Episode 24 of “What is Innovation?” is live! This week, Jared talks with Rob Morgan, a marketing professor at the University of Alabama, and directs the STEM Path to the MBA and CREATE Path to the MBA programs. Rob shares his point of view on marketing strategy, innovation, technology commercialization, and marketing in emerging markets. Listen and subscribe today!
Rob Morgan shares his point of view on marketing strategy, innovation, technology commercialization, and marketing in emerging markets.
More about our guest:
Rob Morgan is a marketing professor at the University of Alabama and directs the STEM Path to the MBA and CREATE Path to the MBA programs. Rob attended pharmacy school at the University of Kansas, completed his MBA at the University of Dallas, and his PhD in business at Texas Tech University. Rob researches and teaches marketing strategy, innovation, technology commercialization, and marketing in emerging markets.
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Episode Guide:
1:39 - What is Innovation
2:43 - Creativity, Innovation, Solutions
4:06 - What isn't innovation
7:10 - Current Academic Programs
10:32 - 5-year program
12:52 - innovation is what drives the growth in our economy
13:38 - How the academic projects are decided
15:43 - State differences in accessibilities
17:54 - Insights from having both programs
20:21 - Career shaped by Innovation
22:36 - Advice to innovators
24:54 - Generational difference with future innovators
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OUTLAST Consulting offers professional development and strategic advisory services in the areas of innovation and diversity management.
/This transcript was automatically generated using AI; please forgive any inconsistencies. We are working to provide the correct and more concise copy of the transcript. For urgent needs, please send us an email.
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Jared Simmons 00:05
Hello, and welcome to what is innovation. The podcast that explores the reality of a word that is in danger of losing its meaning altogether. This podcast is produced by Outlast consulting, LLC, a boutique consultancy that helps companies use innovation principles to solve their toughest business problems. I'm your host, Jared Simmons. And I'm so excited to have Rob Morgan. Rob Morgan is a marketing professor at the University of Alabama and directs the stem path to the MBA and create path to the MBA programs. Rob attended pharmacy school at the University of Kansas, he completed his MBA at the University of Dallas, and his PhD in business at Texas Tech University. Rob researches and teaches marketing strategy, innovation, technology, commercialization, and marketing in emerging markets, perhaps thank you so much for joining us today.
Rob Morgan 01:00
You bet I'm happy to be here.
Jared Simmons 01:01
We had a chance to sort of chat briefly a couple years back about your program and what you all do there at the University of Alabama. You know, as a proud alum of the College of Engineering there, I'm so excited about what you've created and built in terms of this program. And I'm excited that I got through before it was invented. Because I'm not sure I would have made it in.
Rob Morgan 01:29
Well, I definitely would not have made it in. But yeah, it's been a terrific experience.
Jared Simmons 01:35
It's amazing. It's amazing. So why don't we jump right in? Tell me what is innovation?
Rob Morgan 01:42
That's really a great question. And tougher than it sounds. But I guess to me, innovation is really finding new solutions to problems that people encounter. And, you know, my background, most recently is marketing for the last 30 years. Before that, as you mentioned, I was in healthcare, and you might lean towards thinking that it's, you know, innovation is all about creating new products or creating new businesses, but we have people that innovate all the time in other kinds of ways, you know, innovations and public policy innovations and organization structures, innovations, kind of everything that you can imagine. But to me, it's it's new approaches, usually involving creativity, but is a lot more than creativity, and solving problems that people have.
Jared Simmons 02:37
Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned that it's, it's creativity. But it's more than that. What else do you see beyond creativity being necessary for innovation?
Rob Morgan 02:47
To me, you can be creative, and not solve problems. Right? Earlier we, before we get started here, we were talking about art, and art definitely is a, you know, a creative endeavor. But I wouldn't, I would not say that art in itself as a creative act is solving a problem. And therefore I don't see it as an innovation. But at the same time, I can't rule out that. Clearly, there have been innovations in our in painting, music, and sculpture over time, there have been lots of innovations, and how people do those things, but individual pieces of art or individual pieces of music. I don't see us as solving problems.
