Between Two Worlds: Adilson Borges on Integrating Academia and Industry, Part 1

In this episode of AMS Illuminations, Adilson Borges, PhD, who was recently appointed Dean of Rennes School of Business, discusses his transition from industry to academia and the vital importance of merging these worlds. Borges highlights the benefits of academia and industry collaboration to mold future leaders and enhance organizational transitions. He contrasts the pace and mindset differences between sectors, urging academics to prioritize practical applications over perfection. Borges also introduces evidence-based management as a key method for academia to demonstrate its value in real-world settings. Tune in to discover how bridging this gap can elevate both academic and practical impacts.

Follow the Academy of Marketing Science on social media:
Facebook: facebook.com/AcadMktingSci
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/academy-of-marketing-science
Instagram: instagram.com/acadmktingsci

For more information on AMS, visit https://ams-web.org/.

Transcript

Patricia Rossi, Vice President of Engagement, AMS:

Hello, listeners. I'm Patricia Rossi, vice president of engagement for AMS. Thank you for joining us for another episode of AMS Illuminations. To help us reach more listeners, give us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, or share AMS Illuminations on social media. For more information about the podcast and today's guest, visit ams-web.org/illuminations. Now, let's dive into today's episode.

Brad Carlson, Ph.D., President, AMS:

Welcome to AMS Illuminations, the groundbreaking podcast brought to you by the Academy of Marketing Science. As an AMS initiative for professional development, our goal is to foster connections between academia and industry. In this inaugural series of episodes, we delve into the essential task of bridging these two worlds. Join us as we explore the intersection of theory and practice, unlocking insights to drive innovation and growth.

As I mentioned, our goal is to offer actionable insights on leveraging academic knowledge for real-world impact within the industry. With that objective in mind, we're thrilled to welcome Adilson Borges as our esteemed guest for this episode. My name is Brad Carlson and I'm the current president of AMS.

Adilson Borges embarked on his professional journey at Unilever, where he honed his skills as a key account manager. Transitioning into academia, he served as a professor at a leading university in southern Brazil, before venturing to France. In France, he enriched the academic community at NEOMA Business School. And his commitment to advancing the marketing discipline led him to AMS, culminating in his presidency in 2016. However, the call of industry beckoned, prompting his pivotal role as chief learning officer at Carrefour.

Now, eight years later, Adilson stands as the dean of the Rennes School of Business, embodying a unique blend of academic excellence and industry experience. Welcome, Adilson.

Adilson Borges, Ph.D., Dean, Rennes School of Business:

Thank you so much, Brad. I'm really excited to be here. And thank you for this nice introduction. Really do appreciate it. And really excited to be with you guys today here.

Dr. Carlson:

We are very excited to have you with us. Adilson, before we start, congratulations on your new position as dean of the Rennes School of Business. How does it feel to be back in academia?

Dr. Borges:

Honestly, I am thrilled to be back. The experience that I have in industry was intensive, passionate, and a lot of learnings happening there. But I'm also very grateful to have the opportunity to come back to academia, to come back to work with preparing the future leaders, the leaders that are going to be going to the organizations tomorrow and are going to be helping those organizations to make the transitions that are so important to shape a better role in the future. So, really excited to be back. A lot of great challenges and really excited to help bring those two roles, academia and practice, together.

Dr. Carlson:

Oh, that's excellent. Given that you just mentioned transitioning, you have a lot of experience transitioning. You came from industry to academia. Then, you jumped back into industry. And now, you're returning to academia. With those experiences, what can you share with us about merging of those two worlds in your career?

Dr. Borges:

This is really interesting, Brad. Because honestly, I think there are so many things that we could do together, so many things that we can enrich each other, that it's a pity to be on silos and to function in our organizations on silos. Once we learn to listen to each other, to understand what are the priorities, what are the goals, what are the key issues that each one of those roles are actually looking for, if we are humble enough to really listen to those goals and to really understand and have empathy for each other, I have seen a lot of possibilities and a lot of things that we could do together.

So, I really do think that those transitions for me, were always pushed forward by curiosity, always pushed forward by this need to understand things a little bit different, and to apply then in the real world, to contrast then of what is going on in our organizations. And so, it is something that I know it's not usual, because we become very specialized sometimes in one area or the other. But I think there is a lot of richness when we are working on the frontiers of two and helping them feed each other. Because this makes us more intense, more impactful, and much better prepared to the challenges that are ahead of us tomorrow.

Dr. Carlson:

So, obviously, you've done a great job with this transition between practice and the academic perspective. In your experience, what do you think some of the bigger challenges are for the rest of us to bridge this gap?

