The Applicator in Academia

Not too long ago, I mentioned to my wife, only partly joking, that because my career as a professor was in the applied science of marketing I was and am an applicator. I take ideas from the more fundamental disciplines and apply them in my teaching and writing.
 
I have come to accept the term as accurate and, in retrospect, have realized that my professors in both undergraduate and graduate school were applicators also.
 
Think of the person who installs new tile on your floor or shingles on your roof. The construction applicator takes what is on the shelf at the supply shop and lays it on your floor or roof. Professors do the same thing, in all fields of learning including philosophy. They take what’s on the shelf (of the more fundamental disciplines, the supply shop), apply it to their specific fields, then teach it to their students and write about it. The “shop” includes the discipline’s current and past literature that professors often accept too uncritically.
 
Philosophy is the most fundamental of the campus disciplines, so its “shelf” is the latest philosophy books and journal articles. Professors of philosophy—nearly all professors, actually—feel compelled to fit into the mold of that current context and teach and write in the same style as what they have read.*
 
What is on the shelf today for the business disciplines of marketing and management? The doctrine of pure and perfect competition and Keynesianism in economics and behaviorism (positivism more broadly) in psychology. The professors take these two doctrines as givens and, without question, spew them forth to their students and publication audiences.
 
If Austrian economics is acknowledged to exist at all, it is dismissed and disparaged. The same for any alternative in psychology. Cognitive psychology has been corrupted by behaviorism where it is now called “cognitive behavioral psychology” and “cognitive behavioral therapy.” Research and writing is entirely conducted in the older behaviorist mold. Studies must use statistics and probabilities (because there are no universals) and the “falsifiability” criterion of Karl Popper, rather than identification of the facts of reality and the formulation and clarification of universal concepts, are the fundamental methodologies. (Freud is also smeared and ignored, with the exception of specific training programs in psychoanalysis.)
 
Needless to say, Ayn Rand is still not taught, understood, or accepted in any way today in the academic world. (There are exceptions, but not many.) I am tempted to say that there is an “Ayn Rand derangement syndrome” operating in the minds of many academics. Nothing she said or wrote, as the attitude goes, could possibly be correct, interesting, or appropriate for a college classroom.
 
Neither Ayn Rand nor Ludwig von Mises are on the academic supply shelf.
 
This was true in the 1960s and ‘70s when I was in undergraduate and graduate school, and it seems to be the same today, perhaps worse, because of what is now available, namely the postmodern version of Marxism.
 
What did I do in graduate school (and somewhat as an undergraduate)? I called it my “double duty” education. In class and the textbooks, I reluctantly absorbed what was being taught me, but at home would go over the material to figure out what was wrong and what I thought was correct. It took extra time, but it was worth the effort.
 
Because so much bad epistemology was being taught to me in class—even marketing professors were trashing advertising—I began thinking about what became my first book In Defense of Advertising. I also quickly became aware that anything like that book could not be written or submitted as a PhD dissertation. It was not a “true [positivist] study.” My dissertation, consequently, was a study on perceived risk, which is a valid concept in psychology, but the results, to use Edith Packer’s word, were minutia.
 
The problem with the “applicators” of ideas is that everything on the shelf must be questioned and examined carefully for falsehoods, especially epistemological errors, then replaced with better ideas. Which means going away from the standard academic supply shop to find those better ideas, which is seldom done by today’s professors. It means a lot of rethinking of subjects from the ground up.
 
Schools of engineering and business are better than the “social” sciences and humanities, because the professors of engineering and business still rely on objective facts to teach their students how to build bridges and rockets and how properly to run a business for a profit. Engineering is better than business, as bad economics and psychology mentioned above taints the content of business courses. The so-called social sciences and the humanities are the worst.
 
Bad epistemology is everywhere in today’s academic world and it affects content. Good applicators, to conclude this metaphor, must know and use good epistemology—specifically, Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts—to analyze, review or reject, or expand and revise what is on the academic supply shelf before applying it for purposes of teaching and writing.
 
Better or improved tiles and shingles, or a totally new and creatively different covering, are what are needed in today’s academic world. This is how and why I call myself an applicator.
 
