What to

expect

This article discusses the journey towards becoming ‘a consumer-

centric thinking company’: a company that structurally collaborates

with the consumer world within all phases of decision making across

its departments and that has established an outside-in thinking

company culture. It elaborates on possible starting points for consumer

collaboration and the steps an organization needs to follow to start

collaborating in a more structural way. It also mentions the different tools one

needs along the way in order to bring all internal stakeholders on board and

activate them to take relevant action based on the consumer input. And finally,

the positive effects that internal and external leverage of consumer

collaboration has on the company’s culture and performance, and their

measurement are discussed as well. There will also be argued that a new

board member needs to be installed to lead and coordinate this

transformation from an inside-out to an outside-in thinking

company: the ‘Chief Consumer Officer’.

The piece is based on 15 interviews (Van Belleghem & De Ruyck, 2012) with

senior executives from major corporations and best practices drawn from over

200 projects we conducted for our clients around the world, over the last 2

years.

Structural Collaboration with consumers

These changes in the consumer and the business

world ask for an adaptive mind-set within

companies and more outside-in thinking.

Organizations need to become more open

and agile in order to become one of the

winners of tomorrow. They need to embrace

the empowered consumer by having a

continuous dialogue with the outside world

and starting to collaborate with consumers.

This way, they will be able to react quickly on new

trends, emerging consumer needs, expected

improvements to products/services and anticipate

the actions of the competition.

“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of

Today, consumers are empowered. Through

social media channels, they have the power

to make or break brands. And, they want to

have a say in the future of the brands and product

categories they have emotional or functional

affinity with (Van Belleghem et al, 2012).

Moreover, most businesses need to operate in

an economic climate that is harder than

ever before. They have a hard time; but

consumers do not show any compassion as they

expect even more service and better products

from companies, almost by the day. Finally, new

entrants with new technologies or business

models are disrupting many industries and are

changing competitive landscapes at the speed of

light (De Wulf & De Ruyck eds., 2013).

change on the inside, the end is near” – Jack Welch

An online consumer community or Consumer

Consulting Board is an efficient and effective

medium for such consumer collaboration. It is an

online closed platform on which one brings

together a larger group of consumers over a

longer period of time. The platform is

invitation only, so the companies’ secrets are

safe. The fact that it is online makes it convenient

for the participants (no travel involved) and it results

in having no boundaries - nor in geography (it is

easy to bring people from different parts of a country

together), neither in time (one has 24/7 consumer

input at his/her fingertips).

Finally, more people brings a certain richness

and diversity of consumer input to the table

and ‘more time’ makes that we can really

work together with people in different stages

of, for example, product or campaign

development (De Ruyck et all, 2010). Having a

Consumer Consulting Board makes you a more

open company as you invite consumers to be a part

of the decision making process. But this does not

mean you are also more agile per se. In order to

reach that second goal, you need to start using the

Board in a structural way: almost every single day,

for most decisions that affect the consumer, across

different departments of the organization. By doing

so, companies will be able to make better

decisions faster and create more successful

products, services and marketing campaigns

that can be constantly improved (De Wulf &

De Ruyck eds., 2013).

Stakeholder involvement and

building the right culture are crucial

Our interviews with senior executives from around

the globe have taught us that it is not possible to

create a consumer-centric thinking company

overnight. A step-by-step approach is needed.

And every project and initiative needs to be rather

seen as a part of the way towards the end-goal,

than as the ultimate solution itself (Van Belleghem

& De Ruyck, 2012). On the next pages, we

elaborate on the 5 steps to go through in order

to get the most out of consumer collaboration

initiatives and how it helps one to create a

more consumer-centric thinking company

culture, one project at a time. Finally, it is

discussed how crucial the role of the Chief

Consumer Officer will be in terms of leading and

coordinating these projects and the overall

transformation of the company into a consumer

driven one.

Having consumer knowledge within the walls

of your organization is one thing, but using it

all the time is a different one. The former is a

matter of having the right consumer collaboration

tools and initiatives; the latter is about creating

stakeholder involvement and building the right

company culture. A culture of empathy, consumer

understanding and willingness to take action upon

that knowledge in order to serve consumers in the

best possible way while at the same time taking the

company into the right strategic direction. It is

about creating a culture in which consumers

are not seen as an asset, but as a reason of

existence.

