In the Age of Agile, Is There Room for Strategic Marketing Planning?
November 22, 2023
18:00-19:30
Alba Graduate Business School, The American College of Greece
Vasilis Theoharakis
Professor of Strategic Marketing and Director of the Centre for Strategic Marketing and Sales, Cranfield School of Management
Can strategic marketing planning, a long-established cornerstone of marketing theory and practice, coexist with the demands of today's agile, rapidly changing business environment? How can companies reconcile the need for disciplined, long-term planning with the necessity for innovation and flexibility in the face of market volatility? Join us in a presentation of recent research suggesting that marketing planning should not be abandoned but rather evolved, integrating dynamic capabilities to transform continuously in response to market changes.
Strategic marketing planning is essential for achieving a positional advantage. It sets a long-term direction and develops resources to maintain superiority over competitors. However, the rigidity of traditional planning methods has been a point of contention, where too much formality can impede adaptability and response to market dynamics.
Professor Vasilis Theoharakis will introduce the concept of dynamic strategic marketing planning that integrates traditional marketing planning capabilities with the agility to reconfigure processes and resources rapidly. He will explain how dynamic strategic marketing planning enhances organizational performance by preventing the development of rigidities traditionally associated with marketing planning. By embracing a paradoxical approach that combines planning with flexibility and spontaneity, dynamic strategic marketing planning allows firms to preempt market trends and react swiftly to emerging opportunities.
He will further discuss with the audience the importance of senior management's role in the process of ensuring that strategic objectives are clearly communicated and effectively monitored for achieving revenue growth and value creation.
Register online
The event will be held in the Greek language.
Dr Vasilis Theoharakis is a Professor of Strategic Marketing and Director of the Centre of Strategic Marketing & Sales at the Cranfield School of Management. He is a partner and member of the management team of the PJ Tech Catalyst fund, a venture capital fund that invests in seed stage technology start-up companies. As a board member of NYC based Pollfish representing PJ Tech, he oversaw the sale of the company to Prodege, a California based unicorn. He led the creation of the advisory board at Innoetics, a global innovator in text to speech software, which managed the successful acquisition of the company by Samsung. Among other ventures, he co-founded and was chairman of a successful nanotechnology company that he grew to reach exports in 25 countries.
Vasilis has spent several years in Silicon Valley at senior level marketing and business development positions with high-tech start-ups and companies such as 3Com. He started his career as a research engineer at IBM’s prestigious T.J. Watson Research Center where he won the Research Division’s Award. He holds a B.Eng. (honours) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and an M.B.A. (with distinction) from New York University, and a Ph.D. in Marketing and Strategic Management from the University of Warwick. He has taught at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin, City University, Cass Business School in London, University of Sheffield, University of California - Berkeley, ALBA, Aston University, University of Cyprus and Golden Gate University.
