Vision Statement

By Howard Frank, Dean
Robert H. Smith School of Business

Research & Outreach Centers

The Smith School’s research and outreach centers generate strategic partnerships and play a crucial role in determining the dynamic forces that impact business management in the global economy. The centers bring the school closer to realizing its strategic goal of getting multidisciplinary research centers aligned with each academic department, as well as creating strategic partnerships with leading commercial and government organizations.

Center for Human Capital, Innovation, and Technology: “Exploring Complex Interactions”
The Center for Human Capital, Innovation, and Technology (HCIT) studies the ways organizations, especially those in highly competitive environments, create value through the development and application of human resource systems, innovation, and technology.

Business today is a complex interaction among people, structures, processes, financial resources, and the external environment. When organizations get these elements working together effectively, they undoubtedly achieve competitive advantage. Utilizing multiple research perspectives, HCIT researchers work on both macro and micro levels to solve real-world problems. The goal is to translate this knowledge into actionable strategies that enable firms to enhance and maximize organizational effectiveness.

The center’s cross-disciplinary research projects draw on the expertise of internationally recognized members of the Smith School faculty and University of Maryland colleagues in related areas, including strategy, human resources, organizational behavior, marketing, information technology, and organizational psychology.

Center for Electronic Markets and Enterprises: “Getting e-markets Right”
With more than $6.3 trillion in annual online activity projected by 2005, the stakes to get an electronic enterprise right—and not to repeat the mistakes of fallen dotcoms—are enormous. And now, with the help of the Center for Electronic Markets and Enterprises (CEME), organizations stand a much better chance of doing exactly that.

CEME’s mission is to provide a unique, cross-functional, multi-dimensional perspective on emerging electronic markets and enterprises. “We have brought together distinguished Smith School faculty and renowned scholars from the university at large to conduct cutting-edge research,” says Henry (Hank) Lucas, center co-director and the Robert H. Smith Professor of Information Systems.

Working with corporate sponsors from a range of industries, CEME’s interdisciplinary faculty develops concepts and strategies to assist business leaders in meeting the challenges of succeeding in electronic enterprises. The research is shared with the academic and business communities through conferences, seminars, symposia, and an annual publication, CEME Reports.

CEME also provides invaluable consultation services to corporate sponsors. Private industry drives the research agenda, so the center’s work is practical and results-oriented. The center can work directly with a company to build its electronic enterprise literally from the ground up.

Center for Excellence in Service: “Exploring the Customer Side”
Exploring the customer side of e-commerce is the mission of the Smith School’s Center for Excellence in Service. The “gold-rush” phase of the Internet revolution is over. Now, companies need to make a profit from e-commerce, and that means understanding and serving customers. The Center for Excellence in Service brings, to the study of e-service, the issues, research talent, and technology expertise of business school faculty and contributing scholars from across the University of Maryland campus and beyond. A key objective is to create partnerships with organizations that can leverage the center’s knowledge to make their businesses more profitable.

Several important strategic relationships have been established with IBM, Mead, e-Gov, CommerceNet, and CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association). Many other major organizations are also considering partnerships with the center, which teams together with companies in two primary areas: strategic consulting and research.

The Center for Excellence in Service has won recognition among scholars and marketing practitioners through its publication, the Journal of Service Research, widely considered as the world’s leading service research journal, and by its co-sponsorship of the annual Frontiers in Services Conference with the American Marketing Association.

Supply Chain Management Center: “Integrating the Organization”
The Supply Chain Management Center was established to define the 21st-century best practices related to the efficient production and delivery of products and services, and to assist enterprises in applying these practices to profitably serve customers. The center's cross-functional approach comprises the disciplines of logistics, management science, and marketing. It has three primary mission areas: research, education, and expertise.

Research conducted at the center identifies and investigates best practices in managing the interdependent relationships among suppliers, manufacturers, carriers, and customers. Examples of the center’s leading-edge research include projects for CACI International Inc., the Logistics Management Institute, the National Industrial Transportation League, the State of Maryland, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Army Logistics Integration Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. As an example of the nature of the center’s activities, the U.S. Army project involves building a prototype proof-of-concept “mega-portal” that will provide command and control functionality for an Army weapons system.

The U.S. Air Force project developed a portal for the F-101 supply chain that demonstrated the ability to use a real-time environment to facilitate workflow automation, collaborative planning and forecasting, and real-time event management. The new-generation Air Force “command and control” portal will extend the portal’s functionality. The new-generation Army portal will include sensor-to-portal, real-time diagnostics and prognostics and the use of intelligent software agents to represent individual components of the supply chain and to consider alternate rules and policies to govern their behavior. By simulating policy and rule changes through the use of intelligent agents, managers can relax rigid rules and improve overall performance of the supply chains (e.g., use of agent-based modeling helped Procter & Gamble save $300 million annually on an investment of $3 million).

