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Strategic planning isn't just about making up a to‐do list Here's a planning process that can transform an organization's culture.

The purpose of this paper is to explore if experience stimulates or stifles creativity. It shows that accumulation of work experience improves an individual’s judgment and reduces divergent thinking of creativity.

This study examines the factors influencing individual creativity, including the impact of work experience, using 509 responses to questionnaires from 500 top construction companies. The research hypothesis is evaluated using structural equation modeling.

The main factors affecting individual creativity are a positive mind-set, self-directed learning, and low self-monitoring. Self-directed learning has the greatest influence on the creativity of individuals with accumulated work experience, while low self-monitoring influences the creativity of people with less work experience.

A better way to study individual creativity is longitudinal research, which involves long-time observation of the life cycle of creativity among organizational members, who are like products with a life cycle. Further study is necessary to show why some members are creative only for a short time (short life cycle) while some are creative for a longer (very long life cycle) period.

This study finds that employee creativity derives from the self-directed learning process as it helps to accumulate experience. This result indicates that construction firms can train employees to improve their self-directed learning and boost creativity. Experienced workers need more attention because they are trapped in their previous experience and it is difficult to train them.

Entrepreneurship education at universities aims to create entrepreneurial thinking and spread the culture of entrepreneurial awareness, skills and attitudes to students to stimulate their entrepreneurship intentions as graduates. This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurship education on innovative start-up intention as well as the mediating role of entrepreneurial mind-sets of university students.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for analysis with (n = 204) valid questionnaires collected from university students.

The main findings show that entrepreneurial mind-sets mediate the relationship between entrepreneurship education and innovative start-up intention.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by its application in a higher educational institution and enriches the literature with new evidence that entrepreneurship education could enhance innovative start-up intention.

The expected growth of elders and chronically ill patients requires health insurers and health-care systems to shift from primarily focusing on the care of the sick to focusing both on care of the sick and on preventive health care. Public expectations for high-quality health care call for a new, more profound, and more actionable understanding of the healthy customer’s mind regarding health-promoting behaviors. Mind-Genomics may become the next big idea in health service. The relation between Mind-Genomics and data-driven personalized health plans is now being systematically explored. Some of the findings are reported in this research project.

Methodology: Respondents were 200 members of the Excellus American health fund. Based on measures of patient experience the authors created and tested concepts of messaging. The authors conducted a series of conjoint-based designed experiments to establish response patterns to our messaging. The authors analyzed data using Mind-Genomics, an empirical “micro-science” for discovering psychographic mind-sets and mapping motivating messages for healthy behaviors.

Results: The authors segmented patients by attitudes, perceptions, preferences, needs, and behaviors by their responses to messaging, thereby uncovering underlying psychographic mind-sets. The authors used the Personal Viewpoint Identifier to tag each person in the population by a sample mind-set and use the right messaging.

Discussion: To understand the mind of the patient regarding health plans, health funds may use the powerful tools of Mind-Genomics. Health insurers and health systems may implement Mind-Genomics as the next frontier of knowledge development to offer customized health plans, thus investing in preventive medicine.

The purpose of this study is to explore through the author’s personal experience the impact rebuilding the author’s well-being had on the author’s identity and efficacy as a teacher. This describes the author’s experiences after the death of the author’s father and the effect of the author’s emotional state on the author’s personal and professional identity. It also explores how the author developed sustainable habits to cope with daily challenges.

The study adopts an auto-ethnographic approach utilizing journal entries and reflections collected over the years as part of the healing process. These will provide a descriptive view of the author’s emotional state in the years after the author’s father's death. The author employed this method to explore the author’s personal experiences and provide a better understanding of the connections between the reconstruction of the professional identity and the importance of well-being and mental health in light of a significant or transformative event.

The paper provides insights about the significance of a positive mind-set on the efficacy and performance of teachers. This suggests that there is a connection between the impact of improving the author’s well-being on a personal and professional level.