Jared Simmons 03:33
I see. I see. So in each of those domains, the act of generating the art itself, music painting, what have you create, there are tensions or problems that are involved in producing those things. And solving those types of problems can sometimes require innovation. But the output itself to be enjoyed in itself isn't an innovation because it doesn't solve a problem. Right? I see. I see. Yeah. So that that kind of leads into my next question, which is what isn't innovation.
Rob Morgan 04:08
So I think innovation to me, you know, I'm kind of biased, but to me, innovation is one of the greatest phenomena of greatest forces in our lives. And like a lot of other things that that would probably fall into that. That very small group of phenomena. A lot of things get labeled innovation that probably don't quite reached the level of innovation. Maybe they are just creative. Or maybe they're just doing something different than what we're used to. But it might be that it has been done that way before and so it's not really new by that it just kind of came back around as being in style or something. So to me in order to, you know, to reached the level of being innovation, it has to be something new solves a problem usually involves creativity.
Jared Simmons 05:09
And what I hear from what you're saying is you're not saying those things don't have value, because you you clearly love and enjoy art. You're just saying that there's a difference between something that is valuable and something that is innovative. Right?
Rob Morgan 05:22
Yeah. In some innovations may not be all that valuable.
Jared Simmons 05:25
Right? Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Rob Morgan 05:28
Because they could solve a problem, but it's not a common problem, or it's not a huge problem or,
Jared Simmons 05:34
right, right, which is an interesting distinction to talk about with a professor, because that is one of the traditional knocks on traditional academia in academic circles might solve problems, but don't always have an eye toward toward value or impact.
Rob Morgan 05:51
Who cares?
Jared Simmons 05:52
Right? And have you? Have you ever come across that in your career?
Rob Morgan 05:57
Sure, like, on a regular basis, everybody that's in academics, I think, you know, it's just a human thing, that you think that what you create is clearly valuable, and the solutions to problems that you come up with, you wouldn't waste your time on small problems, that kind of thing. Right. But in the scheme of things, it's, you know, it's not coming up with a mRNA vaccine or something, you know, which is huge,
Jared Simmons 06:25
right. And, you know, my frustration with that view of academia is you could level that same criticism to every r&d organization I've been a part of, or experienced, or coach or consultant with the academic world does not have a haven't cornered the market on niche innovations. And I think that's what's so exciting to me about the program that you direct is it just takes that whole conversation and just sort of completely obviated takes it off the table, because everything you do in this program is tied to an impact or an outcome that is relevant to, to outcome, a client for lack of a better term. Can you talk a little bit about those programs.
Rob Morgan 07:09
So the two programs that are that are currently run and we have some other formulations that we just haven't been been able to get approval to move forward with the stem path to the MBA and the Create path to the MBA the stem path to the NBA was the first that we created. And basically what we do is we recruit incoming freshmen who have demonstrated that they're very strong academically, you know, High High School GPAs and sbct, PSAT scores, that kind of thing, who are planning on majoring in a stem discipline, which, you know, the National Science Foundation, definition of STEM is really very, very broad. And so we limit it to engineering, Life Sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, and all of the pre health professionals. So we have a lot of pre med students, pre dental student, pre pharmacy, that kind of thing and nursing students. But about 82% of the students in our program, in STEM are in engineering. Okay, here science, the Create path to the NBA came along. We we developed it a year later, but didn't introduce it for about four years later after that is the same thing going after students that are high achievers coming out of high school, that are majoring in what we think of as disciplines that involve a lot of creativity. So early on, we were thinking music, art, dance, theater, that kind of thing. And then we started adding in, you know, advertising and public relations and apparel, textile design, other kinds of endeavors like that English. And we've also added foreign languages because they tend to be tied to that sort of thing. Okay, so the students come in, and beginning in the fall of their freshman year, they take a one and a half credit hour, so 75 minute, once a week. We call stem business honors class. And they do that every semester, while they're undergrads during their junior year, they formally apply to the MBA program. If they're admitted, they take three MBA courses, the summer between their junior and senior year, come back into their senior year graduate, do another summer of three classes, and then do a fall and spring of MBA classes to finish up the MBA. I see the undergraduate courses were part of what I see as sort of the innovation in what we've done. In the United States. We've had for a long time, what were called three two programs in business where somebody would do some major, usually a business major for three years and then add on to your MBA after that and get both degrees and then there were also plus one so four plus one kinds of programs man worked out that it was just one year. The difference that that we originally had with our program was that they were getting business education from the get go as soon as they arrived on campus.
