Oxford Seminar 2012

– The Power to Act – Innovation Capability, Service Logic, and Human Learning

Illustration of the entrance to the historic Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford, inspired by classic English stone architecture with a heavy wooden door, mullioned windows, and symmetrically shaped shrubs by the entrance. The hotel is known for its quiet and exclusive atmosphere, closely connected to Oxford’s academic environment and traditions. The scene conveys a sense of history, culture, and reflection, symbolizing the classic surroundings that characterize seminars, academic conversations, and intellectual exploration in Oxford. The detailed illustration style evokes British university culture, timeless elegance, and the distinctive atmosphere of the city’s historic colleges and hotels.

Introduction and Reflection

The Oxford Seminar in 2012 stands out in retrospect as a clear turning point in the seminar series. While earlier years had focused more on inspiration, theory, and case-based learning, this seminar was much more explicitly centered on the ability to execute. The question was no longer what we know, but why—despite knowledge, capital, and expertise—we so often fail to turn insight into sustainable value creation.

The seminar connected micro, meso, and macro perspectives: from individual leaders and organizations to design, services, and strategy, and further to institutional frameworks and global patterns of entrepreneurship. For us as participants, this was a seminar that challenged our comfort zones—not through sweeping claims, but through measured, research-based, and practice-oriented reflection.

Program Overview

Oxford 2012 brought together a strong group of speakers with deep expertise and complementary perspectives:

Tor W. Andreassen
- Professor, BI Norwegian Business School / affiliated with Oxford
- Topic: Innovation adoption, customer value, and psychological barriers
- Focus on status quo bias, the endowment effect, and Jobs-to-be-Done
Richard Cuthbertson
- Oxford Institute of Retail Management (OXIRM)
- Topic: The Service Innovation Triangle and the commercialization of service innovation
Peder Inge Furseth
- Professor, BI Norwegian Business School / OXIRM
- Topic: Value-Driven Service Innovation, innovation capability, and the “Power to Act”
Jonathan Reynolds
- Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
- Topic: Disruptive Thinking, mobility, the “Death of Distance,” and hypermobility
Steven DeMello
- CITRIS, University of California, Berkeley
- Topic: Disruptive innovation in healthcare, telehealth, and Big Data
Stephen Ezell
- Innovation economics and policy expert
- Topic: Innovation Economics and national innovation models
- Cases: Amazon, Apple, Nokia, Facebook, Xerox, and Kodak
Lucy Kimbell
- Designer / academic
- Topic: Service Blueprinting and the connection between organizations and customer experience

Together, these perspectives provided a rare and comprehensive view of why creating value in practice is so challenging—and what it actually takes to succeed.

Key Academic Themes

Tor W. Andreassen – “I Want To, I Want To – But I Just Can’t Make It Happen”

Andreassen’s contribution struck a nerve with many of the participants. Drawing on research and observations from Norwegian and international business, he described a paradox:

We have a highly skilled workforce, good access to capital, and high levels of social trust, yet we still often struggle when it comes to execution.

He argued that innovation is too often reduced to generating ideas, writing strategy documents, and expressing intentions, while the real competitive advantage lies in the ability to:

prioritize relentlessly
sustain change over time
withstand resistance and temporary setbacks

Andreassen challenged the assumption that a lack of resources is the main problem. Instead, he pointed to leadership, culture, and incentives as barriers to progress. In many organizations, innovation comes to a halt when it encounters established structures, performance measurement systems, and existing power dynamics.

This perspective became a central premise for the rest of the seminar.

Illustration of the historic Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford viewed from the outside, surrounded by stone walls, green trees, and lush climbing plants along the façade. The classic building, with its steep gables, stone roof, and traditional English architectural details, reflects Oxford’s timeless architecture and academic heritage. The hotel is known as an exclusive and tranquil setting for reflection, academic conversations, and stays in the heart of the university city. The warm watercolor style highlights the historic atmosphere, giving the scene a sense of British elegance, cultural heritage, and intellectual exploration associated with the Oxford seminars and the university’s traditions.

Richard Cuthbertson – Customer Experience as a Strategic Discipline

Cuthbertson built on the theme of execution, but from the customer’s perspective. He argued that many organizations claim to be customer-oriented while organizing themselves in ways that make it impossible to deliver seamless customer experiences.

Through practical examples, he showed how:

customer journeys are fragmented across organizational silos
responsibility becomes diluted
intentions fail to align with the value customers actually experience

Customer experience was presented as a management discipline, not a communications initiative. Organizations that succeed are those capable of aligning strategy, technology, processes, and people around customers’ actual needs—and sustaining that alignment over time.

This perspective resonated strongly with the discussions about both the private and public sectors and laid a clear foundation for later contributions on service design.

Illustration of the breakfast buffet at the historic Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford, presented in warm, muted watercolor tones. The image shows an elegant buffet with shelves filled with glasses, bottles, tableware, and breakfast dishes in a classic English hotel setting with dark wood surfaces and soft lighting. Bowls, bread, juice, and small serving signs are arranged on the counter, creating a calm and exclusive atmosphere.

