Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Seeking for solutions within a project setting

Associated organisational unit

Electronic data

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Seeking for solutions within a project setting

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
  • P Naudé
  • S Henneberg
  • S Mouzas
  • C Ramos
  • A Graves
  • V Crute
Close
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2009
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Business Market Management
Issue number3
Volume3
Number of pages12
Pages (from-to)151-170
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

There has been increasing attention focused on the importance of ‘solution selling’ in the often very close relationships that characterize business-to-business marketing. While an extant predominantly product-centric view of solutions prevails in the literature, this has recently been juxtaposed with a more process-oriented view. We review such a process-oriented solution model briefly, and focus on the managerial challenge of how firms make this process-oriented approach work in practice. We argue that, in parallel to adopting a process-oriented approach, companies also have to focus their attention specifically on how to mobilize the different parties in order to amalgamate the perspectives and orientations between the interacting counterparts. We propose an interaction process model of how this ‘collective mind’ is achieved, using as an example a study of the United Kingdom’s Lean Aerospace Initiative (UK LAI), a large project with a specific solution in mind – improving the global competitiveness of the UK’s Aerospace industry. We use our model to show how the three main groups of actors (Government bodies, four Universities, and the aerospace companies themselves) interact in their pursuit of co-creating their collective solutions.