Dr. Borges:

What I'm going to do is, I'll try to, first, emerge myself when I was associate dean for faculty and research in my past school, and remembering those days moving from the academia and from that particular managerial role, because I was not only a professor at that point, but also serving the school in that capacity, and remember how I move to industry. And trying to identify some of the points there hit me, some of the elements that I was very curious about. And then, if you want, we can build the other way around, now that I'm moving back from the industry to academia. And I remember that there are at least three things that hit me when I was moving from NEOMA to Carrefour. And one of those was speed.

Usually, the timeframe that things happen in the industry is totally different than what we have in academia. I used to say that in academia, we are depth. We go very, very in depth into a specific issue, and we try to understand really what's happening there and being very precise and very specific. But takes time. It takes time and it takes energy. In the industry, things are going really fast, and the decision-making process needs to be fast. Because if you don't do it, others going to do without having all the information that could be necessary to take the perfect decision, but they're going to be implementing something and taking that to the marketplace. And speed means a lot, particularly those days.

And so, this was one of the things that hit me very early on when I was sitting in those EXCOM committees and discussing with my colleagues in terms of thinking. I was trying to think about deeper in some of the decision-making process and say, but we don't have enough information to make that particular decision. And so, this is obviously not necessarily one of the topics that people are going to be bringing that intuitively, but they say, well, maybe we, in a perfect world, we would wait to have all those other information. But here, we need to move faster and we need to make things happen. And so, I think the decision-making process is not as good as it could be, but it's good enough to make a step further, test, learn, and keep going. And I think this is one of the main lessons that I have.

The second element that was very surprising for me when I was going to industry was how the need that we had there for that speed also influences how the problems are addressed by the teams, and how multidisciplinary teams work together. I've never seen so much interactions when we are doing something in the organization. Because even if it was a decision-making process related to marketing, let's say, should we increase the prices or should we change our promotion policy in the stores, there is a bunch of impact around HR. Because the number of people who would be working in the store would be affected.

We need people from finance, we need people from all other sectors. And that multidisciplinary sort of work I found passionate as well in industry. That, usually, because we are hyper-specialized when we are talking about academia, we usually don't do that as well. So, I think this is also something really that struck me as very, very powerful.

And the third thing, and I think it links back to my speed piece, Brad, which I think is really important, was that when you do something and you see the impact of that right there, immediately. And so, the time to see the effects of your actions. I know that in academia, particularly when we're talking about research. When you're talking about teaching, maybe we have loops of feedback that are faster. But when we're doing research, it takes a lot of time. Having the idea and then we are crafting a first draft, and then you get feedback from the conference, et cetera, et cetera. That is completely different in industry.

When you do something, bang, you have right there an impact. And it helps, I believe, to change our mindset from being perfect from the first time to being good enough, learn from what you have done, improve, and try again. So, again, a test to learn mode that I think it's extremely important for us. So, those are the three things that I think hit me very strongly when I was moving from academia to the business, to the professional role.

Dr. Carlson:

What a great response, Adilson. And you brought up speed. That's certainly been an issue. In our previous episode, speed was an issue. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but maybe I can take away that academics move slightly slower than the real world. If we were to take this thought and try to come up with some recommendations for those of us in academics, how might we make adjustments?

You did mention we don't have to move towards perfection. And I think that's something in academics, especially when we think about research, we're incentivized to pursue perfection in the way we design studies, we report studies, those types of issues. But if we were to take some practical takeaways from that bridge of practice and academics, what could we do better as academics, in your opinion?

Dr. Borges:

Let me just jump on this, because I think this is a fantastic conversation to have. I don't believe academics is lower or they are less fast than visioners. I believe the system is building in a way, and the goals that we have as academics are leading us to take more time. And I wanted to take two different approach to address that point.

So, in terms of process, we know the main reason is that we are trying to be really precise. We are trying to build theory. We are trying to address all the possible alternative explanations. We are trying to open up the hood and look at in the engine and see exactly what A is doing to B, and what is the mediator or moderator role that have here in terms of environment. So, it is an adventure of being extremely careful and precise on what you are bringing to the role. And that takes time. And that does take time.

So, it's normal that when you consider this, you think, well, things go slower in academia versus things go faster in the business. Because the business needs to go faster. Because if they don't move, they have others moving on and taking the spaces in the marketplace, and so on and so forth.

But then, coming back to your question on how can we do things differently? Because I do believe that poses a threat, particularly for social sciences and also for marketing and business science, is that business is going so fast that if we don't look at this, we might run the risk of becoming irrelevant to our leaders. Because the problems that we are tackling, the issues that we are trying to address, they become old-fashioned very quickly with things going faster and faster in our organizations.