 
* See Brand Blanshard’s short book, On Philosophical Style, for a discussion of clarity in philosophical writing. All academics could learn from it.
 

“Miniature Adults,” the Marketing Concept, and a Montessori Approach to Organized Youth Sports

Being aware of and catering to the needs and wants of customers is the essence of marketing. The textbooks call this the “marketing concept” and emphasize that everyone in a business, from the president down to the lowliest stock person, should not make any decision or take any action without first considering the effects of the decision or action on customers. Contrary to what Marxists and leftists of all types say, it is through customer satisfaction that businesses earn their profits.

But the marketing concept applies to any organization that has constituents—nonprofits, as well as governmental agencies. The broader principle says simply: acknowledge and, to the extent possible and appropriate, satisfy the needs and wants of the person with whom one is interacting. This is not some self-sacrificial duty. Rather, it is the good manners of recognizing another person as an individual human being.

The problem is that many people, to use a popular expression, “get so caught up in themselves and their own egos” that that they become incapable of seeing life from another person’s perspective. The consequence of this type of behavior is inconsiderateness and disrespect. The problem is especially prevalent among parents and teachers in relation to young children, exemplified in acute form by adult attitudes in organized youth sports.

Bob Bigelow, former professional basketball player, has nailed this phenomenon in his book Just Let the Kids Play. As the title implies, the rise of elite or select teams in organized youth sports—those teams that hold tryouts and cut less effective players when better ones are found—has robbed youth not just of the fun of playing a sport, but also the chance of developing into a talented athlete later in adolescence.

With astute turns of phrase, Bigelow states: “The worst thing we adults do in youth sports is to forget that these players are not miniature adults or high school stars in some kind of larval stage. They are children, with bones that have yet to develop, with minds that are not thinking the same way that we are thinking” (pp. 107-08). And, because these teams are all organized and managed by adults and often include travel out of town, out of state, and perhaps even across the country to play games on a schedule that would exhaust an adult professional team, Bigelow quips: “Parental egos and a full tank of gas—a frightening combination” (p. 111). Some of these teams consist of children as young as five!

The notion that children are not small adults comes from developmental psychology and was championed by Maria Montessori. Children have needs and wants that vary widely by age and most particularly differ from those of adults. The Montessori approach to education adapts learning to the appropriate developmental stage while giving the child as much independence and control in the learning process as possible. Bigelow, without any mention of Montessori in his book, urges the same approach in youth sports.

As Montessori hands over much of the teaching and learning to the children, Bigelow recommends the same for youth sports. For example, recalling the days on sandlots where no adults or coaches were present, children played, made up their own rules, and coached each other on the field. To bring this spirit back into organized youth sports, Bigelow recommends that baseball and softball players up through sixth grade should be the coaches on first and third bases, an idea that would turn most adult coaches today apoplectic!

His main point is that adults need to back off because development in athletics does not really blossom until after puberty. (Former National Basketball Association star Michael Jordan did not make his varsity high school team until junior year.) Playing on an elite team at five or eight or ten does not give anyone an advantage, but getting cut from such a team at five or eight or ten sends a clear message to the child that he or she is not good enough. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many a coach, as Bigelow points out, has seen uncoordinated freshmen and sophomores become stars in their junior and senior years.

It is a myth and a shame, as he puts it, that so many adults think “more, more, more” at a younger and younger age means better. It does not. It may mean overuse injuries and burnout. It may mean, as one young man told Bigelow about his experiences with youth hockey, “[It] stole my childhood.” The young man started learning to play hockey at age three and quit at thirteen because he hated it. Subsequently he became estranged from his father who had driven him to every practice and game.

Bigelow’s book zeroes in on what I have examined before: the stage parent syndrome (1, 2, 3). Stage parents push, that is, coerce, their children to do what the parents think their children should be doing. Often, the parents live vicariously through their children’s accomplishments. What parents are unaware of in this process is their children’s physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. The adults’ actions are all about the adults.

