Meindert Flikkema
Full professor
- S.k.thrane@vu.nl
About Meindert Flikkema
Meindert Flikkema is employed with Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam since 2003 and is a full professor of Service Innovation Strategies in the department of Management & Organization Studies. He obtained an MSc degree in Econometrics from Groningen University and a PhD in Business Economics from VU Amsterdam. His personal page on VU’s website: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/meindert-flikkema
His scholarly work appeared in academic journals, such as Economics of Innovation and New Technology , Industry & Innovation , Journal of Cleaner Production, Business Strategy & The Environment, Technovation and Research Policy. In addition, Meindert Flikkema is affiliated with the Dutch consulting firm Berenschot as a boardroom consultant, and serves advisory and supervisory boards in the private and public sectors: https://www.berenschot.nl/onze-adviseurs/meindert-flikkema
In 2015 Meindert Flikkema received the Van der Duyn-Schouten Education Award for the best senior teacher of VU Amsterdam. In addition, he is the threefold winner of the best teacher award of VU’s School of Business & Economics. In 2016 he ranked second in the Best National Teacher Award competition.
Meindert Flikkema was the co-supervisor of the following PhD candidates:
- Dr. Marco Plaisier (2012). Market orientation of professional service firms.
- Dr. Marcel Seip (2021). Firms and intellectual property rights: Who, which, when and where.
- Dr. Pablo Morales (2023). Formal and informal appropriation mechanisms for sustainable innovation: an investigation of innovator opinions and performance outcomes.
Professor Flikkema is currently working on two research topics:
- The servitization of manufacturing firms
- Beyond value co-creation in services
Positions
PhD positions:
Professor Flikkema currently has several open PhD positions in his research group.
If you are interested in his research and have available funding, you can apply as an external PhD candidate at VU Amsterdam under his supervision. Stephanie Thrane will be screening interested candidates on behalf of Professor Flikkema. By liking Stephanie's profile, she will get a notification that you are interested.
The specific positions are:
The servitization of manufacturing firms
For various reasons, manufacturing firms are trying to extend their products with basic and advanced services, and sometimes they even decide to provide their products as-a-service. However, various servitization initiatives fail or don’t bring the desired outcomes. To improve the firm-level return on servitization efforts, professor Flikkema is working on a protocol for manufacturers in which most attention is not paid to the design of new services but to the lifecycle of products, not only to the use stage (where? by whom? when? why? how?), but also to the pre-use and post-use stages, to identify and exploit opportunities for new services.
Professor Flikkema is looking for 1-2 PhD candidates -with a scholarship, private or industry funding- to work on the servitization protocol and on validating it empirically. He is also willing to supervise other research projects about servitization.
Beyond value co-creation in services
The Service-Dominant-Logic (SDL) emphasizes that value is not embedded in products after their production, and neither transferred to customers after the product purchase. According to the SDL, developed by Marketing professors Vargo & Lusch, value is ‘co-created by multiple actors, always including the beneficiary’. The proof of products is in the services they provide, according to the SDL. So the value of products for customers is basically service value or use value. Professor Flikkema conceptualizes customer value in its simplest form as ‘the customer’s assessment of what he/she gets for what has to be given’. However, in the pre-purchase stage, a customer already tries to get a picture of the gets and gives of an offer: products, services or the combination thereof. Value is therefore not created or cocreated by customers, but attributed pre-purchase, and validated in-use. Professor Flikkema is looking for 1 PhD candidate – with a scholarship, private or industry funding- to work on building and validating a new Value-Dominant-Logic (VDL) that lets go the idea of value (co)creation, a legacy of the Product-Dominant-Logic.
About VU Amsterdam
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) is an internationally renowned research university hosting more than 30,000 students in the international, multicultural and vibrant city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The high quality of research and education at VU Amsterdam can be demonstrated by its excellent performance in international rankings.
At VU Amsterdam we provide three or four year research intensive PhD programmes, or part time PhD programmes with a duration above four years, organized in graduate schools of nine VU Amsterdam faculties. We expect our doctoral graduates to become internationally engaged scientists with transferable skills and opportunities to plan a career in or outside academia.
We offer customized training and supervision with a strong emphasis on the development of research as well as professional skills such as the ability to work in teams and collaborate. In short, we wish to develop engaged and responsible academics and future professionals who constantly explore and push back the boundaries of existing knowledge. Our doctorates are internationally-oriented, multi and interdisciplinary, curiosity and results driven, creating an impact in science, society and economy.
Earning a doctorate from VU Amsterdam often leads to a career as a scholar and researcher in universities, and non-universities (universities of applied sciences); non-profits and think tanks; consultancies and corporations.
