Abstract
Key Account Management is the way a firm handles its largest and most important customers. Significant resources are dedicated to accomplish both short-term sales objectives and strategic long-term goals. KAM is increasingly strategic, not least because the sales and selling activities are becoming digitalized and automatized. A particularly important dimension of KAM concerns how the firm develops long-term customer relationships. However, the truly strategic part of KAM is about innovation, and this dissertation explains how business model innovation emerges in key customer relationships. This dissertation presents in-depth case studies in the fields of military training, editorial outsourcing, and large events. It conceptualizes KAM principles and examines the strategic contribution of KAM to business model innovation. The findings show that customer co-created proof of concept projects and processes of trial and error may be used to test emerging business model innovations. The dissertation introduces the Customer Engagement Model as a result of the research. The model assists in analyzing three KAM processes in which people are central. They are KAM Creating, KAM Disrupting and KAM Anchoring, and they function in relation to customer engagement.