It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Earl V. Snyder Innovation Management Center which is dedicated to studying market-focused and customer-driven innovation and its advancement in practice. The innovation management program, housed in the Marketing Department in the Whitman School of Management, was established in 1981; its marketing faculty and alumni have made seminal contributions to the academic study of innovation. The Earl V. Snyder Innovation Management Center was endowed in 1993 with a bequest from the estate of Whitman School of Management alumna Josephine Snyder ’29 in honor of her husband, Earl.
The areas of focus for the Center which is housed in the marketing department encompass marketing innovation, digital transformation, new product development, and innovations in an emerging economy such as India. In a rapidly changing global economy and faced with environmental challenges, sustainable, agile, and affordable innovations have become more critical.
Students can delve into the rich and evolving tapestry of technologies and opportunities to engage in successful innovation efforts and make their unique contributions to business and society. We thank faculty, alumni, and friends of the Center who have made contributions to this initiative. Our goal is to enrich the understanding of innovation in all aspects of marketing with thought-provoking content. Thank you for visiting.
S.P. Raj – Center Director and Distinguished Professor of Marketing
New Content
Executive Perspective
Tony Spring, CEO, Bloomingdale’s
Tony Spring, Bloomindale’s
Executive Perspective
Jane Elfers, CEO, The Children’s Place
Jane Elfers, CEO, The Children’s Place
Research Insight
Want to Accurately Forecast New Product Sales? Use Prerelease Consumer Buzz
Guiyang Xiong, Syracuse University
Executive Perspective
Looking to Increase the Marketing & Financial Success Odds of New Products & Services?
Peter Klein, ’68, PK Associates
Research Insight
Why Emerging Economies Provide the Greatest Opportunities for Innovation
Jagdish Sheth, Emory University
Executive Perspective
To Enhance OOH Advertising Effectiveness Use Mobile Based Targeting
John Laramie, CEO, Project X Media
Executive Speaker Series
The Snyder Center hosts senior executives from the most innovative, forward-thinking organizations who share their visionary ideas.
Munesh Makhija, Former CEO, GE India & China Technology Centers
August 9, 2022 1:15 PM CST
Affordability, quality of outcomes, and access to care are three critical pillars for innovation success for healthcare innovation in emerging economies. A thorough understanding of contextual constraints, e.g., mode of use, is crucial to building these pillars. Addressing contextual constraints often requires unlearning past practices.
Tony Spring, CEO, Bloomingdale’s
July 26, 2022 1:15 PM CST
Tony Spring, Chairman and CEO of Bloomingdale’s, an American luxury department store chain. His operating principle is to view retail as theater and to bring to life all the possibilities that his retail brand offers with creativity and imagination. He elaborates on the brand’s commitment to giving customers as complete an experience as possible by introducing innovative retail concepts such as The Carousel and Bloomie’s.
Ken Hicks, CEO, Academy Sports + Outdoors
July 26, 2022 1:15 PM CST
Ken Hicks is Chairman, President, and CEO of Academy Sports + Outdoors, a community-based retailer catering to sports and outdoor enthusiasts. He transformed the brand from a modest family business with a dismal future to a remarkable success as a public company. He elaborates on how a brick-and mortar presence can be complemented by dot-com initiatives. For example, during the pandemic, “buy online and pick up in store” was a game-changer that facilitated retail success.
Jane Elfers, CEO, The Children’s Place
July 26, 2022 1:15 PM CST
Jane Elfers, President and CEO of The Children’s Place, a specialty retailer of children’s apparel. A visionary leader, she is a believer in short-term pain for long-term gain and leads through intention and a sensitivity to her customer base of moms. She reflects on how investments in digital transformation initiatives helped the company successfully navigate and thrive during the pandemic.
Tom Mendoza, Vice-Chairman (emeritus), NetApp
November 12, 2021 2:00 PM EST
Tom Mendoza is the former President and Vice Chairman of NetApp. NetApp competes in the computer data storage hardware industry. In 2019, Gartner named NetApp as #1 in Primary Storage.
