The Smith Effect

Robert H. Smith School of Business

The Smith School offers a world-class business education that enables graduates to start on the path to their dream career. Then there’s the Smith Effect. It’s what happens when the Smith community steps up to change the face of business. Transformational things happen at Smith. Here are just a few.

Satisfaction guarantee

Roland Rust

Productivity is important in business, but so is customer satisfaction. Big companies worried about the tradeoffs come to Maryland Smith professor Roland Rust. His research, which has filled nine books and earned multiple career achievement awards, shows how to find the sweet spot between productivity and satisfaction. Rust’s happy customers include American Airlines, AT&T, Comcast, FedEx, Hershey, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Sears, Sony, Tata and Unilever.

Social media intelligence

Wendy Moe

Platforms such as Yelp, Facebook and Twitter offer rich data for marketing analysts — if they can figure out how to filter out the noise from fake accounts, trolls and outliers. Maryland Smith professor Wendy W. Moe has led the way in the race to harness the digital data. Her 2014 book, Social Media Intelligence, provides scientific tools to generate valid, reliable results in real time.

Gordon-Loeb Model

Larry Gordon and Martin Loeb

Long before massive data breaches at Equifax, Target, Yahoo and other companies, Maryland Smith professors Lawrence A. Gordon and Martin Loeb understood the risks. They invented the Gordon-Loeb Model for Cybersecurity Investments in 2002. Their instrument, recommended by the U.S. Better Business Bureau and widely acclaimed by cybersecurity experts, helps companies calculate optimal spending levels to safeguards their data.

Glass ceiling, obliterated

Carly Fiorina

Hewlett-Packard had made strides in diversity when Carly Fiorina, MBA ’80, arrived as CEO in 1999. With her recruitment, the Silicon Valley giant also had the first woman leader of a Fortune 20 company. “Carly Fiorina didn't just break the glass ceiling, she obliterated it,” Matthew Boyle of Fortune magazine wrote.

Reforming Nasdaq, Changing the World

Albert 'Pete' Kyle

Despite advances in digital technology, Nasdaq traders were still handling orders by phone in the 1990s. The old-school approach made it impossible for buyers and sellers to trade against each other without dealers taking a big cut for themselves. When federal regulators got involved, they recruited Albert “Pete” Kyle as a consultant. The resulting regulatory changes forced the market to modernize its way of doing business. “I’ve always been a big supporter of the idea that customers should have access to the market on a level playing field, and that access should be electronic,” says Kyle, the Charles E. Smith Chair Professor of Finance at the Smith School. Kyle’s consulting work is just one example of Maryland Smith’s impact on the world.

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