Jared Simmons 10:13
Right. Okay. So in the three to the or the four ones, it was mean, for me, it would have been three years of engineering, and then two years of business, but I'm not in that business environment for those first three years. I'm not thinking in that mode. Exactly.
Rob Morgan 10:30
Yeah. And so, ours is, for most students, a five year program, some do it in four years by finishing their undergraduate three years and some, you know, do a year of Co Op experience. And so they're finishing and six, that Yeah, so our students are taking business classes with us when they start as freshmen. And we limit the size of the sections of the classes to 35, which, at a large public university, you know, we have 38,000 students having a 35 member class every semester, where we encourage them to stay with the same 30 or so kids is really unusual, and it gives them sort of an anchor that they wouldn't have otherwise. And then we encourage them to stay with the same instructor for the first three years, which originally we were kind of thinking that that would help us with retention. But it's done so much more than that. Because, you know, in a large public university, you usually don't have the same instructor more than once, you know, one semester, right. So these students will see us for six semesters until they go into their senior year. Wow. So it's really been a good experience. And then we we've continued to innovate. Two years ago, we started adding in some training for them, where there's there's a group that started at the University of Pennsylvania about 25 years ago, studying what goes right with people from a mental health perspective, that leads to people that have, you know, very positive mental health instead of what typically was happening in psychology where they were looking at people that had negative issues with their mental health. So it became this this subfield of psychology called positive psychology and a lot of research to find out what it is about people that have very strong, positive mental health. And we incorporated their research into an ongoing journaling exercise that the students start their freshman year into each semester for six semesters.
Jared Simmons 12:33
Wow, a multi year journaling process. Yeah, some of your most formative years. That's, that's got to be fascinating
Rob Morgan 12:41
in a business class.
Jared Simmons 12:43
Yeah. Yeah, that's innovative. That is definitely innovative.
Rob Morgan 12:47
So that's, that's been a strong, you know, innovation, I think. And then we also, so we're big believers, as you know, coming from Business School, as you probably would expect, that innovation is what drives the growth in our economy. And there are probably no better students to try to teach innovation to than these kinds of students, you know, stem and sort of creative majors that are strong students to begin with, right? So they do to team based innovation projects, each semester, each one lasting for seven weeks. And it's just amazing to see how their teamwork skills, improve their communication skills, their presentation skills, but more importantly, their ability to solve problems in an innovative way, is pretty amazing. Wow.
Jared Simmons 13:38
And these projects, standalone things that you all come up with as a faculty, or do you have external sources for these projects.
Rob Morgan 13:47
Most of it is our projects were so we give them a theme for each one of the seven week projects. And we start out with sort of softball kinds of things. Fall freshman semester, the first project is go find a local business and do several interviews with the folks involved with that business and develop a business model for them, you know, sketch out what their business model is. The second project is usually Internet of Things, you know, and so the students relate to that, that everything that we buy anymore seems to have a chip in it that connects to the internet. So find a way to use that technology to solve a problem for somebody. And then eventually we get into more difficult problems like Alabama is very much a rural state. And there's a lot of poverty in rural Alabama, just I grew up in Kansas, and in rural Kansas, we had, you know, same kinds of issues and most of the students in our program, about 75% of them come from outside the state of Alabama and not from rural areas. And most of the students who we have that are from Alabama are not from rural Alabama, right. It's difficult for them to kind of get their head around what it would be like living in a rural area in America today, where you probably don't have very good access to the internet, in a lot of places. You know, they're living in food deserts, where they're getting most of their meals, they're buying the materials to prepare the meals at a gas station, convenience store kinds of places. Healthcare is not my healthcare, sir, or ma'am. We have a county that 25% of the homes in the county don't have complete plumbing, you know, things like that. And so 25% over half the counties in the state don't have an OB GYN. So there's issues with maternal health care and that sort of thing.