#1 consumer collaboration: think big, start small

In our book ‘The Consumer Consulting Board’ (De Wulf

& De Ruyck eds., 2013), we admit that it will take

several steps within a company before structural

collaboration is a true fact. Our advice is to start with a

pilot consumer collaboration project in order to get the

ball rolling. A successful pilot project will result in

new projects and applications and step by step

the company will move forward. By demonstrating

and communicating the value of the consumer

dialogue and collaboration with consumers well

internally, even stronger support from higher

management is earned and a more consumer-centric

thinking company culture is established one step at a

time. True involvement of employees through

confrontation and connection with consumers is crucial

in order to be successful here. Employees need to

feel the need and urgency of consumer

collaboration first hand.

“Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember.

All companies are different, so there are also

different ways to get started. An easy way to start is

for a specific strategic project within one unit or team:

consumer collaboration will help that team to craft the

strategy. If that team is excited about the results of the

ad hoc collaboration, they can opt for a more structural

integration of the voice of the consumer within their

team to constantly fuel the strategy. An example of the

former is the ad hoc project we conducted for PepsiCo

Turkey (De Ruyck et al, 2013). They wanted to

reposition their Ruffles chips brand. To do so, we

confronted the whole brand team and their ad agencies

with the target group for 6 weeks, to discover insights

and shape the new strategy together with us -

consultants - and the end consumer. An illustration of

fuel the strategy is our always-on Board at Heinz in the

Netherlands: the Food&Co Community allows the whole

marketing team to ask feedback from and co-create with

consumers almost every single day. All aspects of

marketing across different brands are constantly

checked with consumers to make well-informed

decisions fast. Let me do and I understand.” – Confucius

This asked for an immersion into this new

consumer world first, before diving into

specific projects from the new category. At

Mars Pet Care in Verden (Germany) the

leadership wanted to emphasize on the

importance of listening to customers’

needs and wishes, as the goal of the

project was to demonstrate the value of

consumer input and feedback. In both

companies the whole plant was involved in

the project and confronted with the consumer

world, resulting into a feeling of urgency to do

this more and a clear belief in the value of

consumer collaboration.

In larger, more complex organizations or in changing environments; it can be beneficial to first gain ground for a

pilot project. We do that by setting-up a program that needs to change the mind-set of the employees.

Examples here are the projects we ran for Unilever R&D (De Ruyck et all, 2011) and Mars Pet Care. Unilever’s

R&D plant in Vlaardingen (the Netherlands) moved from inventing functional laundry products to creating more

emotional beauty products.

It was the well-designed internal

communication plan about the pilot project

and the constant activation of all stakeholders

along the way that paved the path here.

As one can see, creating a more consumer-centric

thinking company is a journey, not a destination! For

many CxOs starting that journey is one of their

current top priorities. According to PwC’s Global

CEO Survey of 2013, 80% of the world’s top CEOs

believe that customers should have a significant

influence on a business’ strategy (PwC, 2013).

The path towards our goal is known now; let’s take a

closer look at the different steps to take along the

way and the consistency and persistency that will be

needed once we get closer to that goal.

The end-goal should be that the companies’

strategic goals are managed through constant

consumer input across all departments of the

organization. We are currently rolling this out at

Marktplaats (part of the eBay Classifieds Group). NPS

is one of their key metrics and it is managed by a

constant stream of relevant user feedback towards the

appropriate team within the company. This system is

empowering every employee to do his/her part of

the work involved in reaching the user

satisfaction and service recommendation targets.

As Marktplaats is a smaller organization and as we had

management’s buy-in from the start, they were able to

move immediately from an ad hoc pilot project

(on the creation and roll-out of their renewed

online classifieds platform) towards full

integration and activation of consumer

collaboration and the revolving knowledge

within the whole company.

#2 Activation of internal stakeholders to take relevant action

There are 3 stages to leveraging consumer knowledge within an

organization and to get the most out of it from a company culture and a

marketing perspective after every ad hoc project - or continuously, if the

organization has already installed a structural way of collaborating with the

consumer world. First, you work on the hearts and minds, then you work on the

actions of all employees and finally, you need to leverage this new way of working

towards the external world. Let’s take a detailed look at internal leverage first:

Hearts and minds

This phase of internally levering the results of consumer collaboration is

about engaging the organization with the consumer world (creating

empathy through consumer connection and confrontation) and

inspiring the employees with relevant consumer knowledge (create

consumer understanding). This happens via the use of the right

stakeholder activation tools. Here are short illustrations from different client

projects of those techniques that can be used to create stakeholder

involvement:

Consumer quotes and pictures

At the ad agency Famous, consumer quotes and pictures in the lobby

remind the creatives about who they work for: normal consumers that

are not as hip and trendy as they are. Moreover, it is also a great way to

remind them of the fact that 300 consumers are there to help and inspire them on

a daily basis in the two Consumer Consulting Boards of the agency.