The center is responsible for the Supply Chain Laboratory that maintains a variety of commercial off-the-shelf software applications, as well as prototype, proof-of-concept applications developed as part of the research program. These software packages and systems provide students with hands-on experiences with applications currently used by major Fortune 500 companies, as well as applications that will be commercially available in the next three to five years. Working with business and government leaders, the center is helping position the Smith School to assume a leadership role as a hub for integrated supply chain management.

Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship: “Growing People and Markets”
Successful entrepreneurs must marshal their resources. They race against idea obsolescence. They scramble for more capital. In a high-tech world, they require more connections. The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship is dedicated to facilitating, supporting, and encouraging new-enterprise growth. One of the oldest original entrepreneur centers in the country, the Dingman Center at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, has established itself as a national catalyst for entrepreneurship at the dawn of the digital economy.

The Dingman Center acts as a window to the substantial entrepreneurial resources at the University of Maryland. With the A. James Clark School of Engineering, it co-directs the Hinman Campus Entrepreneurship Opportunities (CEOs) Program, an undergraduate living-learning program for students demonstrating an interest and potential strength in entrepreneurial ventures. The Dingman Center also works closely with the university’s Engineering Research Center, including its incubator Technology Advancement Program, as well as the Office of Technology Commercialization.

The Dingman Center provides leading organizations with the opportunity to guide the center’s future, gain a window into promising new enterprises, and build alliances with other leading organizations. It all takes place by entering the center’s elite Inner Circle. Members include senior executives of companies and individual members who have a unique opportunity to interact with Smith School students for full-time, part-time, and internship positions. Current Inner Circle corporate members include executives of some of the region’s top organizations.

A major initiative of the Dingman Center was the establishment of the New Markets Growth Fund, a $20-million venture capital fund (organized as a legally independent corporation) launched in 2003. The New Markets Growth Fund (NMGF) invests in early- and expansion-stage companies, primarily located in economically distressed sections of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The NMGF is an innovative investment fund designed to bring economic growth to underserved communities within the region and to fill a funding gap in the region, while creating strong opportunities for returns to the fund’s investors.

Through its affiliation with the center, New Markets Growth Fund managers have access to the region’s top scientific, investment, and business professionals. In addition, the Dingman Center provides a team of exceptional Smith School MBA students, who support the fund’s professional managers with a unique education in venture-capital investment. Investors in the NMGF include public entities, private institutions, and high net worth individuals. Investors in the fund include CapCity Ventures (including National Capital Revitalization Corporation, BB&T Bank, and Southern Financial Bank), M&T Bank, Capital One, Chevy Chase Bank, MBNA, Farmers & Mechanics Banks, Sandy Spring Bank, Empower Baltimore, the Calvert Group, National Cooperative Bank, Baltimore Development Corporation, the State of Maryland, the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, and several of the region’s top angel investors.

Center for Global Business
The mission of the Center for Global Business is to integrate a global dimension into the activities and programs of the Robert H. Smith School of Business. This integration is designed to enhance the Smith School’s curricular emphasis on the creation, management, and development of knowledge and information. The center is a key agent for the school’s outreach on global issues to the university community, business firms, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. Activities include managing the global exchange and study-abroad programs, conducting study trips, providing global internship opportunities, working with student organizations, and sponsoring the Global Executive Seminar Series.

As an example of the center’s activities, Smith students traveled to Dublin, Ireland, in 2003 to study with Smurfit School of Business students. The course, “High-Technology Organizational Innovation,” brought Irish and American students together to learn from panels, professors, and company representatives as they addressed topics, such as innovation in software, biotech, the impact of state support on innovation, digital and intellectual property rights, and how Irish companies finance their ventures. Students were exposed to a breadth of information, including semiconductors, biotechnology, digital media, infrastructure, financing, and the role of government. Representative 2004 courses include: Global Financial Markets, London, England; Global Management and Corporate Social Investment, San Salvador, El Salvador; Freight Transportation in the European Union, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; and Technology and Entrepreneurship, Côte D' Azur, France.

The Center for Global Business is the organizational link to the Global Technology and Management Consortium (GTMC), a consortium of select business schools around the world that are committed to the highest level of education and research, emphasizing technology, its uses, and development as the bases of their educational and differentiation strategies. The Smith School, along with CERAM Sophia Antipolis, founded the consortium in 2001 to create a global alliance of business and technology schools aimed at advancing the integration of technology into management education and research. As such, the GTMC is unique in the world.

The Global Technology and Management Consortium enables faculty, students, and affiliated companies to share research efforts and expertise; provides opportunities to interact with and learn from other students and faculty through projects such as the supply chain game and global case competitions; and offers a “finger on the pulse” of the technology management needs in participating companies and the corresponding supply and network of great talent within and across universities and companies. The GTMC stresses the ability to benchmark, incorporate, and stimulate technological developments and uses with colleagues of the highest quality. The consortium’s founding members include the Smith School of Business (U.S.), Delft Technical University (Netherlands), CERAM (France), Technion (Israel), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand). The GTMC will hold its first Global MBA Case Competition this autumn in Delft, the Netherlands. The winning team of the 2004 Smith MBA Case Competition in College Park will represent the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business at the GTMC’s Global MBA Case Competition in Delft.