The scene conveys the feeling of quiet mornings before seminars and academic discussions in Oxford, where historic surroundings, British hotel culture, and intellectual reflection come together. The image also symbolizes the social gathering points surrounding the seminars, where ideas, conversations, and academic inspiration often began around the breakfast table.

Case Studies

Steven DeMello – Economic Frameworks and Institutional Quality

DeMello broadened the perspective and reminded participants that value creation never takes place in a vacuum. Through analyses of economic policy and institutional quality, he demonstrated how:

stable framework conditions
trust in institutions
predictable regulation

are essential to long-term innovation and entrepreneurship.

His contribution provided an important counterpoint to oversimplified explanations about taxation, regulation, and the “role of government.” What matters is not the degree of public-sector involvement, but the quality of governance and the interaction between public and private actors.

Stephen Ezell – Entrepreneurship in Practice

Ezell brought the seminar back down to earth. Drawing on experience with startups and entrepreneurial environments, he described entrepreneurship as a learning process rather than a linear journey from idea to success.

He emphasized:

experimentation
learning from failure
persistence over perfection

Ezell’s contribution balanced the more structural perspectives and reminded participants that value creation is always a human endeavor—shaped by uncertainty, choices, and responsibility.

Reflections and Discussion

Peder Inge Furseth – When Knowledge Meets Reality

Furseth addressed the gap between academia and practice. He highlighted a familiar but often underestimated problem:

We have more research and insight than ever before, yet we struggle to turn this knowledge into action.

He challenged both academics and practitioners:

research must become more relevant
practice must become more knowledge-based

The discussions that followed made it clear that innovation is not about a lack of ideas, but about the ability to build bridges across disciplines, sectors, and people.

Illustration of the tranquil garden at the Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford, surrounded by green trees, stone walls, and lush vegetation in warm watercolor tones. The image shows guests seated at small tables beneath large umbrellas in the hotel’s intimate courtyard garden, a setting known for its relaxed and exclusive atmosphere in the heart of the historic university city.

The old stone architecture, green surroundings, and soft light give the scene a sense of tranquility, reflection, and British elegance. The garden symbolizes the breaks between seminars and lectures, where conversations, the exchange of ideas, and academic reflection continued in informal surroundings among researchers, students, and participants in the Oxford seminars.

Illustration of a classic English breakfast served at the Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford. The table features fried eggs, bacon, sausages, grilled tomato, mushrooms, and traditional black pudding, accompanied by coffee, cappuccino, orange juice, and small bowls of jam and condiments. A bottle of “Oxford Sauce” reinforces the local British atmosphere.

The image is rendered in warm watercolor tones, creating a calm and exclusive mood during the morning hours before seminars and academic gatherings in Oxford. The breakfast symbolizes the start of a new day of intellectual exploration, reflection, and conversations about innovation, leadership, and digital development in historic surroundings.

Illustration of the breakfast room at the Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford, decorated in a classic British style with deep red walls, comfortable armchairs, wood paneling, and framed portraits and artwork that give the room a historic and exclusive atmosphere. The tables are set for breakfast with coffee, tableware, and traditional English details, while the warm lighting and muted watercolor tones create a calm and welcoming ambiance.

The scene conveys the feeling of early mornings before seminars and lectures, when participants gathered for breakfast, reflection, and academic conversations in historic surroundings in the heart of Oxford. The image symbolizes the combination of British hotel culture, academic tradition, and the social connections that formed around the Oxford seminars.

International Perspectives

Lucy Kimbell – Service Design and Public-Sector Innovation

Kimbell’s contribution was among the seminar’s most forward-looking. She presented service design not as aesthetics or a series of workshops, but as a systematic method for creating better services within complex systems.

Particularly important was her focus on the public sector:

users as co-creators
services as holistic experiences
experimentation within safe boundaries

This perspective connected directly with discussions about welfare, digitalization, and public-sector value creation—and is even more relevant today than it was in 2012.

Jonathan Reynolds – Global Patterns of Entrepreneurship

Reynolds concluded the academic contributions with an empirical and measured perspective. Drawing on global data, he showed that entrepreneurship varies significantly across countries—and that culture, institutions, and economic structures matter more than individual characteristics.

His contribution served as an important reality check:

There is no universal formula for entrepreneurial success. Solutions must be grounded in context.

Illustration of the lounge area at the historic Randolph Hotel in Oxford, with high arched ceilings, dark wood paneling, bookshelves, and classic English furnishings rendered in warm watercolor tones. On the table, a pint of beer sits beside an open laptop, notebook, and pen—a quiet moment for reflection and academic notes after a long day of seminars and discussions.

The calm hotel atmosphere combines British elegance with academic tradition and symbolizes the pauses between lectures, when ideas, experiences, and impressions were given time to develop. The scene conveys the sense of Oxford as both a place of learning and a space for reflection, where historic surroundings, conversations, and personal contemplation went hand in hand throughout the seminars.

What Do We Take Home With Us?