When I was at Carrefour, I remember receiving or even talking to some other friends who were CLOs or even CFOs of other organizations. They're saying, "There's really good stuff coming from academia." But honestly, when I start talking about doing research together, for example, and I say, "From a business perspective, I have this really interesting topic that I wanted to test here in the company," and then I talk to a professor and he or she comes back to me and say, "Wow, that's really cool. Let's do something together on that." And then I say, "Beautiful. Can we start doing something next week?" And the professor, looked at me, "I was thinking about something next year." You know what I mean?

And again, we understand. We have our constraints in academia. Maybe we have a teaching load next week. Maybe we have other projects in our research pipeline that we are working on. But no matter what usually are the explanations, we need to look at that and try to reframe things differently here. And try to imagine some sorts of different approach that can accelerate our way of working with business.

And on top of that, Brad, I will throw this idea for you, but it's something that keeps me thinking as well in terms of infrastructure in our field, is the whole conference journal process. I think we have to ask ourselves, isn't that the time... The guys in computer science face this problem. In computer science, what they did is that they just say, "Look, our conference papers are our real papers, because it goes much faster. And the journals are just after we review and we do replications, then it goes for a journal at some point. Because those journal go through their peer-review systems, they have extra layer of quality in terms of selection. But the conference papers have a different value. They are much more impactful because of that.

And so, maybe one invitation for the community that I would like to share is, shouldn't we think in marketing to treat our papers in conferences a little bit different? And shouldn't we think about having at AMS the World Marketing Congress? Or having moments in which we have professionals coming more to post-sessions or to discuss in some of the sessions with our colleagues, but from something that would be a little bit more advanced in terms of results? That can be thought-provoking. And from there, we can work on something?

Because that would give us, academics, professors, it would give us, I think, a little bit more leeway to work harder to build the bridges with the professional world, with the industry. So, that's one of the ideas that I have, probably many others there, but I think it's a conversation that would be very healthy and very interesting to have with the all-marketing community.

Dr. Carlson:

That's such an insightful response to that question. And for all of the AMS listeners out there, I want you to know that it was right here on this podcast where Adilson talked about the value of the conference papers and presentations as a key bridge between practice and academic research. And I think that's really great insight in terms of, to your point, the conference process in those papers, it moves much more quickly than the journal outlet process, which can take 18 months to two or three years just to publish. Forget about all the time that goes into designing, collecting data, analyzing, those types of aspects. So, I think that's a great thought for us as we try to look forward in how we bridge this gap.

If it's all right with you, I would like to take a minute, before we really delve deeper into the academic perspective, and allow you to just share your experience at Carrefour in terms of the integration of academic research and business. Did you have many opportunities to personally help others bridge this gap? Again, you're in a unique position with your experience. Did you find that the organization and the individuals within the organization were open to, eager to, and excited about using academic research? Or was it a little more standoffish because of a perception that maybe things aren't moving as quickly as we need them to, or maybe the focus is a little different than what we need in practice?

Dr. Borges:

When I got to Carrefour, I said, "Okay, now I have a beautiful land where I'm going to go and put all my research into practice." I'm going to talk to folks and say, "On pricing, you should be doing this, this, and that. And on promotion, you should be doing this," et cetera, et cetera. Honestly, what I faced, and was extremely interesting also for our conversation, and the second thought that I wanted to bring to the table to engage in this conversation and in this dialogue with all the AMS community, is how we frame our results.

Because, again, coming back to what is our goal on research, we are building theory. So, we go very deep into something that's very specific, because we really wanted to be sure about what's going on here. It turns out that when you come to talk to someone in a company about this very specific, very little thing, they don't care. And I was frustrated about that. I say, "Come on, this is really cool what I'm finding here, right?" So, I showed some interesting situations in which when you reduce the price, you're never going to get the increasing demand that you're expecting. And the guy said, "Yeah, maybe. But look, you are working on this little piece that probably represents 0.001% of my sales. And the time that I'm spending with you, I should be already looking at the 80% of my sales here. Because I need to, at the end of the year, reach the goals that I have." So, I believe that this center needs to be different.

So, my take on this, Brad, is, there is no way. Well, let me reframe that. We might be able to sometimes, with some really cool results, not only with the cool results, but also with size effects that are relevant, because many times we find those little things, but very little, small effect size to bring somebody's attention. But I believe, at least where I did, and I can give you some concrete examples later if you want, where I brought research is when I aggregate a little bit of the different research results into something a little bit bigger.

