The Glueck Best Paper Award to the School of Science and Technology
16.08.2010
Researcher Jens Schmidt and Professor Thomas Keil of Aalto University School of Science and Technology have won the Glueck Best Paper Award of the Business Policy and Strategy division at the 2010 Academy of Management Meeting in Montreal. The winning paper is titled "Unique Demand Complementarities – A Demand-based Theory of Diversification".
The Glueck Award honors the best strategic management paper in the refereed program of the AOM meetings, the largest academic management conference in the world. From a high-standard bunch of altogether 696 papers submitted to the Business Policy and Strategy division, 161 were chosen for paper presentation, and out of these Schmidt’s and Keil’s paper was the one awarded. The Glueck Award is one of the highest international recognitions in the field of strategic management research.
The work by Jens Schmidt and Thomas Keil develops a demand-based theory of diversification decisions by complementing prior research which has focused mostly on the supply side explanations of these decisions.
– There is an emerging research stream building a demand-based view of strategic management. It urges management researchers and company managers to give a more prominent role to demand-side factors (e.g. customer segments, changing customer needs) in formulating and executing strategies, Professor Keil explains.
– In particular, the paper shows the importance of increasing the value to customers who buy several products from the same company, for instance through easier usability or adoption of the products or through better integration of them, in order to increase market share and profitability. This is especially relevant for companies moving from product to solution business, Keil exemplifies.
The winning paper is expected to be published soon in a top academic journal yet to be announced.
Jens Schmidt is a Ph.D. student at Aalto University School of Science and Technology since 2007 and also works as Business Development Manager at Itella. The paper is a part of his doctoral research which focuses on the role of customers and the demand-side in business expansion strategies. The dissertation is part of the project "Dominance strategies – Leveraging strongholds for market expansion” within the LIITO program funded by TEKES – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.
Thomas Keil is Professor of strategic management at the Institute of Strategy in Aalto University School of Science and Technology.
