The person behind the resume

Having reached the 55 years of age, it is time to look forward for the future because a brain that has been stimulated for so long can harvest the investments it has made. I look forward to my next ten years of academic life because I feel that I did come to a stage where I can reach the highest of my abilities. Indeed I believe that a university operates like a knowledge intensive firm and working at a university implies that one grows intellectually in a continuous way or else there is just no place for you. However, at that age one can also look back and reflect, so here are my reflections about my career.
 
First, I do not feel the 55 years of age. Looking back at the pictures shown here, I feel I am still the young boy, running his first race. I did not win that race, but during the contest I moved up to third place. Why? I learned from running that if you want to finish as a winner, just start out fast: overtaking other runners can be very difficult at times. Indeed I started out fast and kept fighting. That is what I also do at work: I always start fast and by being persistent I keep going and give all my energy to the goals I set for myself. By doing so I hope to be an example for my colleagues at my university.
 
The philosophy of my life is largely existential: Martin Heidegger reminds us that as humans ‘Wir sind gewurfen’. From Jean Paul Sartre I learned that indeed during our life we ought to take responsibility for our actions and make the best out of it. In short, that is what I did: with my persistence during my academic career I have constantly created and recreated myself and as you can see I still do. My academic life is nothing but an exciting search and research process for what is important in marketing. How can I stretch the boundaries of my knowledge? All this is being done in collaboration with different exciting researchers within and outside the Netherlands. I talk about them later.
 
I am born in Belgium and followed an agricultural school (so I am a farmer), only to become interested in the then vocal and innovative philosophy professors: Leo Apostel, Jaap Kruithof, Etienne Vermeersch and Rudolf Boehm. They worked at the department of philosophy, State University of Ghent, Belgium and there I did spend my undergraduate university years. It was an exciting time full of intellectual surprises and as a philosopher we had to build our own theories or our own views. Needless to say I liked that and found that challenging. As you can see from my resume this is exactly what I have been doing my whole career. One of the most important inspirations in my career came from an uncle (Willem Melis), who told me an interesting story: not being a very brilliant friend of him started to study for his exams at the University of Ghent on the Sunday evening the day before the academic year started – and that is exactly what I did when I arrived at the university when young. Later I discovered in marketing that being first in a market has an advantage, but not always. But if you ask me what to do in life: just work and run! This is what I did and will do. This is the best advice I like to give to everybody reading this resume!  
 
As a student I had a cleaning job at SABENA airlines and I received a free ticket to South America where I did see the world as it is, not the world in the news or in the books. It was a good learning experience. Coming back to Belgium I decided that I better pursue a Ph.D. in the USA, the country which I then perceived as the originator of the new world and new science. I got myself at the University of Pennsylvania (where I became Annenberg fellow, a prestigious grant at Penn). At Penn I experienced probably the most beautiful and interesting times of my life. First, Ronald Reagan got elected two months after my arrival and he made the claim that people ought to take responsibility for them selves. I felt that he was right; my intellectual work (in philosophy) had to have practical applications. In Europe my social identity was being socially engaged (despite my high ambitions), so I changed my identity immediately and I did prepare myself for the future. I decided to combine different sources of knowledge: educational psychology, communications and marketing. Second, I also met Miss and Professor Chance who offered me a free apartment in exchange for the maintenance of their apartments at Pine Street, Philadelphia. I studied in the morning, worked in their gardens and cleaned houses, then I trained (running), slept one hour and then worked everyday until 5 A.M. in the morning. At times I also took sales jobs in restaurants and stores, and I must say I learned a lot about selling, my secret there was ‘be persistent!’ All this made me realize that indeed the USA is a country where you are given a chance to proof yourself but when you promise something, just do it! I still enjoy the USA for that! I enjoyed the intellectual climate at Penn: all professors had their own institute, professors had co-chairs in different departments, we were stimulated to take courses in different departments and I did have a chance to meet the most well known scholars in different fields such as Lenn Lodisch, Bart Weitz, Erving Goffman, David Schmittlein, Barbara Hernstein Smith, Brian Sutton Smith (my thesis advisor). Leaving Penn I was better trained both as a scholar but also as someone who was trained to survive and willing to take responsibility and conquer (my small) world. Having finished my Ph.D. I got a job in an Ad agency in New York: NW Ayer. It was a great experience but ever since my 18th I sensed that academic life was my purpose: I enjoy the intellectual freedom but also the fears and the risks that come with it
 