Jared Simmons 15:41
Unbelievable. I grew up in Alabama, born raised and educated in some of those numbers. You know, don't surprise me, but those those two are shocking.
Rob Morgan 15:51
I'm guessing most states that have a large rural population probably had the same issues. Wow. So so the students do a lot of, you know, work around, they can choose health care, education, water and sanitation, or food deserts. And, you know, really dive into one of those four areas and come up with an innovative solutions. So then you start seeing them getting away from it, they're not necessarily having to come up with an idea for a new product. It might be that there's a new organization or nonprofit or something to serve people. That's,
Jared Simmons 16:27
that's fantastic. And it it, I would imagine, it's not the, you know, the dentists and the nurses that are doing the healthcare stuff, or the, you know, engineers, the chemical engineers that are doing the water sanitation stuff, I would imagine it's not domain specific that way. Right?
Rob Morgan 16:44
Yeah. And then you also imagine, it's a lot easier to understand why they have problems with diabetes and cancer screening.
Jared Simmons 16:51
Right, right. Right. Amazing. It's great, because the caliber of students, I think, I can't remember the the numbers you quoted, when we first when I first learned about this program, but just to get into be part of this program. I mean, you have to be the best of the best from an academic standpoint, right. And so to be able to deploy that kind of talent within the state on its on its toughest problems. That's a that is the definition of innovation. And I'm excited to hear that as an alum, and as a native of the state.
Rob Morgan 17:22
Yeah, they're very bright kids, but they have big hearts as well, a lot of animals. So we'd like to give them lots of opportunities to sort of work on there
Jared Simmons 17:30
at the at the good combination world needs. needs that combination, for sure. Right. As you think about, you know, comparing this stem path to the NBA the Create path, what kind of unique differences what what, I'm curious, what led you to create the Create path, you know, and how those two compare to each other, not in a good, better, whatever. But any insights from having both programs?
Rob Morgan 17:57
I guess it's the capitalist in me, I think capitalism solves a lot of the world's problems if it's done, right. And so you always want to grow, right? That's kind of a principle. And so I was kind of never satisfied with how large the classes were getting the incoming classes. Also, I think that it doesn't help the students that are coming from STEM disciplines to only be around kids that are from STEM disciplines, even though some are, you know, in biology, and others are in chemical engineering, right. And so having some, you know, more interdisciplinary teams, and getting exposed to people that their strengths are quite a bit different from your strengths. And then to kind of get into your question about what are the differences between the two, kind of as you would expect the in a typical class, but just because the Create path is a smaller program in terms of the number of students in a typical class will have maybe three or four create past students and 25 to 30. STEM students. Those create past students are pretty hot commodity, when it comes time to divide up into teams to do these innovation projects. Yeah, I can imagine, you know, part of the philosophy behind it was that no matter what discipline you're in, no matter what major you're in, in 2021 technology is going to be part of your future. innovation will be part of your future. Creativity is going to be part of your future, if you're going to be successful in business is going to be part of your future. So we want all of the students in the program to get all of those kinds of skills.
Jared Simmons 19:33
Right? That's that's well said. In their future. There's only more collaboration with more different types of people. So giving them exposure to diverse ways of thinking early on, I think is is also another huge aspect of of the program, helping them understand how to recognize other types of talent, appreciate it, and leverage it in a team concept. I see a lot of folks in the corporate world struggling with Because you come out of these siloed professional training, and into a world where you spend most of your working day with people who don't weren't trained the way you were looking at your own career, I mean, you went to pharmacy school, you know, you're a marketing professor, and you'd look at all these different aspects of things, how has your innovation sort of shaped your career through that progression?
Rob Morgan 20:26
I think that I've always been interested in creative kinds of things. You know, it's one of those those things where we all get a thrill out of different kinds of accomplishments. And ever since I can remember, I got a thrill out of solving problems in a unique way. I didn't know that that was called innovation or whatever. When I got out of pharmacy school and started working, I worked at a hospital in Dallas, I really enjoyed starting new kinds of new programs and offering new services. And, and that kind of thing. When I finished my PhD, I didn't want to do research, that was an incremental improvement on what had already been done, I wanted to do something that was that was very different. And that can either pay off really well, or, you know, the majority of the time, that kind of research doesn't go forward. And you know, you take big risks, and so you have potential for more flops. But when you are successful, it's a much more satisfying success.
