lab Twente: a new initiative to promote entrepreneurship

VentureLab Twente (VLT) is an advanced training facility for people who take seriously their entrepreneurial ambitions. The mission of the Lab is to help “ techno-starters” and knowledge-intensive businesses to enter the market and succeed. VLT welcomes participants with concrete business ideas who feel that they miss certain commercial capabilities necessary for building-up a successful business.
Participants without concrete plans or clear business ideas are also welcome to join. A particular advantage of the VLT program is that it helps aspiring entrepreneurs to discover viable business opportunities.
At VentureLab Twente, entrepreneurs work in teams to develop a successful high-tech company. Participants receive support from academics, consultants and students from the entrepreneurial University of Twente and the Saxion Universities of Applied Sciences Seminars by internationally renowned trainers, carefully planned personal coaching, access to newly developed technologies, access to a network of international companies and last but not least access to venture capital are some of the elements of the VLT approach.

Those interested can join one of the INFORMATION MEETINGS.
CHECK http://www.venturelabtwente.com/ AND REGISTER NOW!