Some people try to predict the future in order to figure out what their next step should be. Personally, I prefer to figure out how processes work and use this knowledge to create the future I want to see. It’s the difference between telling companies/persons where they will be next week/month and telling them how to get where they want to be.To provide companies operating in complex and/or turbulent markets with both strategic insights and guidelines for tactical decisions, my research focusses on combining the latest advances in econometric modeling with social simulation techniques (agent-based modeling) to create a better understanding of how social influence processes work and how they are related to (social) media and other marketing instruments.