Natalie Mizik
Gantcher Associate Professor of Business The high number of BCEMBA students involved in high-tech and entrepreneurial ventures makes for a dynamic, high-energy mix in the classroom according to Professor Natalie Mizik, who teaches the program’s core Marketing class. The students with high-tech backgrounds in particular “recognize that marketing can add a lot of value to their enterprises. They immediately see the relevance of the topics discussed in class and often tell me that they took the concepts presented and implemented them at their jobs.” Mizik focuses her teaching on the fundamentals, noting that, “buzzwords and fads die out fast, but fundamental concepts and ideas endure and have lasting value. I want to give students a framework for better understanding the business environment and making better decisions.” Discussing her research in the classroom gives Mizik an opportunity to share with her students “where the science is and where it is going, where we lack knowledge and where we need to ask more questions.” Myopic management—the tendency to over-emphasize short-term performance at the expense of long-term sustained success—is a current topic of interest to Mizik. “We need to know how to improve business performance, how to design incentive programs, how to evaluate managers, and what measurement systems to use to discourage short-termism and managerial myopia,” she explained. This research and her work examining the financial value implications of brand perceptions, such as perceived brand energy, differentiation, relevance, esteem, and trustworthiness inform Mizik’s teaching by bridging the theory and the practice. “I don’t have to convince the BCEMBA students that brand attitudes and perceptions impact a firm’s financial performance, they know it. And they are curious and eager to learn about it in more depth.”
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