Jared Simmons 21:30
That's Well said, I can definitely resonate with that. The whole kind of the theme of what prompted me to start this podcast was just that, that, you know, you can call things innovation, you can call it whatever you want. But at the end of the day, everyone who, you know, there's this population of people who look at things a certain way, you know, want problems to be solved in a certain way, are, you know, obsessed with progress and step change differences in that this incremental point of view? And it's less about the domain, you do these things and and more about that, and there are people who just kind of get that, you know, and they're everywhere. And that's, yeah, that's, it's just fun to connect with people who think that way. Yeah.
Rob Morgan 22:11
Yeah. And I'm okay with, you know, the incrementalist because it's still moving forward. But the leaps forward are a lot more fun.
Jared Simmons 22:18
They are they are, you take the incremental stuff to keep things moving. But the leaps are what gives you the energy to come back and fight another day, or at least for me, anyway, they are few and far between and hard earned. rights. Right. Any, any advice for innovators out there?
Rob Morgan 22:40
So I think that you have to have a thick skin, because most people like the concept of change. Innovation involves change. And sometimes it's painful changes. And people think that they like the idea of change until it's changed for them. Hey, and so there can be a lot of pushback, I think within organizations. For young innovators, it's really important a to find somebody that's going to be sort of your champion and have your back. I was really lucky when we started the stem path to the MBA program, I had a dean who had always, you know, supported, trying new things. And it was kind of a big difference from what had usually been done. But he was very supportive of it, and continues, he's retired, but continues to come back and speak students and that kind of thing. So having a champion that has your back. And then also, I think you kind of got to always be on the lookout for collaborators, because even though we think of innovators as being these, you know, lone innovators that do things by themselves and make great changes, the reality is most, most great innovations come from teams of people. And it's a whole lot more fun to do innovation, when you're doing it with other people to stay true to kind of have a lookout for other people that enjoy doing what you're doing.
Jared Simmons 24:11
That's great. That's great. The theme through that, that I've taken away is, is innovation is more of a team sport. And I think people always internalized so looking for people that can, you know, provide support from above, but also the people around you then that might be like minded and able to sort of help you along the way.
Rob Morgan 24:30
And that's a whole diversity thing, too. They, they probably bring with them some different life experiences that you don't have and can add some little tweaks in there that make it successful when it might not have been.
Jared Simmons 24:42
Yeah, that's that's a great point. Because it's those tweaks that make the difference between you know, a phone and an iPhone, right. And you never know where that's going to that insight is going to come from.
Rob Morgan 24:53
That's a great example.
Jared Simmons 24:54
One question occurred to me as you were talking about your advice. Do you see any differences In sort of the people that are coming into your program now these this newest crop of innovators, these high achievers, these folks that are coming through to enter the business world now, and people you interacted with, you know, early in your career in the in out in the corporate world, how are the future innovators? Do they look different? Do they sound different? What would you say about that?
Rob Morgan 25:21
You know, that generation, the group that are my customers right now, they get a lot of criticism that I think is undeserved. I am very bullish on our future, when I spend time with current 18 to 21 year olds now, I'm with a select group of them. I'm very blessed to spend my time with people who want to be really good students. I think that the future is really bright. And it's amazing when you have given them some skills and some experience doing small innovation projects with, you know, what they come up with when they start being faced with bigger, bigger problems. So I I'm bullish on the future with with this group.
Jared Simmons 26:07
Glad to hear that because you would know and that makes me feel better. I'll sleep better tonight. Yeah. Dr. Morgan, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it and have a great day and Roll Tide.
Rob Morgan 26:22
Roll Tide. Thanks for what you're doing.
Jared Simmons 26:24
Thank you. All right. All right. Take care.
Jared Simmons 26:32
We'd love to hear your thoughts about this week's show. You can drop us a line on Twitter at OUTLASTT LLC, or follow us on LinkedIn where we're OUTLAST Consulting. Until next time, keep innovating. Whatever that means.