Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose an MBA program, but the educational experience at business school is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we focus on Art Middlebrooks from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
A 1988 Chicago Booth alumnus, Professor Art Middlebrooks (“Marketing of Services” “Developing New Products and Services”) is also a management consultant who helps service companies—including the Bank of America, IBM Consulting and BP/Amoco—develop new products and services. With these experiences in hand, Middlebrooks is prepared to take students in his “Developing New Products and Services” class through the product development process, starting from scratch. In his class, rather than being instructed to dream up a product, students are given raw data and hold focus groups as they strive to identify a consumer need. Recently, students in this course conceptualized new bag products for Ziploc and presented their findings to a panel of entrepreneurs. Students with whom mbaMission spoke described Middlebrooks as innovative and gushed about his passion and energy. Plus, several were impressed that he knew each student’s name on day one of class.
