I recorded this podcast with Ari Lightman while attending Dell World 2015. Ari is a Professor and Director at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) where he teaches classes on IT transformation, marketing, social media and mobile content. Ari is a major contributor to the Social Business Journal that we published with Dell. He also participated on a social selling panel with me at Dell World.
Ari’s work is intriguing. I enjoyed learning how his students at Carnegie Mellon University conduct research on behalf of large brands.
Researchers in the classroom have access to a variety of different software programs and tools used during their learning experience. When they come to the workforce, they expect to have access to those tools with which they’re already familiar.
In this episode, you’ll discover a few ways to ask questions when problem solving and how young researchers expect open access to the tools they need. You’ll also learn how Ari’s students at CMU created an opportunity for one company to generate an extra million dollars in revenue from their research findings and recommendations.
A quick picture of Bernie Borges with Michael Dell at DellWorld 2015.
On This Episode You’ll Discover:
- How Ari was involved in many startups as a Management Consultant before becoming a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
- How Ari was constantly asked, “What is the ROI of a Facebook fan?”
- How Ari’s students get real world experience by conducting research on behalf of companies that come to him with business problems to solve.
- How there are 7 projects conducted in his class per semester for different companies.
- How a brand hired one of Ari’s students after the close of the final presentation on their findings.
- How the Pittsburgh Pirates (baseball team) came to Ari and his class to obtain research on community engagement in relation to ticket sales.
- What types of data Ari’s class analyzed for the Pirates and how that affected ticket sales.
- How the CMU students came up with a “PIRATE” algorithm to optimize sales.
- What type of analysis Ari’s students did around March Madness for Nike and how their sentiment mapping involved long search strings.
- The various social analysis and listening programs used by Ari’s class.
- How Ari uses Facebook and Twitter to communicate with his students.
- How Ari’s students use a variety of programs for their research and expect to have access to them in the workplace.
- What Ari calls “chunkation” and how it breaks down large projects into smaller ones for efficiency.
- Why Ari says it should be, bring your own everything, not bring your own device.
It should be, bring your own everything, not bring your own device. @alightman
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- Why Ari says brands should create a safe space where employees can experiment and then write a blog post sharing what they’ve learned.
- Why Ari says to focus on lateral thinking and look at a problem through different lenses to understand how departments across the organization view the same problem.
Featured On This Episode:
- Ari Lightman on Twitter and LinkedIn
- Ari Lightman’s CMU faculty page
- Ari Lightman’s personal blog
- Download Social Business Journal Vol. 3: Digital Transformation
- Subscribe to our Newsletter
- Write a review of this podcast in iTunes
- Bernie Borges on Twitter: @bernieborges
- Social Business Engine on Twitter: @bernieborges
- Vengreso’s YouTube Channel | YouTube channel
- Social Business Engine website
There are TWO WAYS you can listen to this podcast with Ari Lightman.
You can click the Listen Now button at the top of this page… Or, you can listen from your mobile device’s podcast player through iTunes or Stitcher.
P.S. Don’t miss next week’s podcast episode with Abby Euler from IBM where we discuss the role of marketing in talent acquisition. Subscribe to our podcast to stay current on new episodes delivered to your inbox every Friday!
Download Social Business Journal, Volume 3: Digital Transformation
