At Webfleet, a Bridgestone company operating in European commercial-vehicle
telematics, PMMs must turn fragmented inputs from market research, customer
feedback, sales signals, competitor intelligence, and regional sources into coher‐
ent Go-to-Market (GtM) insight. The difficulty is not a lack of information but an
excess of it, and current practice relies heavily on individual judgment that is hard
to scale, audit, or improve.

This thesis investigates how a structured, AI-enabled sensemaking framework can
reduce information overload and improve the quality of GtM insight synthesis for
PMMs at Webfleet. Following a qualitative, design-led approach grounded in de‐
sign science research, the project ran across three phases: a contextual inquiry us‐
ing semi-structured interviews with PMMs and secondary stakeholders, the design
of a framework and AI prompt guide, and a perception-based assessment and trial
use of the guide.

The central design outcome is PRISM(E), a six-element framework: Prioritise,
Reduce, Interpret, Synthesise, Mobilise, and an Equip layer of organisational en‐
ablement that runs alongside the five sequential stages. PRISM(E) is opera‐
tionalised inside Microsoft 365 Copilot within Webfleet's own tenant — a choice
grounded in data governance and infrastructure fit rather than raw capability.
Interview findings refined the framework from its conceptual form into a final ver‐
sion, and the work is delivered through three artefacts: an AI Prompt Guide, a
strategic three-horizon roadmap, and a tactical roadmap for adoption.
The contribution is a design-research-grounded operationalisation of sense‐
making and prompt-engineering theory in the specific context of B2B product
marketing — an area that existing literature leaves largely unaddressed. ... Read more

This thesis examines how MOOS, a shelf-sensing component provider, can position itself in the retail technology ecosystem around actionable shelfinsight. The study starts from the observation that shelf-level problems such as out-of-stocks and theft are not only visibility problems. Shelf information becomes valuable only when it is reliable, timely, connected to a workflow, owned by a decision-maker, and able to trigger store action. The research uses ecosystem-as-structure as the main theoretical lens. This lens helps analyse the activities, actors, positions, links, and alignment conditions required to turn shelf-condition information into action. Co-innovation risk, adoption-chain risk, and internal readiness are used as supporting concepts. The empirical research combines 41 store visits with a ranking exercise and eight semi-structured expert interviews. The findings show that store teams mainly need reliable signals, timely actionability, and low additional workload. At ecosystem level, shelf sensing depends on fragile links between store teams, IT, loss prevention, point-of-sale systems, workflow systems, partners, and ownership structures. Theft-related use cases are mainly shaped by urgency and response risk, while on-shelf availability use cases depend more strongly on integration and backend closure. The design phase translates this diagnosis into a positioning direction and roadmap. The thesis concludes that MOOS can most credibly be understood as a bounded, partner-ready shelf intelligence and trigger layer between shelf reality and store action. The revised roadmap should be used as a strategic decision-support tool, not as a fixed rollout plan or proof of market success. ... Read more

The Adcrew is a Dutch early-stage startup that turns students into micro-brand ambassadors through a campaign sticker worn on students laptops for at least 30 days in exchange for a product reward. The concept sits in an advertising market where trust in digital channels is declining, while around 80 percent of advertising budgets keep flowing toward the same large digital platforms. This tension opens space for new formats that combine physical visibility, real product experience and peer-driven word-of-mouth, but it also raises the question of how a single-founder startup can launch such a format credibly.

This thesis designs a launch strategy for The Adcrew's first year, based on a grounded theory analysis of 15 expert interviews with brand managers, marketing professionals and brand experience consultants. The analysis produces five interrelated super families that together describe the conditions for a successful launch: building the business, campaign and brand fit, the student experience, authentic word-of-mouth, and proving it works.

Three strategic results stand out. First, the positioning shifts from selling laptop advertising to creating micro-brand ambassadors, which reframes the channel more around peer advocacy rather than awareness and impressions. Second, the year-one roadmap is sequenced to start with the most accessible brand segments instead of the segment that initially looked the strongest fit on paper. Third, the measurement framework is built in three layers (reach, self-reported advocacy and indirect market signals) to address the difficulty of measuring word-of-mouth to a specific campaign. A final round of expert validation refines the strategy at the level of execution.

