It’s no secret that marketing strategies play a significant role in the success of a company. Research from Mays shows that looking to the future is vital for promoting innovation in a firm—and innovation starts with how CEOs think.

Some firms embrace change, while others are ambivalent about or opposed to change, says Associate Professor of Marketing Manjit S. Yadav. There are different reasons for that phenomenon, but in business, the behavior and success of a company comes back to leaders and how they perceive change.

Yadav’s article, “Managing the Future: CEO Attention and Innovation Outcomes,” represents an analysis of 176 public banks and their introduction of Internet banking services. To determine how a CEO’s thought process affects company innovation, Yadav used an approach from psycholinguistics—counting how many times a CEO used the word “will” in letters to shareholders as a signifier of forward thinking. Almost 1000 letters were analyzed from 1990 to 1995. The research looked at innovation outcomes over eight years, from 1996-2004. “Our methodology creates a separation between the measurement of CEOs’ thought processes and when innovation actually occurs,” Yadav said. “Future focus of CEOs is found to be a very strong predictor of innovation in firms.”

With results of “will” usage ranging from 0 to 20 percent, Yadav found that the amount of attention a CEO devotes to events not yet occurring impacts three key areas of innovation—detection, development and deployment. Companies must focus on the future beyond detection of new technology. They must create products based on new technologies and then deploy them further after launch. Attention is the chief bottleneck in organizational activity, Yadav said, and the bottleneck becomes narrower and narrower as we look to the top of organizations.

“CEOs should acknowledge the importance and impact of how they think. They should cultivate a broad, forward-looking posture. Once they exhibit it,” he said, “it sets in motion a similar attentional stance throughout the organization.”

Yadav’s research suggests that when future-focused thinking is employed by CEOs, managers and employees pick up on the idea. This creates an innovative organization that is ready to adapt to change, using new technology such as online banking to serve customers in innovative ways.

"We need to learn a lot more about how CEOs impact innovation, but this research begins to address the issue of leadership that is widely recognized as one of the central problems in the management of innovation,” Yadav said.

Evaluating the Journey

Research on turnover and women in academia demonstrates that a myriad of factors can impact the retention, tenure and promotion of female faculty. A recent analysis of the Faculty Cohort Project, administered by The Women’s Place at Ohio State, found that the project is beneficial to its participants and that cultural change is important for the advancement of women faculty. Management and Human Resources Professors Jill Ellingson, who also served as lead investigator, and Arnon Reichers presented their findings to Ohio State President Karen A. Holbrook (left) and her Council on Women’s Issues. Ellingson’s research was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Cohort Project, as well as offer insight into work-life issues and barriers to the full inclusion of women on university faculties. She found that cohort participants believe the project provides a supportive, nonthreatening environment and that a good relationship with department chairs is integral in shaping the positive experience of assistant professors. Due to Ellingson’s study, The Women’s Place plans to continue the project for six years as well as utilize feedback from the study to enhance its programming and guide culture and policy changes.