Online quiz

For stroller manufacturer Quinny, we developed an online quiz about the most

striking findings about young urban parents that came out of their

global Consumer Consulting Board. The marketing and R&D teams could

play the quiz of ten questions before the closing workshop of the project. The

game confronted them with the new consumer knowledge for the first time and

evoked curiosity about the final presentation and the brainstorm.

FanFace

In order to confront the journalists and editors of the magazine Flair (a Sanoma title)

with the true face of their readership of young females, we built FanFace, a

Facebook-like profile page of the average reader that employees needed to

complete. Afterwards, we compared the profile of the perceived reader with the

profiles of the readers in our community. Confronting the editors and journalists with

the differences between both was really eye-opening for them. It created a sense of

urgency to get to know more and to work together with the readers in a very

intense way during the process of reworking both the design and content of

the magazine.

Fanface for Sanoma’s Flair

Bus safari

Belgian public transportation company De Lijn has sent its management on a bus

safari: they had to use their own services to experience the issues passengers

were discussing in the Consumer Consulting Board first hand. The

confrontation with customers’ daily reality has pushed things forward faster than ever

before.

Weekly newsletter

At the Italian pasta maker Barilla, the internal stakeholders received a

weekly newsletter about the main topics discussed on their Board that

week. The newsletter was created in a way that every stakeholder received

only the content that was relevant for his/her job.

Consumer news platform

In our project at Unilever R&D, we immersed the whole company into the world of the

consumer by launching an internal consumer news platform. Every single day, two

news articles about the main findings from the community discussion were

shared, over the course of 3 weeks. Reporting in an easy to digest format during a

longer period of time fitted the objectives of this project very well: it truly immersed

them into the world of consumers. Based on a pre- and post-survey we know that

knowledge about and confidence to work within the new category went up with 81%.

It also made R&D employees discuss consumer feedback at the workplace among

colleagues and at home among friends and family (rise from 12% before to 55% after

the project) (De Ruyck et all, 2011).

Interactive infographic

When it comes to offering consumer understanding in a creative manner, our

interactive infographic for Heineken’s ‘The Club of the Future’ project is a nice

example: we guided the design team that needed to work with the

results through a night out, in 6 different sceneries. Each of the sceneries

consisted out of 5 key consumer insights that were well visualized and made

concrete via a design action. The interactive format fitted very well with the

creative process designers go through. From the in-depth interview with the 19

designers after the project, we know that the tool was used by them on a

daily basis while they were making sketches and at the end, during the

review round, to make final decisions. The 30 insights have led to 8 new and

innovative concepts that have end-up in the final pop-up club (De Ruyck et all,

2012).

Magazine

A last example of sharing results in an engaging and inspiring way is the

magazine about its business readers, which we created for Bloomberg. Here,

storytelling and visualizations were used to bring consumer knowledge

alive within the company.

Actions

Engaging and inspiring internal stakeholders is crucial. By doing

so continuously and in a consistent way, step-by-step, a more consumer-

centric thinking company culture is created. But, it is important to take the

next step as well: activating employees to take relevant actions. this

phase is about activating employees and making them process

the new information. We need to activate them to take relevant

actions based upon the newly gained knowledge and consumer

understanding. Two nice illustrations of how to do that during

workshops come from projects we conducted recently for IKEA

and Heineken.

During the final workshop of our 2014 IKEA Catalogue study, we defined

strategically important areas to focus on in the next edition. In the

brainstorm session at the end of the day, the team members were

confronted with relevant quotes from the community. They were

asked to make an interpretation and turn the quotes into

relevant insights. That process made them think deeply about the

subject and it demonstrated the power of consumer input first hand. In

the next phase they used the newly generated insights as a springboard

for ideation and creativity.

For Heineken we worked together with

consumers to gain insights about the ideal

lounge experience. To let the results come

alive after our presentation, we went

lounging with the design team. During that

Lounge Tour we gave them an observation card.

