Reflections from Maryland: Visiting Scholar Describes Study Under Smith’s Roland Rust

Jan Oskar Bolin recently traveled from Norway to College Park to audit a PhD Seminar on Marketing Strategy under Maryland Smith’s Roland Rust. “A key takeaway,” he says, “is under the right conditions artificial intelligence (AI) could prompt a seismic shift that reverberates throughout the entire economy. But good decisions will have to be made.”

Bolin, a PhD research scholar at the Norwegian School of Economics’ Department of Strategy and Management, makes this observation in a recent blogpost at Digital for Innovation Growth (DIG).

The piece further examines a foundation of the seminar, “The Feeling Economy: How AI is Creating the Era of Empathy” (2021) coauthored by Rust, Distinguished University Professor and David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing in the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and Ming-Hui Huang of National Taiwan University.

“In the book,” Bolin writes, “Rust and Huang argue that manufacturing technology (e.g., industrial robots) is the pillar of the physical economy, information technology (e.g., mechanical AI) is the driving force of the thinking economy, and AI (cognitive technology) is the backbone of the feeling economy.

The research behind the book and seminar, Bolin says, “has instilled in me, more than anything, the importance of vision.”

Bolin adds, “Although the merits of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence may be contested, Roland’s faith in the revolutionary capacity of AI technology permeates through both his research and expositions in the classroom. Researchers can, and indeed should, take a stand and argue their vision. And our research will be better for it.”

Read more: “Reflections from Maryland” by Jan Oskar Bolin at DIG.