preview intro "Driven By The Data"

Market research is often looked upon as relevant only to product development, simply to guide engineering.

In fact, upstream market research and the Market Research Staff also play pivotal roles to lead the downstream promoting and selling processes, and to steer the entire enterprise.

Fact-gathering, analytical market research is early intervention to validate and size the business opportunity, to direct financial and staffing decisions.

Selling is too important to entrust to the sales force. Marketing communications is too important to leave to Marcom. Strategy must be based on facts, not on wishes.

Driven by the data, real-life examples illustrate how good, up-front market research brings about an integrated strategy for design, manufacturing, promoting, selling, service, and across the organization. Tools will be demonstrated for the Market Research Staff to collect that data, to deliver an integrated strategy, and to fulfill their leadership responsibility.

Ralph Grabowski is a MIT-trained Electrical Engineer who focuses on the fact-gathering, analytical, front-end marketing process to steer technology-based enterprises. He has helped launch new products, new companies, and new fields that gainfully employ thousands of his fellow engineers; and which have become worth more than ten Billion dollars. Additional information on his consulting practice and on his role as a temporary executive is at http://marketingvp.com/practice.

Mr. Grabowski has delivered more than one hundred papers, talks, and courses for universities, institutions, and professional societies. He is the co-founder of MIT's annual entrepreneurship program, co-founder of the popular MIT Sloan School of Management graduate course "Starting And Running A High Tech Company," co-founder of Technology Capital Network (TCN) at the MIT Enterprise Forum, co-founder of the North Shore Technology Council (NSTC), and co-founder of the world's first IEEE Robotics Chapter. Ralph was also an Adjunct Professor in the Marketing Department of Suffolk University's School of Management, teaching in Suffolk's Executive MBA Program.

This is one is a series of Mr. Grabowski's more than twenty Boston University guest lectures and Master Classes, mostly in BU's Master's program in Administration with concentration in Innovation and Technology.

"Professor Barry Unger is one of the co-founders of the MIT Enterprise Forum and, as a Presidential Appointee under the Carter administration, co-authored the SBIR Act of 1982. For either accomplishment, much less both, I regard him as having more impact on technology-based business and entrepreneurship than any other human being, living or dead." Ralph E. Grabowski

Professor Unger will be combining two of his graduate courses for one evening for this special event in a Master Class format.

Click for a printable flyer for posting, in Adobe® Acrobat® (PDF) format - 0.3 MB. This is also the Master Class handout.

Directions to the Master Class at Boston University
Room SMG 324, Boston University School of Management

The Marketing Leadership Series is a special grouping of papers that stand out and which, taken together, demonstrate how Marketing (as differentiated from promoting and selling) delivers leadership to all aspects of the corporation. "Driven By The Data" is the fourth in the series. You might visit the first three ...

"Who Is Going To Buy The Darn Thing?"	The original! With 9,700 words, 110 references, and eight figures.
"The Board's Fiduciary Responsibility To Market Research"	for the Board and the CEO
"What Do Customers Want?"	tools to steer the corporation