On the observation card they had 6 tasks or

themes to observe that seemed to be crucial in

the experience of lounging, based on our

presentation. They were asked to take pictures

of those aspects. The day after, together with the

Heineken team, we organized the second

part of the workshop in which they used

their pictures and comments to define the 6

areas again and to brainstorm about

possible design actions.

Activation workshop on day two for Heineken’s ‘The Lounge of the Future’ project

#3 inspiring and empowering employees at all levels

Activating internal stakeholders to take

relevant actions should result in products,

services and marketing campaigns that are

created or improved based on consumer

input. Previous research has taught us that those

products/services and campaigns are more

successful in the market. An experiment we made in

collaboration with Heinz compared ideas for new

cold sauces coming from marketing and R&D

people with consumer generated ideas, in a concept

test among a representative set of the Dutch

population.

This experiment showed us that ideas from

consumers while being perceived as less unique

than those of marketers (7 of the ‘uniqueness’ top-

10 came from employees), score higher on

perceived consumer relevance (8 of the

‘relevance’ top-10 came from consumers) and

buying intention. An experiment with the ad

agency Famous with a campaign for Nutricia on baby

food, showed that in an online ad campaign, copy

created based on consumer stories did a better

job in reaching the target group than copy

coming directly from the creative team. The

consumer driven ad was 50% better at reaching the

right socio-demographic. It is clear that collaboration

with consumers brings ‘relevance’ to the table.

So, consumer collaboration pays of, but there

is more needed than just the insights and

the collaboration with consumers on the

platform: activation of internal

stakeholders. The right internal people.

Research at MIT (Whelan, 2011) indicates

that the difference between organizations who

are successful in integrating the voice of the

customer into their strategy and

developments, differ from the ones that fail, in

the regard that the former are good in

identifying the movers and shakers within the

organization and in giving them a leading role

and all the support they need. The platform

that we use to distribute consumer input within

organizations is able to identify these so-

called scouts and connectors.

The scouts are good at spotting new opportunities in what

they get back from the outside/consumer world. The

connectors are great at bringing together the right team to

realize it. It is important to identify these people as early

as possible and bring them on board within the core

team that will realize the transformation of the

company (culture). They will play a crucial role in

embedding the philosophy and practice of consumer

collaboration and outside-in thinking within their team or

department.

We may conclude that in order to make consumer

collaboration initiatives successful within

organizations, you first of all need the right consumer

collaboration tool. From that point, it is all about engaging,

inspiring and activating senior managers with the newly gained

knowledge. In this phase, it will be crucial to identify and

support the ‘scouts’ and ‘connectors’ within the

organization so that they can make it happen. But it does

not stop here. If you want to become a true consumer-centric

thinking company, you need to make sure that not only top

and middle managers understand consumers and act upon

that. It is important that everyone within the company

knows the basics of who the customer is and what their

wishes are. Also, the people who are running the frontline of

the business need to be inspired. At De Lijn, the bus drivers

are also immersed into the world of the consumer through

their own magazine and articles/videos on the intranet.

Within their specific role they now know what drives passengers’

happiness and what they can do about it. Kitchen appliances

manufacturer ATAG trained their sales staff on what they can do

in different phases of the customer journey, based on insights and

stories coming from the members of their Consumer Consulting

Board. Leading to a more emphatic sales talk and so, better sales

results. This means empowering line-managers and

frontline employees by giving them knowledge and

allowing them to take relevant actions. Doing so will have a

positive impact on customer experience, satisfaction and

recommendations (NPS). Hotel Radisson Blu Edwardian in

London, for example, allows every employee facing guests to

take action (up to a certain investment involved), to do everything

to make guests happy. All of this leading to high levels of

customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth. And in this case,

a happy guest definitely leads to a happy employee as well

(Pantelidis, 2002).

Becoming a company that is more and more driven

by consumer input also means that you need to let

go of something else: being a process, product

or technology led company. Employees have a

natural inertia for change. It is important to take

away as much burdens as possible and to

trigger the right motivations at their end to

make the new way of working a success in

terms of adoption. It is important to make the

process of engaging, inspiring and

activating/empowering employees a fun learning

experience. That can be done through gamification

(the quizzes we play before a workshop are a great

example) and the format of the used communication

tools (think of things like the interactive infographic

for Heineken). Next to that make the information

relevant for the receiver at the moment of

reception and make sure it is bite size (the platform

we are rolling-out for Marktplaats is a perfect

illustration of how that can be done).