Mr. Mendoza established a culture that led to NetApp being ranked #1 in Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies To Work For” in 2009. He was also a recipient of the Morgan Stanley Leadership Award for Global Commerce.
Gary Friedman, CEO, RH
April 1, 2021 2:30 PM EDT
Gary Friedman completely transformed the RH brand into a visionary example with architecturally inspiring spaces that activate all of the senses and create an immersive experience that cannot be replicated online; an innovator in experiential marketing.
Pete Nordstrom, President, Nordstrom
April 1, 2021 1:00 PM EDT
Pete Nordstrom, President/Chief Brand Officer of Nordstrom, the American luxury department store famous for its customer-first, personal service, speaks about localization, personalization and use of AI.
Hal Lawton, CEO, Tractor Supply
March 26, 2021 10:00 AM EDT
Hal Lawton, CEO of Tractor Supply Company, one of the most under-the-radar modern retailing operations in the country, offering products for home improvement, agriculture, garden maintenance, and much more. “I don’t care how much you know, AI, AR, or VR, artificial intelligence and all that stuff you have. If you don’t understand the core of what you’re doing, if you take your focus off of that, you’re just not going to win.”
Rick Caruso, CEO, Caruso
March 17, 2021 2:00 PM EDT
Caruso is an innovator, highly successful business leader, philanthropist, and the pioneer in creating memorable experiences in retail centers that are based on experience and community. He is the visionary behind centers like The Grove in Los Angeles that bring people together to meet, celebrate, and of course to shop – demonstrating the power of community and commerce as the future of the shopping center.
Research Seminar Series
The Snyder Center hosts leading academic scholars to present cutting-edge research on market-focused innovation.
Katrijn Gielens, University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill
November 11, 2022 9:00 AM EST
Topic: The Growing Power of Online Juggernauts: The Impact of Amazon’s Private Label Introduction on National Brands. Dr. Gielens is Professor of Marketing and Sarah Graham Kenan Scholar at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Retailing
Anthony Dukes, University of Southern California
October 28, 2022 9:00 AM EDT
Topic: Marketing at the Edge of Law: The Case of Vertical Restraints. Dr. Dukes is Department Chair & Professor of Marketing, Robert E. Brooker Chair in Marketing, and Co-Director of the Initiative on Digital Competition, and senior editor at the journal Marketing Science at USC Marshall School of Business. He is also a senior editor of Marketing Science.
Charles Noble, The University of Tennessee
September 16, 2022 9:00 AM EDT
Topic: Pushing the Boundaries of Marketing: Better Innovation for a Better World. Dr. Noble is the Henry Distinguished Professor of Business at UT Haslam College of Business and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Product Innovation Management.
Anand Kumar Jaiswal, IIM Ahmedabad
August 9, 2022 1:15 PM CST
Success in BOP markets requires the development of frugal innovations. A “clean slate approach” is a useful starting point for developing frugal innovations. Frugal innovations can lead to reverse innovations, i.e., the offering of such innovations in the developed world.
Raji Srinivasan, University of Texas at Austin
April 8, 2022 12:30 PM EDT
Topic: It’s Mine and Only for Me: Consumers’ Responses when Online Firms Use Personal Data for Firm-Wide Innovation (vs. Personalization)
Dr. Raji Srinivasan is Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin and a professor in the Department of Marketing and a Spurgeon Bell Centennial Fellow.
John R. Hauser, MIT
April 14, 2021 11:00 AM EDT
“Design and Evaluation of Product Aesthetics: A Human‐Machine Hybrid Approach”
Aesthetics are critically important to market acceptance. We use machine learning to augment human judgment when designing and testing new product aesthetics.
Jonathan Bohlmann, NC State University
March 19, 2021 11:30 AM EDT
“A Demand-Side View of Incumbent Inertia and Performance”
Incumbents are often, but not always, posited to suffer from inertia, making them slow to respond to market opportunities. We introduce a framework for a demand-side view of incumbent inertia, recognizing how the supply- and demand-side factors interrelate. We advocate several opportunities for future research that could further examine the complex relationships among incumbent inertia factors.