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Research in Action I Business schools with research-driven missions are building buzz about their faculty's best work— and promoting their intellectual brands. by Tricia Bisoux n case you haven't noticed, business research has been getting more exposure lately—and not just in the daily news. Business schools are using print publications, podcasts, electronic newsletters, and even lunch meetings to get their faculty's best research into the hands of academ- ics, students, business managers, journalists, and laypeople as efficiently as possible. In many cases, business schools are promoting their missions by expanding the reach of their research. Business schools have long staked their reputations on their educa- tional offerings. But for those schools with an active research faculty, intel- lectual capital has become another area where they can differentiate their brands in a competitive market. In a world where business needs information at lightning speed, business schools that can prove themselves as "thought leaders" can establish reputations as intellectual powerhouses. "Our goal is to narrow the gap between supply and demand for research," says Ale Smidts, professor of marketing research and director of Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) at Erasmus University's Rot- terdam School of Management in The Netherlands. "At the end of last year, we assessed that we still have 'more to show the world.' We decided to make this objective a priority in 2007." Smidts and other business educators are recognizing that, if research is knowledge, then knowledge is power. Many schools already have boosted funding for research, launched new research centers, and made research a central driver in their mission statements. Now they are devising new strate- gies to advance their missions in the public eye—and "show the world" just how powerful their research can be. New Perceptions of Research While research has been predominantly considered an academic enterprise, the ways faculty view their research, and its connection to real-world issues, has changed, says Kathleen Sutcliffe, associate dean of research at the Univer- sity of Michigan's Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor. Purely theoretical research is still alive and well, she says, but she has seen an intellectual shift among many of her colleagues, from theory to practice. "In organizational research in the 1970s and '80s, for example, research- ers were much more focused on elaborating on abstract paradigms and understanding basic theories and phenomena," says Sutcliffe. "But in the 1990s, research became much more problem-driven and increasingly con- nected to management challenges. Rather than paradigms, studies focused on problems such as why and how socially responsible practices influence 26 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2007