Not that adults do this deliberately or in a mean spirit. Most think they are doing what is best for their children . . . but the science isn’t there. Multiple sports experiences and free (unsupervised and unorganized) play produce better perception and decision making among elite athletes. The needs and wants of youth are to have fun. Just as fun should be the goal of any career one chooses to pursue, fun should be the goal of all sports, whether at the high school, college, or professional level, but especially at the youth level.

Youth sports is about the kids, not the adults.

The Market Function of Piracy

In marketing the most effective way to introduce new products is the free sample. In 1978 Lever Brothers spent $15 million ($47.55 million in today’s currency) delivering a free sample of Signal Mouthwash to two-thirds of all US households. The strategy was a success and the product remained on the market well into the 1990s.

The significance of the free sample is product trial; it gets the product into consumers’ hands. If consumers use the sample and like it, they may go on to buy the product and buy it again and again, that is, become repeat purchasers; they may even spread the good word to others. When repeat purchasing and favorable word of mouth kick in, the product’s sales will experience a shift from slow to rapid growth and management will consider the product a success.

Free sampling is the best method of introducing new products, but it is also the most expensive. Not surprisingly, then, Forbes ASAP magazine (April 5, 1999, p. 54) reports this alternative way to practice free sampling:

One security manager for a major manufacturer, who asked not to be identified, says she is sure some companies actually view being counterfeited as a boon to their efforts to build brand awareness. After all, she says, if some companies give away merchandise to expand market share, what's not to like about having someone else take on the expense of manufacturing and distributing the goods, as long as they’re high-quality copies?

Imitation is a universal trait of human behavior, ranging from the use of phrases and mannerisms of admired others to the reuse of hummable themes in music, recognizable images in paintings and well-known plots in literature and Disney movies. Imitation is a normal part of the competitive process in growth markets. As the sales of an innovative new product takes off, competitors enter the market with their own, often cheaper, versions.

If the innovative product is patented, competitors make minor design or functional changes to secure their own patents. Knock-offs are unauthorized, usually cheaper copies. And, of course, the innovative marketer often produces its own cheap version, sometimes called a fighting brand, to fend off the competition. Over time real prices in the product category decline and quality improves.

Knock-offs are pirated products. Because they are usually cheaper than the original, knock-offs tend to appeal to a more price-conscious segment of the market; that is, the buyers of pirated products are probably not legitimate prospects for the innovative new product, either because they cannot afford, or do not want to pay, the higher price. Message to the innovative marketer? Either drop the price of the new product or produce a cheaper version—or be the first to exploit a new technology, something the movie and recording industries chose not to do.* Many, including these two industries, would rather sue than practice good marketing.

One study found that users of pirated software sufficiently influenced—by word-of-mouth communication—eighty percent of the software’s prospects to buy the legal product and another described several scenarios in which piracy can help increase the sales of legal products.** The pirated product functions as a free sample that the innovator does not have to fund.

So what about free copies? How do you compete with free, to state the battle cry of the new Luddites who fear digital technology? It’s done all the time. One of the most dramatic recent instances of this was the strategy of science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who, over the course of three years, gave away 700,000 electronic copies of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Sales of the hard copy went through six printings and surpassed his publisher’s expectations. Many of the downloaders, Doctorow said, did not buy the hard copy and probably would not have regardless, but the giveaway created considerable buzz and a significant minority did buy the hard copy. Compare the experience of the Mises Institute with Omnipotent Government.

Free—no matter where it comes from—can help sell.

 
* See Ray Beckerman’s "How the RIAA Litigation Process Works" to read how the Recording Industry Association of America uses questionable legal tactics to sue teenagers and grandmothers instead of designing creative money-making uses of P2P file sharing.

**Moshe Givon, Vijay Mahajan, and Eitan Muller, “Software Piracy: Estimation of Lost Sales and the Impact on Software Diffusion,” Journal of Marketing, 59:1 (January 1995), 29-37; Julio O. de Castro, David B. Balkin, and Dean A. Shepherd, “Knock-Off or Knockout?,” Business Strategy Review, Spring 2007, 28-32. Thanks to Gil Guillory on the Mises Scholars List for alerting me to the former study.

Cross posted on the Mises blog.