As Peter Drucker said: “The purpose of a business [or entrepreneur] is to create customers.”  So, if you want to find out whether your new technology or application holds potential get out there and look for customers! However, if even venturous customers are not interested, you probably should think again. And, please note that in contrast to what designers often think: users and customers are often not the same!

Ed Nijssen is a Professor of Technology Marketing at the Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship and Marketing (ITEM) group of the School of Industrial Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His areas of expertise include strategic sales and marketing and entrepreneurial marketing for radical and incremental innovations. 

His research interest focuses on marketing and innovation (e.g., adoption of new products, NPD tools, self-service technologies, social media, marketing/sales—R&D interface, branding), sales research (e.g., sales organization, selling new products, value/solution selling), service research (e.g., innovation in the front line, brand advocacy) and marketing strategy. Recently work focuses, in particular, on servitization (i.e. developing, manufacturing and selling of solutions). Servitization requires integrating hard and software but also a fundamental change in organizational culture to reap benefits from this approach.

Ed Nijssen holds a PhD from Tilburg University (The Netherlands). He was a visiting professor at Michigan State University, New York University, and Bocconi University (Italy), and taught PhD courses on cross cultural research methods at the Swedish School of Economics and Business (Helsinki), Fudan (Shanghai) and Vaasa University (Vaasa, Finland). He also served two terms on the Executive Committee of the European Marketing Academy. Ed is on the review boards of Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of Product Innovation Management. He is also active in accreditation committees for NVAO/VLUHR, as consultant, and as a professional trainer in executive education. Together with Link Magazine he organized several round tables e.g., on the subject of servitization.   

Ed has published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Business Research, and Long Range Planning among others, and he is the author of several books, including Marketing Strategy, and Entrepreneurial Marketing, an effectual approach. He has won several ‘teacher of the year’ awards and prizes for his articles.