Moving to the Netherlands was for me a big experience, my first boss was Professor Jan Bunt who had one basic device: ‘let 1000 flowers blossom’. I did embrace that words because that is exactly what I experienced at Penn. Erasmus University is a university where you are given the chance to develop your self (at least this is how I did experience it) and so I did work there as a academic, teacher and entrepreneur. I wanted to blossom as a flower and put my talent to work. My career started off quite rapidly: just as I did run races. I ran fast, in 1888 I became fascinated by Brian Arthur’s notion of ‘path dependency and complex systems’– for me marketing management is the creation and management of complex systems. I started to work with Paul Farris (Darden School of Business) with whom I did develop a paper around path dependency in marketing only to find researchers in marketing do not understand what path dependency is. In fact Shelby Hunt once said that path dependency in marketing is a rarity, we thought it is the core of it. Practitioners caught this idea quite well and I did give more speeches in companies than I could write papers for the academic world. But in the end this intellectual endeavour resulted in a paper with Peter Dickson and Paul Farris, and was awarded in The Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

During that years it was also time to find a niche in marketing at Erasmus, and Jan Bunt and Ben Bakker encouraged me to focus on selling: not surprisingly, salespeople are entrepreneurs; they are the only people in a firm who are responsible for their actions/results. I must say the choice to study sales is not only about seeking a niche, but also about discovering  a passion: I will always see salespeople as people who are responsible for their actions and it is his/her actions that in the end secures that firms make money. In addition, salespeople (the better ones) are good copers with adversity.

This capability of speaking, researching and being entrepreneur is what I do now: I learned that by taking new topics people develop the neurotransmitter ‘dopamine’ which makes you in the end happy and which provokes curiosity. You could see that on my resume right?

Over time I have learned that trusting and doing research go hand in hand. Shelby Hunt once said: in order to compete, cooperate! Having ideas is important but the implementation and the blending ought to take place in teams. I learned to appreciate the value of co-authors. Part of my identity now is ‘being loyal to people that you trust and who trust you’ as well as ‘never change a winning team!’. So I keep collaborating with the same co-authors.

I do a lot of research with Rick Bagozzi, especially on emotions. And with him I discovered that as salespeople interact with customers they have to deal with anxiety and fear – especially the anxiety of being rejected by customers. All salespeople feel that kind of emotions. My research discovered that better salespeople cope better with their fears than the less productive ones. But perhaps the most important discovery was that good salespeople are also better in experiencing embarrassment – which is the sudden discovery due to a social incident that one is as human as others – and better in coping with that feeling, and therefore develop stronger relationships with customers.

Finally, I have learned that if one wants to be creative it is important to rest and believe in your self. Doing sports is essential to me. Indeed I do play golf, do running (ran the Rotterdam Marathon seven times) and I do visit the gym regularly (I burn about 100.000 calories a year).
When people do sport intensely they sleep better, think better and take a broader perspective in life.

Others hobbies include: during winter time I work for a month in a Hotel near a Starbucks Coffee shop in South-East Asia (e.g., Thailand or Vietnam) where I write books and study yet while also enjoying the sunshine. In addition I also visit Ann Arbor frequently and stay in the Campus Inn (close to Starbucks Coffee shop) in order to continue my work with Rick Bagozzi.

My most favorite piece of music is from Mitsuko Uchida: Mozart, The complete Piano Sonatas. In particular the Sonata in D (K311), C (K330) and A (K331). I work everyday with this one single CD and this CD makes me tranquil. Indeed having been in South-East Asia many times I am inspired by Buddhism.

Just one more note: The most important book written in business (I think) is from Spencer Johnson: Who moved my cheese, but that should not surprise the reader. For me it is an inspiration.