There is little research on how self-efficacy or coping strategies could have an impact on teachers. The paper offers a unique insight into teachers' emotional and academic identities.

This paper aims to advance the design-thinking approach in food from an engineering mind-set toward a positive psychology perspective by investigating how consumer experiences evoked by food-related activities can facilitate, stimulate and enhance individuals’ happiness and perceptions of life satisfaction.

A diary field experiment was conducted. Participants from a major European city were asked to reflect on their food-related activities, provide descriptions and answer questions on experiential stimulation derived from these activities in relation to happiness and perceived life satisfaction.

Food-related activities generally result in positive consumer experiences and psychological well-being. Experiential stimulation resulting from food activities is positively related to perceived life satisfaction directly and indirectly via pleasure and meaning. Although the authors found an overall positive relationship between these constructs, they also found differences based on the experience type considered. A “crescendo model” of experiences that details how experiences lead to happiness and perceived life satisfaction is presented.

This study is largely exploratory. Future research should adopt an experimental approach and further test the relationship between experiential stimulation, happiness and perceived life satisfaction in the context of food.

The paper offers innovation teams in food companies a practical “crescendo model” that can be used to design product–consumer interactions.

The research bridges literatures on design thinking, psychological well-being and consumer experiences. By studying the relationship between experiences, happiness and perceived life satisfaction in the context of food, the findings contribute to research on food well-being by expanding the notion of happiness seen only as pleasure. The research also contributes to work on design thinking by offering an experiential framework that contributes to the notion of consumer empathy.

Several studies have investigated the factors affecting innovation in medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at different levels. However, research into the characteristics of the entrepreneur (individual level) in social economy enterprises (SEE), and the relationship to innovation is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to build upon previous innovation literature to analyse SEE innovativeness.

This paper empirically analyses data from 193 face-to-face interviews with the founder/owner/managing director of small (zero to nine employees) SEE in Andalucía, Spain. A semi-structured questionnaire was produced using the literature review. To ensure the reliability of the data collection and the consistency of the results, several researchers reviewed the codification and analysis of the answers. Quantitative analyses were performed on the data, including descriptive statistical analysis and multivariate analysis (factorial for innovativeness construct validation, multiple regression, cluster, and discriminant). The software SPSS IBM PASSW Statistics 18 was used.

Considering the individual factors, it was determined that a proactive attitude towards innovation and a degree-level education were positively related to SEE innovativeness and that these were the most significant factors considered. The identification of attitude towards innovation was perhaps not surprising; one might expect a relationship between proactiveness and innovativeness. Furthermore, this result is consistent with the positive impact exerted by entrepreneurial characteristics, such as entrepreneurial confidence and adaptability, or SME entrepreneurs’ proactive personality and prospector strategy orientation towards their firms’ innovation.

This study has a number of limitations. First, the study is an exploratory study of innovativeness in SEE in a limited geographical area. Second, the fact that the interviews were conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire limited the opportunities for obtaining more detailed information regarding the factors affecting innovativeness in SEE. Third, other variables may have been used as control variables, such as firm age. Sector was used as control variable and it was found as not significant. Fourth, other statistical analyses, such as hierarchical linear modelling, would benefit the results, as different levels of analysis would be considered simultaneously. Fifth, other components of entrepreneurial orientation would render the results more complete.

The research findings suggest that SEE would benefit from degree-level people with proactive attitudes towards innovation. Clearly, attitude and education are important aspects of the individual's mindset. This study demonstrates that the mind sets of the owners of SEE, in terms of both education and attitude, positively impact innovativeness. At least in SEE, degree-level entrepreneurs with positive attitudes towards innovation run more innovative firms. The challenge for regional policy makers is to look beyond the formal education system to promote innovation skills programmes for social and economic impact.

This paper contributes to the entrepreneurship and innovation literature by identifying the importance of developing individual-level skills as well as formal education in order to foster innovation in SEEs.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated model to represent how service experience (core, employee and service scale), customer satisfaction (transaction-specific and cumulative) and brand affinity influence brand equity in financial services, taking into account the moderating influence of financial service providers.