Furthermore, it is vital that they feel close to

consumers, so that, if possible they experience the

consumers’ feedback first hand. Especially if one

wants to involve all employees at all levels of the

company (line managers and frontline employees) the

inspiration needs to be very short, lively, sharp and

clear. It is also crucial that stakeholders and

employees immediately see how the shared info helps

them to do a better job in the short and long term. That

is where the measuring bit will pop-in later on.

Finally, it is vital to have a clear mission & purpose as a company and

summarize this in a catchy phrase. No matter what, the consumer should

be central in this one, next to strategic goals. IKEA's mission for example is to

'create a better everyday life for the many people'. Aligning the goals of

consumer collaboration with this mission & purpose will help

employees to see the importance of the initiative.

It is clear by now, that it not only takes the right consumer collaboration

platform to become more consumer-centric, it is also about distributing the

respective results internally in the best and most impactful way. It is

about activating the internal stakeholders and let them bring the

new knowledge into practice. They need to integrate it into their new

plans and strategies (among managers) and by doing so making consumers

happy with more relevant products and campaigns that are tailored to their

needs; or they need to improve their day-to-day way of working and behavior

to create more customer happiness (for frontline employees and customer

service helpdesks).

#4 leverage the collaboration initiatives and the culture externally

It is great to be proud of the fact that you listen to consumers and that you act upon what you

have heard. But you also need to talk about it to the outside world. Not communicating about it to

the external world would be a missed opportunity as it evokes positive effects as we will see later on.

To consumers

You can communicate this to consumers, but also through them. The first option is telling the

world that you have a Consumer Consulting Board, and that you are looking for

members for it to help you out crafting a new product, like the CEO of Telenet (a Belgian

telco company) did during a live press conference. Or using the insights from your projects as

marketing material just like Chiquita used consumer insights and quotes in the campaign to launch

their new smoothie offering into Europe. Another option is to do what Heineken did and show-off

‘The Club of the Future’ you co-created with consumers to the press and the (design)

world. A final way to show that you are an outside-in thinking company is by combining closed

collaboration with open crowd-sourcing (an open call to the world for ideas through the

company’s social media channels). It gives a wider group of consumers the opportunity to take part

in something and, from a marketing perspective, it will built awareness about your way of working

and great company culture. The generated ideas can serve as input for further collaboration and

fine-tuning in the closed Consumer Consulting Board.

Through consumers

The other option is to communicate about it through consumers. At Marktplaats, four members of

the Consumer Consulting Board that helped them make the right decisions while

renewing their online platform introduced the new platform and its features to a group

of 50,000 beta users. It was much more powerful when done by ordinary consumers who were

part of the project than if Marktplaats executives had done this announcement via a short video

message.

A Consumer Consulting Board member announces the new features to beta users in a video

By consistently following and continuously repeating the different steps we

outlined above - working on the hearts and minds by engaging and inspiring

employees, activating them to take relevant actions and communicating about the

consumer collaboration initiatives undertaken to the external world – for every

single project; this is how a company works on becoming a more consumer-

centric thinking company project by project.

#5 Measure the impact on the company’s culture and performance

What is the impact of all of this on the performance of a company? We ran a series of

experiments with a series of clients that taught us it has a positive impact on a companies’ company

culture, the performance of their employees and products/services/campaigns and the perception the

external world has about the company as a whole and their respective brands:

Company culture

By constantly engaging the internal world with the external world

and by inspiring them with what drives consumers’ happiness, it

becomes clear that passion for the consumer within the

organization is vital. It makes employees more service

oriented towards the outside world, but also towards their own

colleagues, which is a positive side effect. Both at Mars Pet Care

and Unilever R&D employees who were part of the project

indicated that this was the way forward. KPIs here are

‘employee happiness’ and ‘internal believe and support’

for the initiatives.

Performance

Both managers and front-desk employees create

more empathy for the consumer and know better

how they can play a role in ensuring happiness

among customers. Managers do this by creating more

consumer relevant products and services, frontline

workers for example by knowing exactly what to do and

how to behave. Being in constant touch with the

consumer world makes a company more successful, also

in its marketing actions that will become more relevant to

consumers as well. KPIs to keep track of the

performance of the company can be: consumer

satisfaction and the success in the market of co-

developed products/services and campaigns.

