China, India and Japan: Global Economic Drivers

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IE Business School and Casa Asia are organizing this conference to discuss the concerns that Asian companies have in Europe and vice versa, in order to show the full potential, from the business point of view, of relationships with three of the major Asian countries: China, India and Japan.

Every time we have more and more evidence that Asia will be the center of global economic growth over the coming decades, due to the enormous strength of the Asian economies. In Europe, Asia is perceived as a great opportunity for its high growth rates, demographic factors, infrastructure needs and rising middle classes. In Asia, Europe is perceived as a market with high rates of consumption that is valued technological capacity of their firms, the relevance of their brands and the degree of excellence shown in the design of certain products. 

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Rock ‘n’ Roll Architecture

IE University

It happened in the IE Bachelor in Architecture, subject: Design Studio II… Professor Manuel Ocaña, http://www.manuelocana.com/ invited architect and researcher Carlos Ramos to one of his lectures. Carlos’ conference was entitled out Towards Rocking Architecture. – A retrospective insight into space and sound throughout four short stories.- and talked about the influences rock music could have on architecture. As well…

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Businesses, customers and small fry

Academics

IE Focus | By Enrique Dans, Professor at IE Business School

It’s time to put an end to deliberations. If there is anything that really is changing as a direct result of the popularisation of the net and the so-called social web, it is undoubtedly relations between businesses and their customers.

Open your account on Twitter (Sorry? You’re an executive and you still don´t have Twitter or you don´t know what it is?) And write something about well-known large business organizations with millions of customers, such as Telefonica or Iberia, often criticised for their customer service. In a matter of minutes, if what you have said about the company merits a reply, you will quite possibly find it on Twitter. Have a look at the Twitter accounts of Movistar or Iberia… What can you see? Businesses talking directly with their customers and offering to solve their problems. Businesses that listen to the small fry.

It might be a question about items on a bill, explanations about an incident or about an offer: the question is that, after many years of inflexible single-direction trading and contacting customers only to harass them by throwing new products and services in their faces, many businesses are finally starting to use bidirectional communication channels to maintain real relations with their customers. Such relations are much more genuine and make it worthwhile to manage exceptions or speak with a human voice if a problem can be solved and a customer can be satisfied. Trivial? At the moment, more or less testimonial. But undoubtedly a sign of the times. Times in which technology, far from isolating individuals, makes it possible to humanize relations and bring together those who are on both sides of the screen. How can invest millions in expensive CRM systems if our customers then speak about us in public and we pay them no attention?

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