Goizueta Faculty Interview: Professor Reshma Shah on Goizueta Business Library’s partnership with Goizueta Marketing Strategy Consultancy

This year, Goizueta Marketing Strategy Consultancy (GMSC), led by Professor Reshma Shah is celebrating its 25^th Anniversary! Goizueta Business Librarian Ann Cullen sat down with Professor Shah to talk about the Goizueta Business Library’s ongoing collaboration with GMSC. 

Can you provide a quick history of GMSC?

Initially GMSC was called the “Marketing Competition.” The idea was hatched in 1991 through brainstorming among the students of the Graduate Marketing Association and their faculty advisor on a way students could use their talents and what they were learning in their MBA program to get experience providing marketing advice to companies. The first formal competition was held in 1993. The projects started the beginning of the fall semester and then teams presented in January or February.

The Marketing Competition started as an extracurricular activity. Clients were charged a very small amount or nothing to participate. There were around 10 teams of students in the early years because demand was huge, and since this was an extracurricular activity, there was less of a need to manage the teams and their work. After being involved for a few years, and making GMSC a formal elective course in the marketing area, we decided that 6 teams was the optimal number to manage.

Initially there was a very hands-off approach in terms of supporting student work on these projects. The focus was to just let them dive in and see what they came up with.

In 1997 I became involved in the program and added more rigor and support for students to make sure their projects and recommendations were of high quality and that they added real value to our clients. Also at this time we began to charge more money to clients to participate to support the additional resources that the program required.

In 2001 GMSC became a course and in 2003 we changed the name to Goizueta Marketing and Strategy Competition. In 2004 I changed the course structure so that I could personally meet with each team two times per week for the entire semester. They also had a second year MBA student who would serve at their Team Guide and also met weekly with their assigned team. In this way, each team projects became its own class.

In 2007 the course was renamed Goizueta Marketing Strategy Consultancy to match additional structural changes such as the addition of outside consulting resources, new leadership team structure, formal processes to review project milestones with me, and other similar formalizations.

Tell about when the business librarians first began to work with this program; what was your motivation for developing this more formal relationship between GMSC, students and the librarians?

Librarians were working with GMSC when I took over in 1997 and to my knowledge had been involved to some extent all along. Ruth Pagell, who was head of the Business Library at that time, would ask me which companies the competition was working with in any given year. Then the librarians would pull standardized reports and syndicated data on those companies.

The relationship with the business library became more formalized over the years and teams were encouraged to see the librarians and use their expertise for help with research on projects.

2004 was when the librarians began being assigned to the specific teams. Around that same time the team guides were encouraged to meet with librarians to get help in putting together the Industry and Competitive Analysis (ICA) report. This document (now call ICP) is prepared for the GMSC teams to review because they don’t have the time to think about the projects until January and it helps them dive in quickly and get started on their projects right away. Sometimes, our clients want to sponsor a kick-off meeting in December, so it is helpful for them to have some sort of project background information to review early on.

When these reports were first being put together there was almost no training provided to the team guides on how to approach this. The librarians normally just provided some documents that informed what the team guides put together along with what they got from the company. The quality of the finished products was uneven.

Gradually, the involvement of the business librarians migrated from their pulling documents for the teams, to the librarians meeting with the teams and teaching the students how to locate information for themselves. The librarians’ role with GMSC has moved from delivering information to teaching students about effectively gathering and using information.

As a result, there is now a much healthier respect for secondary data throughout the research process by students than there used to be. However I wonder sometimes if the students fully understand how to best make use of the resources and expertise the librarians have to offer these projects.  I am not sure we are fully there yet in educating the students effectively in this regard, but I know we are going in the right direction.  I know that much progress has been made since the early days of this program.

How has the role of the business librarians changed over the years?

Now, the librarians are increasingly positioned to assist with these projects when their engagement is relevant to the process. For example, librarians are still each assigned to a team, but now rather than leaving it to the students to reach out to the librarians, the librarians sit in on several of the required weekly check-in meetings with me and provide guidance about resources as part of that discussion as well as meeting in separately scheduled consultations with their teams. They are asked to meet with their teams at other points in the curriculum such as when the teams practice pitching their project recommendations. This takes place about a month before the projects are due and usually it is uncovered that some extra research is needed when they do this practice presentation.

Looking ahead, what does success look like for you as it relates to the value/contributions the business librarians can make to the GMSC client projects?

What I have loved so far is that the business librarians view their relationship with this course as a partnership. They are just as invested in the success of this class as I am and I look forward to this being an ongoing and growing endeavor. I believe that the model of interaction and partnership that I feel has been so beneficial to the GMSC students could serve as a model for work the business librarians do with other classes as well.