External communication

Research by the University of Wageningen (van Dijk,

2011) has shown that products that claim to be

created together with consumers are perceived as

being better and that companies who show that

they listen to and work together with their

customers are seen as more contemporary,

consumer relevant and genuine. Out of the member

satisfaction survey that we run on all the Consumer

Consulting Boards of our clients we learn that

consumers who have closely collaborated with a brand

or company become what we may call emotional

shareholders of the brand/company. They become

very involved and start to perform consumer brand

related actions for the company:

recommendations, content creation, etc. Moreover,

happiness of customers due to great service by frontline

employees leads to online and offline word of mouth as

well (Pantelidis, 2002). External KPIs can go from

measuring brand perception and brand identification to

word-of-mouth, NPS and all kinds of other consumer

brand related actions.

In conclusion, a company needs to be consistent and give

constant feedback to its Consumer Consulting Board-

members and the consumer world in general about

what it does with the results of consumer collaboration

initiatives. In this new world of perfect information (all

information is available for all online), companies need to be

very transparent and open about their actions.

Especially the younger, digital native and marketing savvy

generations (Gen Y and Z) will get after a lie or pure marketing

stunt without real impact and hunt a company down. An

interesting case here is Starbucks. They do a great job on

social media in terms of consumer listening and collaboration,

but when it comes to their financial structure they act against

what is perceived as ethical. This hurts their brand perception

and is counterbalancing the positive effects of their listening

and collaboration initiatives.

The Chief Consumer Officer change manager and ambassador

This white paper describes the process of changing the culture of an

organization from one that thinks inside-out to one that has an outside-in

vision. As described above, this asks for a step-by-step approach, but also a clear

vision and strategy behind it is needed. The latter emphasizes the need for

coordination by a new member of the company’s board: Chief Consumer

Officer.

What are the tasks of a CCO?

1 Creating buy-in among top management for structural consumer

collaboration;

2

3

4

Guiding the company through this transformation from an inside-out

towards an outside-in thinking company. Leading the change and

coordinating the strategic projects;

Identifying the ‘movers and shakers’ within the organization, supporting them

and giving them the necessary responsibilities within the project so they can bring

their department or team on board;

Embedding consumer listening and collaboration through-out the

company: making it part of every phase of decision-making across different

departments and at all levels;

5

6

7

8

Linking consumer collaboration to the long term strategic goals of the

company;

Making sure that every project is leveraged internally: maximize the

impact on actions and the company culture;

Convince the Board of the company that it is not only about being

proud, but also loud: making external leverage happen to get positive

marketing effects;

Defining and measuring KPIs at different levels of impact as described above;

It needs a senior executive to take on this role. The person needs to be

networked very well within the organization and be able to turn a vision into

reality. It is a challenging new role within a company, but those who accept

know that the journey will be at least as exciting as the destination!

References

Van Belleghem, S. and T. De Ruyck (2012). ‘From Co-creation towards Collaboration’, InSites Consulting

Working Paper

Van Belleghem, S. et all (2012). ‘Social Media Around the World’, InSites Consulting Working Paper

De Wulf, K. & T. De Ruyck eds. (2013). The Consumer Consulting Board: Consumers Shaping your

Business, InSites Consulting Working Paper

De Ruyck, T. et all (2010). ‘How Fans Become Future Shapers of an Ice-cream Brand’, Proceedings ESOMAR

Qualitative

De Ruyck, T. et all (2013) ‘Think Big & Connect to the Max: How PepsiCo (Re)connected the Ruffles Brand

with Generation Y’, Proceedings ESOMAR Congress

De Ruyck, T. et all (2011). ‘Engage, Inspire, Act: 3 Stepstones towards Developing more Impactful

Products’, Proceedings ESOMAR Congress

PwC (2013), ‘Global CEO Survey 2013’, PwC Working Paper

De Ruyck, T. et all (2012). ‘Designing the Club of Tomorrow: Consumer Understanding Guiding Creativity

towards Success’, Proceedings ESOMAR Congress

Whelan, E. et all (2010) ‘Creating Employee Networks That Deliver Open Innovation’, MIT Sloan Management

Review, Volume 53, No. 1: 37-44.

Pantelidis, I. (2002) ‘Implementing empowerment. The case of Radisson Edwardian, a hotel chain that dared

take action, Proceedings CHME Conference

Van Dijk, J. et all (2011) ‘The effects of co-creation on consumer perceptions’, Msc thesis, Wageningen

University

tom@insites-consulting.com

+32 9 269 14 07

Tom De Ruyck Head of Consumer Consulting Boards

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Consulting Boards?

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