Data were collected from 751 customers in three types of financial service providers (banks, insurance companies and credit unions), and analyzed with structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis.

The findings confirm the significant and positive influence of service experience, customer satisfaction and brand affinity on brand equity. Employee service experience has the strongest influence, but its impact is mediated by customer satisfaction. Brand affinity has the lowest influence on brand equity. The type of financial service provider moderates the influence of customer satisfaction on brand equity; transactional satisfaction is more important for credit unions and insurance companies, but cumulative satisfaction is higher for banks.

The study is significant for three reasons. First, it reconciles branding strategies across different types of financial service providers. Second, it will help financial managers to develop and implement a more integrated approach toward building brand equity for financial service brands. Finally, it will identify specific service-related areas financial providers can target to increase customers’ preferential value.

The paper addresses previous concerns within brand equity studies by examining the drivers of brand equity formation in multiple financial institutions. It shows how different aspects of service experience and customer satisfaction affect brand affinity and preferential attitudes toward financial brands.

A fundamental aspect of hierarchical loyalty programs is that some consumers get rewards that others do not. Despite the widespread use of such programs, academics have long debated whether these benefits are outweighed by the potential negative impact of the differential treatment of customers. This study aims to extend our understanding, examining the impact of message framing on consumers’ reactions to hierarchical loyalty structures.

Three online studies were conducted. Study 1 uses advertisements to manipulate the message frame’s emphasis (benefits vs status). Study 2 manipulates consumers’ frame of thought by directing their attention to either changes in benefits or status. Finally, Study 3 uses the proposed framework to reconcile contradictory findings from past research.

Low-frequency customers who do not expect to qualify for a superior customer tier tend to reject hierarchical programs when thinking about status. In contrast, when these customers think about concrete rewards, loyalty program messages produce no negative reactions. High-frequency customers are positively affected by communication regardless of the type of benefits framed.

All studies were done online, potentially limiting the external validity of the results. Nevertheless, the impact of message framing on perceptions about the loyalty program seems to be quite robust across different studies and manipulations.

When communicating with low-frequency customers, managers should avoid promising status; customers should instead be motivated based on concrete rewards. High-frequency customers are indifferent to alternative emphasis of communication frames.

Marketing academics have acknowledged the importance of being able to reward top customers without demotivating light and moderate users. This research is the first to provide a solution to this issue.

The concept of brand transformation concerns a brand strategy that advocates radical changes. It involves a collective set of actions and activities that are coherently steered to regenerate the engagement experience of the target market emanating from the brand strategy. Nevertheless, there are still lack of case studies demonstrating this in the B2B business sector. The purpose of this paper is to exhibit a brand transformation initiative taken by a B2B business, particularly the handling challenges leading to the initiative coupled with the framework and processes involved to make it a success.

A case study method was applied with documentation of inputs captured from different stakeholders. Consulting practitioners from a brand consultancy involved in the brand transformation initiative documented interviews and audit findings which offered first-hand report regarding their involvement and experience of bringing the B2B business through the brand transformation journey.

Brand transformation at Fagerdala warranted a radical re-orientation of the brand positioning that supports a clear business intent that was put forward. The initiative encompasses strong leadership, commitment and change management to drive transformational changes involving both internal and external stakeholders. An innovation oriented mind-set is critical to drive radical changes to support coherent efforts that could ultimately engender to distinct brand experience to targeted stakeholders.

This paper provides brand managers, particularly the brand owners practical and realisable example on how to plan and execute brand transformation in a B2B business environment. More specifically, it highlights the indicators for embarking on this initiative, the approach to drive brand transformation based on established brand strategy frameworks and finally how to execute the strategy in a practical manner.

This paper extends the concept of brand transformation that has recently been mentioned in literature from one of conceptual perspective to one of practice perspective. It emphasises and underscores some of the details of execution that is instrumental in the practice of brand transformation within a B2B industry sector.