We bring to your attention the four section of the latest book published by the EMBA graduates, which taps into the domain of innovation and ethics, and explores the emergence of new business models and innovative business practices which enable to anticipate customers’ needs and expectations and drive the delivery of better services and products. These papers and their findings shed new light on the developments taking place in Romania in the past years, showing how innovation and investment in innovation do not take place only across technology and tangible material outputs but also across how companies are managed and structured and how they think about value creation and capture new emergent trends and opportunities.
In this sense, the papers in this volume bring a new perspective to the table, showing a lot of innovation goes rather silently and unnoticed within organizations and teams changing the way they operate, communicate, share responsibilities, and capture value. Romanian managers and entrepreneurs and businesses operating in Romania seem to have grasped and adhered to the basic principles that create value for both customers as well as employees and business partners. These papers illustrate their attempts of identifying the challenges and the opportunities that would enable them to promote these new ways of producing and capturing value and institutionalize them at the level of companies and industries. As the Romanian business environment is undergoing important transformations, we are looking forward to seeing how these future business leaders will be able to shape the way companies produce prosperity for both their employees and partners as well as for customers and stakeholders. If you want to inquire more on these topics, please read the fourth section of the book and explore the findings of these three chapters.
In the first chapter of this section, Exploring Service Innovation in Flower Industry - Florina Popîrțac analyses the way a flower shop that has recently entered the cut flower market can innovate and explore new market areas by introducing better and more creative services through service blueprinting and innovation. She draws her research on critically assessing the service innovation literature and reflecting on new ways of value creation in flower delivery services.
In the second chapter of this section, New Generation of Business Incubators, a Disruptive Innovation Impact on Romanian Start‐Up Challenges, Raluca Frîncu discusses the emergence of business incubators and start-ups within a wave of emergent disruptive innovators. She is mapping out the emergence of a vibrant and dynamic start-up sector that has the potential to enhance the growth of the Romanian economy and shape the development of the country in the upcoming decade. The emergence of these innovators will nevertheless not only shape the economic development, but also the way we think about value and how we imagine prosperity.
In the final chapter of the book - Investigation on the Factors Affecting the Ethical Decision‐Making of Insurance Intermediaries, with Consequences on the Quality of the Insurance Solutions Promoted to Individual Clients, Alin T. Băiescu explores the development of the Romanian insurance market by analysing the ethical behaviour of insurance intermediaries. He analyses the factors that affect the ethical decision-making of life insurance intermediaries, based on Trevion’s “Person-Situation Interactionist Model of Ethical Decision-making in Organizations”. Comparing two distribution channels (the brokerage and the bancassurance one), the author proposes a customized and improved model that presents a wide variety of factors that influence these ethical decisions of life insurance sellers.
For more details, please order the book here. If you want to meet the authors and discuss with them the challenges and opportunities that Romanian entrepreneurs and managers are facing, join us for the book launch on Monday, 26th of April from 18:00 (RO Time) on Zoom or Facebook live.
About the authors
Florina is one of those persons who have learned how to adjust themselves according to what they want to accomplish, and this grit plays a pivotal role in everything she is doing. Her impressive ability to build relationships and continuously acquire new relevant knowledge and skills are at the core of her ability to overcome adversity and reach outstanding results. She brings over 15 years of diverse experience in Banking, Professional HR Services, and Entrepreneurship in some exciting industries. In the last seven years, she focused on establishing productive business relationships and resolving critical human capital business issues. Working with colleagues and clients, she facilitated the design and implementation of different strategies for large organizations to meet HR & Operational needs. After graduating with Distinction from the Executive MBA program at the University of Hull, she discovered a new passion for Innovation in the service processes. This new interest motivated her to build her knowledge and experience in Process innovation, and recently got her Green Belt - Six Sigma certification. Moreover, during the last few years, she successfully managed to implement projects in various areas, such as supporting basic education and literacy, disease prevention and treatment, and maternal & child health.
Raluca is a confident, independent, and dreamy person who values continuous learning, evolution, and authentic relationships. She has been endowed with creative thinking and the role that suits her best is to create long-lasting connections and partnerships. Her mission is to help create a community of genuine entrepreneurs. Raluca has over 13 years of professional business consultancy experience as Management Consultant/Project Manager/Regional Manager. Her main experience lies in providing business solutions to help organizations improve performance and efficiency with the help of EU funds. Raluca has an Executive MBA degree from the University of Hull (UK), graduated in 2019 with “Distinction” and a PMP Certification in Project Management from issued in 2016 from Project Management Institute, USA.
Alin T. Băiescu has held different middle and top management positions (Board Member, Deputy CEO, COO, CMO, Director, Manager), in 20 years of experience in the financial and medical services industries, with international exposure, having a proven record of outstanding results in management, sales & customer services, backed by consistent back‐office expertise and excellent academic records. He worked for multinational companies as Metropolitan Life / AIG (USA), Raiffeisen (Austria), AEGON and Eureko/Achmea (The Netherlands), Garanta (Greece), but also for local organisations (Babeș-Bolyai University from Cluj, TEE - Transilvania Executive Education, POLARIS Medical).
Alin has an Executive MBA degree from the University of Hull (UK), graduated in 2019 with “Distinction”, and a Ph.D. Diploma in Finance from “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu (2011).
Also, he received the ACS (Associate, Customer Service) & ALMI (Associate, Life Management Institute) designations, awarded by LOMA – Life Office Management Association (Atlanta, Georgia, USA), in 2007 and 2009. Alin T. Băiescu is the founder of the first personal Blog in Insurance & Business in Romania and, till the moment, he has also published 7 books (single author, co-author, book coordinator, both at the academic level and of financial education).