The seminar left us with several clear insights:
Execution is the greatest challenge—not a lack of ideas.
Value creation happens through interaction between people and institutions.
Customers and users must be genuine starting points—not just rhetoric.
The public and private sectors face many of the same challenges.

Illustration of the Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford late in the evening, surrounded by dark trees, stone walls, and warm light glowing from the windows and entrance. The historic building, with its classic English stone façades, gables, and climbing plants, is bathed in soft blue and golden tones, creating a calm and almost timeless atmosphere.

The image conveys a sense of stillness and reflection after long days of seminars, lectures, and academic conversations in Oxford. The warm light from the hotel contrasts with the dark evening sky, symbolizing knowledge, community, and intellectual exploration in historic surroundings. The scene brings together British hotel culture, university life, and the distinctive atmosphere of Oxford in the evening.

Relevance Today

In light of today’s debates on digitalization, artificial intelligence, and public-sector efficiency, Oxford 2012 appears remarkably forward-looking.

Many of the issues we discuss today—execution, trust, user focus, and collaboration—were already explored in depth here.

The seminar reinforces a core principle of The Invisible Capital:

Value is created through interaction—not in isolation.

The Experts Behind the Oxford Seminars

The Oxford seminars were more than a series of lectures. They were meeting places where research, business, and practice came together, with leading international experts sharing insights into innovation, retail, technology, leadership, and value creation.

Over the years, participants had the opportunity to meet some of the foremost researchers and thinkers in their respective fields.

Peder Inge Furseth

Peder Inge Furseth was a key academic driving force behind the Oxford seminars and helped make international research relevant to Norwegian and European organizations. As a professor at BI Norwegian Business School and academic director of the program, he helped participants place the lectures within a broader context in which technology, innovation, business development, and people had to be understood as interconnected.

Throughout the seminars, he served as a bridge between research, business, and practice. For many participants, he therefore became more than an academic leader—he was also a mentor who inspired them to think differently about innovation, digitalization, and commercialization.

Jonathan Reynolds

Jonathan Reynolds is a professor at the University of Oxford and has been a prominent academic contributor to the Oxford seminars for many years. He is internationally recognized for his research on retail, customer experience, innovation, and business development.

Through the seminars, Reynolds provided research-based insights into how organizations can build competitive advantage through a deeper understanding of customers, markets, and value chains. His ability to combine academic rigor with practical examples made him one of the most highly valued speakers in the seminar series.

Richard Cuthbertson

Richard Cuthbertson was an important academic contributor to the Oxford seminars for many years. As a researcher at the University of Oxford, his work has focused on areas such as retail, distribution, supply chains, innovation, and technological development.

Through his lectures, he helped connect research with practice, demonstrating how organizations can respond to emerging challenges through innovation, collaboration, and a deeper understanding of the markets in which they operate.

From Studies and Seminars to Today’s Knowledge Hub

The studies, seminars, and study trips documented on this page form part of the knowledge foundation behind The Invisible Capital. Topics such as customers, technology, innovation, digitalization, and value creation have shaped this journey over several decades—while these fields have continued to evolve.

At The Invisible Capital, we continue to explore these questions through dedicated knowledge series. Here, earlier theories, research, and experience are connected with more recent knowledge, emerging technologies, and the challenges facing people and organizations today.

Innovation

Innovation is not just about new ideas. Value is created when knowledge, technology, and ideas are developed into products, services, processes, organizational models, and business models that are actually put into use. The Innovation series explores the field from Schumpeter to modern innovation research, including incremental, radical, disruptive, open, and user-driven innovation.

→Explore the Innovation series

The Customer

The customer is not simply the recipient of what an organization produces. In a competitive market, the customer plays a decisive role in determining whether an organization actually succeeds in creating value. The Customer series explores customer orientation, customer insight, customer experience, satisfaction, loyalty, trust, and human interactions in greater depth.

→ Explore the Customer series

Value Creation

What does it really mean to create value—and who creates it? The Value Creation series explores everything from economic theory and influential researchers to a broader understanding of how people, skills and expertise, institutions, organizations, and the public sector contribute to value creation.

→ Explore the Value Creation series

Digitalization

Digitalization has evolved from individual technologies into a fundamental part of how organizations operate and create value. The Digitalization from A to Z series traces this development through the internet, the web, e-commerce, search, UX, social media, mobile, omnichannel, cloud, data, platforms, and digital transformation—leading to today’s AI First era.

→ Explore the Digitalization from A to Z series

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence represents the next chapter in the digital evolution. In our dedicated AI knowledge hub, we explore how artificial intelligence works, how AI finds and uses information, how it evaluates sources and websites, and what these developments may mean for people, organizations, and value creation.

→ Explore the articles on Artificial Intelligence

Power of Pull

This book explores how modern organizations must move beyond traditional hierarchical models toward more open, dynamic, and knowledge-driven ecosystems. The authors show how innovation, collaboration, learning, and human engagement become essential in a digital economy characterized by rapid change.

These themes align closely with the Oxford Seminar in 2012, where the lectures focused on service innovation, customer experience, disruptive thinking, innovation economics, and the “Power to Act.”