Hello Bo Edvardsson...

- I was Visiting Professor at University of Canterbury. This was in the context of an international teacher and researcher exchange funded by the Erskine Programme. During my visit I participated in teaching in the courses Service marketing and Relationship marketing. I also worked on my research on service innovation and design of value-creating service systems. What is it that causes innovations to be scaled up quickly? How do the personalities of actor’s influence how value is co-created? 
Can you tell us about your impressions from the University?
- I visited the Institution of Marketing, ranked as the best when it comes to research in the country. The ratings of individual researchers, disciplines and institutions seem to play an important role. Every six years there is an evaluation of lecturers and researchers, they look at research grants, involvement in graduate education and external research funding. The number of points is the basis for allocation of resources to higher education institutions and internally within universities. The higher the rating, the greater the award. This evaluation system, the Performance-Based Research Funding (PBRF), has a clear focus on individuals and topics. The aim is to increase the quality of research, encourage individual researchers, ensuring that research continues to support education at all levels, ensuring that funds are available for graduate students and new researchers, and to improve the quality of the dissemination of research results. The results of evaluations show that the quality level increased between 2006 and 2012. The publication in international journals is rising, but the external research finding has not increase as planned. Therefore, there is a proposal for the next evaluation round to give greater weight to external funding and cut down on publication and citation. The discussion brought about the commercialization of research results emphasizing the risks that this may prevent the dissemination of research results and ultimately limit the contribution of research to society’s long-term development. From the political side, the importance of increasing external research funding and that research should be user-oriented and focusing on urgent social challenges.
Do you have more reflections from your visit?
- The nature on New Zealand is fantastic. There are many great hiking trails, vineyards, high mountains, millions of sheep and long beautiful beaches.