The digital world will compel companies to provide us all with highly personalised services which will fit exactly with the ways in which we choose to live our lives in the future. This is the conclusion of Professor Irene Ng, Professor of Marketing and Service Systems in her new article for the University of Warwick’s Knowledge Centre.

Professor Ng, Head of Service Systems and Marketing and Director of WMG’s International Institute for Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI), has released the article on ‘Digital Darwinism’ to coincide with the release of her new book on the subject, Value & Worth: Creating New Markets in the Digital Economy.

The final speakers for the annual TEDxWarwick event have been announced this week, completing the full programme around the theme of Building Bridges.

We are pleased to announce WMG Honorary Fellow, Rick Robinson, is one of the speakers at this year’s event. Dr Rick Robinson is Executive IT Architect at IBM, responsible for the development and delivery of their Smarter Cities solutions. Dr Robinson will speak on the subject of Smarter Stories for Better Cities – how to develop sustainable city systems, such as transportation and water, in rapidly growing economies. Cities around the world are growing at a rate of two people per second; five billion people are expected to be living in cities by 2030; astonishing developments in science and technology such as 3D printing, brain-computer interfaces and predictive analytics offer the opportunity in theory to develop new models of business and city systems that can supply, manage and exchange resources in ways that are more sustainable; and that create localised personal and community value. Dr Robinson works closely with regional and city government organisations to unravel the problems faced by this rapid population growth.

TEDx, an off-shoot of the prestigious global TED event conference, is a programme of local, self-organised events that bring people together to share their experience. TEDxWarwick is organised by a team of 26 students from the University of Warwick, and this year is being led by WMG’s Professor Lucy Hooberman, Professor of Digital Media and Innovation.

Professor Hooberman is bringing her knowledge and expertise, gained from a career within the media industry and at the BBC, to the 2013 student organisers. She describes her role as one of a ‘mentor’ to the team.

This year’s line-up of speakers also includes:

· Kate Cooper – Feeding the City, Feeding the Mind

· Tan Lai Yong – The Broken Bicycle Chain

· Stefan Bon – Nano Materials: The Science of the Small

· Andy Miah – I Scientist: The Art of Future-Gazing

· Gilean McVean – A Thousand Genomes, A Thousand Stories

· Sir Philip Craven – Paralympic Sport: Society’s Great Educator

· Fabian Oefner – When Science Meets Art

….and many more from a range of fields.

Tickets for TEDxWarwick 2013, which takes place on Saturday 9^th March, are now on sale from the TEDxWarwick website: http://www.tedxwarwick.com/2013/

WMG will be opening its doors on 4th December 2012, to showcase the research, education and knowledge transfer capabilities of its Service Systems Group.

Professor Irene Ng, Head of the Service Systems Group and Director of the new International Institute for Product and Service Innovation, will speak on Service Systems, Markets and New Business Models in the Digital Economy.

Mark Reddish from Rolls-Royce will provide his perspective on why service - and the new MSc programme - is important to his business. Traditionally, a manufacturing-focused concern, Rolls-Royce now derives more than half of all its revenue from services.

The event will take place on Tuesday 4th December (6pm - 8pm). A light buffet will be provided beforehand with presentations starting from 6:30pm.

If you would like to attend the event, please RSVP to Julia Fan (J.M.Fan@warwick.ac.uk)

A new innovation support programme aimed at helping small business growth has been launched by the SME team at WMG, University of Warwick. They have recently been awarded ERDF funding to offer two free days of innovation support to West Midlands SMEs, through a new Innovation Programme, which is designed to help SMEs transform existing products and services and launch new products and services that are market leading and able to adapt to changing market needs.

It has been announced todaythat leading marketing academic and entrepreneur, Professor Irene Ng, has been appointed as Director of The International Institute for Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI). IIPSI is the newest building for WMG, at the University of Warwick. It is funded by the University of Warwick and the European Regional Development Fund and will translate WMG’s innovation into commercial outcomes within small businesses. This digital innovation space will enable businesses to access the very latest cutting edge product and service design technology, leading to the creation and testing of market leading products and services.

WMG at the University of Warwick has used its unique position between academia and industry to launch a new MSc in Service Management and Design. Delivery of world class customer service and generating a slice of the vast business revenues that can be achieved by getting this right remains the goal of all companies wishing to survive and grow in today’s tough and uncertain economic climate.

WMG is looking to make a number of key academic appointments across its full range of research activities in Digital Technologies, Materials and Manufacturing and Operations and Business Management, in order to enhance and expand its capabilities in these developing areas.

The new posts cover a range of research, teaching and knowledge transfer activities, working with partners in diverse business sectors such as automotive, aerospace and defence, digital, healthcare, finance, energy and pharmaceuticals.

The Group are currently looking for world class individuals who want to make a real impact in their field. The following roles are available:

• Jaguar Land Rover Chair in Simulation of Complex Hybrid and Electric Powertrain Systems 
• Royal Academy of Engineering / TATA Steel Research Chair in Low Carbon Materials Technologies
• Professor of Innovative Manufacturing
• Professor of Cyber Security
• Associate Professor in Service Systems
• Associate / Assistant Professor in Tropical Diagnostics (in collaboration with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine)

Other key academic positions in Cyber Security, Digital Product Lifecycle Management, Hybrid and Electric Vehicles and Nanocomposites will also be announced shortly.

Award Winning US Marketing Professor Stephen L. Vargo has just arrived in the UK to undertake an extensive research collaboration as a Visiting Professor with WMG’s Service Systems group at the University of Warwick from Feb 1 to Sept 30, 2012.

Professor Vargo, who will be working on projects in WMG and around Europe this year, will collaborate with Professor Irene Ng and researchers at the Service Systems group on research efforts in the area of service and value. He is particularly known for his work in Service-Dominant Logic, which was first published in the ground-breaking article “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing” in the Journal of Marketing. It is the most-cited marketing article published in the last decade, having been cited over 1,800 times in the past seven years in the domain of management, marketing, operations, engineering and information systems.

WMG at the University of Warwick have just appointed Professor Irene Ng as Professor of Marketing and Service Systems. Irene was the founder and director of the Centre for Service Research and the Professor of Marketing Science at the University of Exeter’s Business School as well as an ESRC/AIM Services Fellow.