So, instead of talking about my paper of whatever year, or whatever journal on sales promotion or price match guarantee is, what I did is that, because this little impact of A on B doesn't really matter for the company. But when I come back and say, "Look, we know that price match guarantee is X and Y," et cetera, so it's a meta analysis of what's going on there, then companies start to listen to you. Because you are giving them sound advice that's based on data. And there's a whole movement out there that, I think, we should be part of and be much more active on it.

It's called evidence-based management. I think that is one way to get into the organizations and explain what we are doing and how can we help. Because the unit of analysis is different. The unit of analysis, not your... Let me try to make a metaphor. We are not talking about the results of one particular paper. You are talking about, for example, a chapter of a book, or you are talking about a book itself. You're talking about that sort of a difference that usually can help to engage into that conversation.

And I think this is something that we... It's a practice that we have to help, that we have to have, and that can help us to engage in a much more fruitful conversation with leaders and with managers in organizations. Does that make sense?

Dr. Carlson:

Yes, that does make sense. And there's actually quite a bit to unpack from your response, and I have a few follow-up questions. But based on the response that you just gave, do you think, from the academic perspective, that we should emphasize less than we do some of these smaller counterintuitive results of our research? What's unique? What is not expected?

We certainly try to find those types of relationships and emphasize those to demonstrate unique contribution. Does it seem, from your perspective in industry, that maybe a little less focus on that would be more valuable for practitioners?

Dr. Borges:

Honestly, I don't think so. My take on this is that maybe I should be a little bit more nuanced here. Sometimes, we can find those weird, and I know that we overvalue sometimes weird results because weird is interesting, it's new, it's exciting and et cetera, but sometimes sounds too bizarre. And sometimes, again, the effect size are so small that I don't think that this really matters in the real world. So, I think there is a conversation that we can go over this, but it would be more related to, how much is the impact that this can have in the real world than anything else?

On the other side, Brad, I think it's not about not being exciting, not being new, or trying to find something that's more regular. I think it's just a different skill. Faculty, it's so nice. Our job is so fantastic because we have to be great on research. Meaning, finding new ideas, trying to prove them, developing theory, testing, et cetera. But we also have to be great teachers. We have to engage with students and create materials, and we have to be really in the way we are delivering our thoughts. We have to be great at services. You know what I mean?

So, we already have so many hats. And I think this, Brad, the one that we are talking right now, is just another hat that we can learn. We can learn how to look at the results from research and to pack and unpack them in front of executives. We can learn how to look at the different journal results and create some sort of stories that can be delivered in a much more powerful way for executives that doesn't look like just talking about this little tiny thing here. And so, I don't think that we need to... If you rethink the system, saying, "Look, let's stop looking for the really cool thing and that that's new and exciting," and by the way, many times very specific, I think we're going to be specific when we're doing research, when we're doing really good research. The question is that we are doing that to build theory.

Then, there is a time, like when we are preparing our courses, in which we have to say, "Is that a course for initial education, for bachelor's or master programs? Or is that a course for executive education?" Usually, when we're doing executive education courses, we are already thinking in a different way. And I think it's exactly that way, transforming some results, trying to make them coherent, telling a story that's broader, that's larger, that's more impactful for business, that we're going to have a much higher impact. And that, again, is a competence that usually we don't get trained for that in our PhD programs.

We usually don't get a lot of, and that's one problem, I believe that's something that we have to tackle, we do not get any reward usually in our systems to develop that skill. Because once we are published, we are good. Now, we are done. The paper is out, so we are all happy. Well, I think there is an effort to keep engaging with the community. Because when you do so, then you can get your paper, obviously. There's many journals, by the way, doing a fantastic job on that. I'm thinking about the top journalist. JAMS is doing that. Once we have this paper published, they prepare a press release and they send out to the press. And the journalists can spread that a little bit out.

And I think this kind of thing, I think it's something that we have to keep doing. But I believe it's a learning process for us, faculty, that's kind of new, and we are not necessarily very rewarded for that. But that it's so powerful when you do it. Because then, you can open up that door of an entire new road that can actually give you access to field studies, that can actually make your research much more relevant. Because it's actually changing the life of people who are doing the business, or using the subject matter that you are studying. And this, there is no better reward than this one.

Dr. Carlson:

Thanks for that response, Adilson, as well as all of the insights that you've shared with us today. We still have a lot of topics left to discuss, but those will have to wait for our next episode of AMS Illuminations.

Patricia:

Be sure to subscribe to AMS Illuminations, and don't miss our other episodes. If you have a question or topics you'd like to be up for discussion on AMS Illuminations, email ams-web@outlook.com. For more information about AMS and AMS Illuminations, visit ams-web.org.