CEGE4ALL: Markets & Policy Seminar

The next CEGE4ALL: Markets & Policy Seminar by Michel van der Borg, on “Who owns customer intelligence in the age of AI? Rethinking the sales–innovation interface” will take place on October 7th, between 2.30 pm and 3.30 pm in room EP002.

REGISTER HERE

Registration is mandatory. Please register by October 6th indicating if you will be attending in person or online. The weblink will be emailed to online attendees after registration.

Michel van der Borgh is Full Professor of Marketing at Copenhagen Business School. His work sits at the intersection of marketing, sales, innovation, and technology. He studies how firms make better commercial decisions under uncertainty, with a particular focus on sales force management, B2B markets, AI-enabled selling, and the commercialization of complex digital technologies. He has published in leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, Industrial Marketing Management, the Journal of Business Research, and the Journal of Product Innovation Management. He also serves as Associate Editor for the European Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, and the Journal of Business Research. Michel teaches at Copenhagen Business School and in executive and MBA programs at TIAS, EDHEC, NEOMA Business School, and Bifröst University, and has previously taught at Esade. Trained originally in mechanical and industrial engineering before moving into marketing, he brings a technology-minded perspective to questions of markets, customers, and commercial strategy. 

Abstract

Innovation research has long debated how firms structure customer intelligence (CI) gathering across R&D and sales. While prior work identifies distinct approaches to organizing CI gathering, dissemination, and usage, the rapid emergence of analytical, generative, and agentic AI challenges these architectures. This presentation argues that AI is not merely a tool supporting sales or marketing, but a structural actor that reshapes how customer needs are detected, translated, and prioritized in innovation processes. Analytical AI reinforces centralized intelligence models; generative AI augments or substitutes requirements engineering; and agentic AI introduces semi-autonomous market-facing systems into the innovation cycle. These developments fundamentally alter the boundary-spanning role of sales and raise new questions about control, knowledge structures, and organizational design. I outline a configurational research agenda on hybrid human–AI intelligence systems in B2B innovation.