What do you teach?…What are you working on?
I continue to teach my normal rhythm of classes (even in this very abnormal time); Marketing Strategy for the MBAs and Marketing Research and Product Design and Development for the undergraduates. I’m very fortunate because the classes that I teach directly relate to my research interests outside the classroom. Somewhat bizarrely I’ve been quite productive during the pandemic; I think the time in lockdown allowed me to take a mini-sabbatical away from the normal pace of life to get some thinking and writing done.
I will have an article published in the Design Management Institute Review magazine (the Harvard Business Review of design management professionals) next month about the role of strategic design as it relates to pricing power— in it I was able to use some contacts at Nike to write up a case study about the revolutionary Elite Basketball sock to illustrate my theoretic points, along with another article using survey data to look at the flows of information between functional areas of product development teams that is “under review” (meaning it has been submitted to a journal and their reviewers are busy working on a response telling me everything that is wrong with it), and I gave two conference presentations, although they were obviously on Zoom rather than in-person which makes them a whole lot less fun.
Why Should students take your courses?
In this climate of virtual learning I continue to be impressed by the resilience and adaptability of our students as they grapple with their day-to-day lives alongside the requirements of our classes. I try hard to remind students that we’re all not just getting through this current time we are all living the future as the pandemic has dramatically accelerated trends we were beginning to see in regards to the skills and aptitude that will be valued in the future. More specifically, developing the tools and methodologies of creative thinking and problem solving directed in a logical, focused, strategic, and systematic way will be highly valued by organizations in the future.
In my BUS 520 Applied Marketing Strategy class we talk quite a lot about what we call “diagnostic thinking” (pausing to consider the quality of information you have available to make a decision and the processes you are using to make sense of that information, rather than simply jumping from problem —> solution).
If you think about it, we in academia have trained students their entire lives to make quick, rapid decisions in formats such as multiple choice exams, highly pressurized standardized tests, and “all nighter” essay assignments… then we wonder why managers feel the need to rely on “gut instinct” and “decisiveness” to make flawed strategic decisions. In the class we use the case study methodology to explore the real-world decision-making of organizations and how concepts and frameworks from class could be helpful to structure that diagnostic step. I believe this skill is incredibly useful for any student, even those coming to us from disciples outside marketing!
What do you like to do for fun?
I have two young kids, so what I like to do for fun typically revolves around whatever I can convince them to do with me. So we have been spending lots of time going on bike rides, watching Arsenal FC lose, and taking rainy, muddy walks in Forest Park. I’m also very much hoping for a summer back at Providence Park watching the Timbers!
Contact: Dr. Ian Parkman