The research adds to the launch strategy, customer development and brand experience literature by showing how awareness and trial can lead to a peer-to-peer interaction, how the framing of a rewarded product shapes the quality of the advocacy that follows, and how a relational moat can act as first-mover advantage in resource-limited startups. The result is a credible and scalable strategy for The Adcrew's first year of operations. ... Read more

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are often being initiated with the promise of synergy, scalability and a high chance for competitive advantages. Yet many M&A integrations fail to realise their intended value in practice (Koi-Akrofi et al., Weber & Tarba, 2012). This suggests that the underlying causes more complex than the structural considerations and decisions and require a closer look at how change is experienced and implemented within everyday work reality. This research explores ‘how formal organizational change efforts interact with informal practices during post-merger integration (PMI), and what this interaction implies for achieving integration goals and anticipated synergies’. Central in this research is the role of ‘bootlegging’: the unofficial, often invisible practices employees develop to continue operations when formal structures are experienced as too slow, rigid, or incomplete.This research is based on an in-depth qualitative case study of a recently merged company. The case company was created by bringing together two legacy entities with different histories, structures, and ways of working. To understand how the integration unfolded in practice, fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees and managers from different hierarchical levels of both entities. Existing literature on change management, M&A, and bootlegging was used to develop an initial framework of organizational, social, human, and cultural factors that influence integrations and change implementations. In contrast to many top-down models, this research uses a bottom-up perspective in which bootlegging and other informal practices are treated as a central analytical dimension, allowing the framework to reflect how change is actually being experienced in reality.The findings show, that during this period of change, employees experienced a large leadership distance, fragmented communication, and increasing operational complexity. Together, these struggles contributed to four reinforcing gaps: a credibility gap between communicated intentions and perceived reality; a synergy gap between promised and realized value; an execution gap between decisions and implementation capacity; and a visibility gap between operational efforts and what higher levels actually acknowledge. In response to unclear expectations, resource constraints, and cultural frictions, employees developed informal workarounds and trust-based information lines to bridge the operational challenges. These bootlegging practices were rational, adaptive responses that allowed operations to continue, but limited knowledge sharing, learning and the realization of M&A synergies.Based on these insights, the framework was iterated to represent a clear bottom-up, human-centered perspective on change experiences and readiness within PMI. It introduces dimensions, such as leadership visibility, system compatibility, psychological safety and voice, and vertical connectivity as key conditions for ‘building a change-ready organisation’. This framework was used as a (design) tool in co-creation sessions with employees, translating analytical insights into concrete needs, priorities, and directions for action. The outcomes were defined as strategic design implications, being the base for a strategic plan. The strategic roadmap is supported by a tactical roadmap that specifies stakeholder roles, ways of working and the expected outcomes over time.This research contributes by explicitly positioning bootlegging as a central mechanism in M&A PMI, presenting how informal practices simultaneously compensate for and reinforce the challenges and shortcomings of formal change efforts. It offers a practical approach for decision-makers to understand and work with these dynamics, moving from a top-down focus to a realistic view on how change is actually experienced and acted upon in post-merger environments.
... Read more

This project focused on exploring atypical packaging as a tool for brand positioning and product differentiation. Breaking the Mould was carried out as a collaboration between the home university (TU Delft) and the client company, Lamb Weston EMEA. The process consisted of three stages. The first stage centred on exploration and secondary research. This included market and brand analyses, as well as an extensive literature review on cues, categorisation, branding, and packaging. During this phase, field research was also conducted. I spoke with experts in manufacturing, supply chains, branding, and other internal departments. Additionally, I visited Lamb Weston’s innovation centre and trial manufacturing line in Bergen op Zoom, as well as the Oerlemansplastic production facility in Giessen. The stage concluded with a small-scale, qualitative preliminary workshop to better understand consumers and their perceptions of the product category. In the second stage, I identified the main business and research opportunity: functional foods, specifically functional fries. The core of this stage was a primary research study in the form of a quantitative experiment, yielding over 310 responses. The data was analysed and conclusions were drawn, confirming most—but not all—of the hypotheses. Key findings included: typical packaging was rated as the most appealing; most comparisons between two bag formats (typical vs. moderately atypical) were non-significant; and the drum, the most atypical format, was harder to categorise correctly and scored significantly lower in appeal. However, atypical packaging performed strongly in attracting attention and transferring associations between product categories. The third stage concluded the project with practical managerial recommendations. Overall, the project delivered: a definition of “chaos packaging,” an assessment of its strategic viability, and actionable recommendations for Lamb Weston. The recommendations were to utilise the most atypical packaging in marketing campaigns, as it conveys to most associations and draws the most attention, but is not functionally viable. However, the second recommendation was about launching a new line extension (functional/healthy fries) and packaging them in a moderately atypical flat-bottom (standing) bag. ... Read more