The Marketing Innovators: Tapping University Knowledge, Part 2
In our first online newsletter of 2008, Greg Thomas, Director of Research at the Emory Marketing Institute, introduced our readers to some of the key online knowledge available through universities. In case you missed that issue, click here to read Part 1. In this issue Greg will explore “Institutes”, “Scholars”, “Academic Events”, “Executive Development”, “Open Education”, “Technology Licensing”, “Student Projects” and “in-residence” programs.
As we offered in the first part of this article, if you see your favorite resource missing from this list, please send your thoughts to the AMA at newsletters@ama.org.
Institutes
Organizations which have determined that their marketing capabilities are core to the success of their strategy need to pursue knowledge leadership in their industry. Often the best way to accomplish this is to work on a long-term basis with institutes (also called centers) at universities. The role of these institutes is to establish a critical mass of research focused on a topic or discipline. This is accomplished by pairing scholars with pressing issues in management, and by establishing resources for conducting vigorous research.
There are numerous institutes that focus on marketing issues. So, to identify the one that is best to work with depends on your specific business issues. If your organization has multiple issues, working with multiple institutes may be the best bet. Institutes produce research on their topic(s) of focus, which are usually detailed on their websites. Organizations can also work with Institutes to have custom research performed.
The Emory Marketing Institute is a research institute that focuses on issues related to brand-driven business performance. It is based at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. The ISBM (Institute for the Study of Business Markets) is based at Penn State and focuses completely on B2B research. The Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University works on services-related issues. University of Michigan manages the ACSI which focuses on customer satisfaction. UC Berkeley houses the Center for Responsible Business. For our friends ‘down under’ the University of South Australia runs the Ehrenberg Bass Institute for Marketing Science. The Center for Relationship Marketing and Service Management is based at Hanken University in Finland. And the Center for Hospitality Research is based at Cornell University. Interested in consumer behavior, then check out the Center for Customer Insights at Yale University. MSI (Marketing Science Institute) is also worth mentioning. Although it is not housed at a university, it is run by academic scholars and supports academic research.
Scholars
Managers can also connect with specific scholars at universities to work with them on developing knowledge on a specific focus. Ideally, it is good to find a scholar who has prior expertise in the area of interest. One way to track down scholars based on their research is to use Google Scholar. This is a useful resource as you can search on key terms of interest. The search results will typically contain a ‘cited’ number which identifies how many times the work has been cited by other academic papers. Generally, a paper with higher citations is recognized as a major foundation for the topic. However, there are some caveats to using citation counts as the guide. Newer papers will typically have fewer citations than older papers, and if the topic is more focused the number of citations may also not be a good indicator of value.
Although working with individual scholars can be fruitful, if you do not have the time to perform a search the easier method is often to contact the institute that is aligned with your interests. The institute directors can handle assembling the best investigation team for you.
Scholars are motivated and prepared to perform groundbreaking work. Do keep in mind that academic time does not move quite as quickly as that in the managerial world. So, it is best to adopt a long-term time frame. It is helpful to note that scholars are motivated to work on problems which impact across industries or sectors versus problems isolated to a single firm.
Academic Events
For those who are marketing quants, a good way to keep current on new developments is to attend academic events. Although most of the attendees are university faculty there usually are a few “propellerheads” from industry that attend. The INFORMS MS conference is a popular conference with over 600 research projects presented. This event changes venue every year, and is being held in Vancouver this year. The Association for Consumer Research also hosts noteworthy conferences. There are a wide variety of other conferences on special interests. If you are interested in finding out more, the AMA’s ELMAR news is a valuable resource for event announcements.
Executive Development
Executive development is quite important for revitalization of managers’ skills. There are lots of turnkey executive seminars available from the top universities. These can be quite useful. However, when you do not see the courses that match your company’s needs then a custom program is worth investigating. Executive education departments of universities often have a group that handles custom programs. Institutes can also help with executive development, and can pull the faculty in from multiple universities to create an all-star team.
Open Education
There is a trend amongst some universities to offer open courses, or course materials, on the web. MIT Sloan School of Management offers undergraduate and graduate-level courseware online. UC Berkeley offers webcasts of select courses. For now you will find more offerings in psychology like a course on ‘human emotions’ than business courses.
You will not earn credit for these classes, but if learning is your objective you can bypass admissions and tuition and start learning right away.
Technology Licensing
Technology licensing is typically more common in the hard sciences, however; faculty at business schools also develop new technologies which can be licensed. Who to approach on the issue usually depends on how the university manages the issue with its faculty. Sometimes there is a centralized technology licensing office that handles the negotiation. At other universities the faculty members are their own agents. Marketing faculty are particularly good at developing quantitative models, so if you are a marketing mix modeler, strategist, or consumer researcher the universities are a good place to connect with innovative techniques.
Student Projects
Sponsoring graduate student competitions is a great way to have a talented team of students work on a business problem for you. The students get great experience working for managers on the project. The companies receive research reports detailing the findings, implications and recommended actions from the team.
Companies can also work with faculty outside of these competitions by sponsoring a practicum. A practicum is a course where classroom learning is mixed with a company project.
Keep in mind that universities are tied to the academic calendar. So, to make use of students on projects it is best to establish the need several weeks before the start of the semester. Once the semester starts it is often too late as students have already committed their time.
Scholar-in-Residence
A way to bring knowledge inside is to support a scholar-in-residence program. Under this type of program a university faculty takes a sabbatical from their position to work onsite at the company. The faculty typically will conduct lectures during the week for employees, and they are invited to executive meetings so they can better understand the issues the firm is facing. The faculty can then help coach the executives on issues, and develop a stream of academic research based on the insights gained.
Executive-in-Residence
A flipside of the scholar-in-residence is the executive-in-residence program. This is a program where an executive takes time off from work to spend time at a university. This often works best when the university has an institute or center to visit as there will be synergy around an issue of interest. The executives can spend as little as two weeks to as much as several months at the university. The executives are encouraged to participate as guest lecturers in classes, and to work with the scholars on defining research goals and objectives.
Now that you have the ‘toolkit’ defined for tapping into university knowledge, it is up to you to make the best of it. With this guide and a little effort you should be able to invigorate the knowledge assets in your company in a way that champions open innovation laud.