Building The Isenberg Advantage Building The Isenberg Advantage

includes 18 hospitals around
the United States. “One of our
challenges has been to expand
that growing national market with
a very small sales force,” observed
McDonald, a member of the
firm’s board of directors. “That
becomes more difficult owing to
a 6 to 9-month sales cycle that
requires approval of a hospital’s
chief medical, legal, nursing,
information, financial officers,
and others,” noted Fortin, who is
Patient.Edu’s CFO.
To meet those challenges,
Patient.Edu has forged marketing
alliances with cable TV providers
in hospitals, health care insurers,
medical record specialists, and
other firms that do business with
hospitals
and other
health care
providers. “In
their study,
the students
emphasized
that we—
especially
our web
site—needed
to market
more directly
to those
players—that
we were too focused on narrow
hospital solutions,” explained
Patient.Edu’s CEO, Steven
Graziano. “Beyond that, they
recommended that by redefining
our markets in terms of wellness,
we could expand them by 75%.”
A prominent member of Patient.
Edu’s board of directors insisted
that the students’ study could
have easily fetched competitive
consulting fees, remarked Fortin.
Added Paul McDonald, “The
students’ insights had a further
advantage: unlike some
consultants, the students brought
no biases to the exercise.”
The 2008-2009 Isenberg
Award Recipients honored at the
Isenberg School’s 2008 Annual Awards
Banquet in April, included two Isenberg
School students: MBA candidate Jason
Gabisch (second row, far right) and
Ph.D. candidate Xuan Huang (fi rst
row, far left). Established by Eugene ’50
and Ronnie Isenberg in 1994 to foster
interdisciplinary integration among
business, science, and engineering, the
annual awards provide up to $10,000 for
graduate students in the Isenberg School, the College of Engineering, the College of Natural Sciences
and mathematics, and (for the fi rst time this year) the School of Nursing.
Engineering Student Discovers
Marketing Skills at the Isenberg
School; Wins Annual Technology
Innovation Challenge
Without question, Isenberg Scholar
Brian Mullen has lived up to his Isenberg
Scholarship’s aim of fostering meaningful ties
among business, science, and technology. In
May, Mullen, a doctoral student in mechanical
engineering, won the $50,000 grand prize in
the UMass Amherst Technology Innovation
Challenge (TIC)—with more than a little help
from new-found friends in the Isenberg School’s
marketing department and MBA program. In the
competition—now in its third year—students,
recent graduates, and faculty advisors submit
technology-based business plans to a panel of
judges, including technology entrepreneurs,
consultants, and intellectual property specialists.
Mullen’s winning entry, Therapeutic Systems,
plans to market a light-weight deep- pressure
vest developed on campus for the mentally ill,
especially those with autism. Having come up
short in the previous year’s TIC competition,
Mullen knew that he had a promising product
idea in search of a marketing plan. To make
progress, he
enrolled in
two Isenberg
School MBA
electives
taught by
marketing
professor
Brian Mullen and MBA candidate
Chris Leidel.
Tom
Brashear—a
marketing
research course in the fall and a special topics
course in marketing strategy in the spring. In the
marketing research course, the class critiqued
Mullen’s previous TIC executive summary and
marketing surveys. “With their help, I learned
how to ask more relevant questions and how
to arrange those questions to yield optimal
responses,” he recalls. “The course was eyeopening
to me both as an engineer and an
entrepreneur. I gained a greater appreciation for
the customer’s perspective.”
In the follow-up course, Mullen and MBA students
Rebecca Faneuf ’08 and Stephen Burrows ’08
focused on his project’s marketing plan. (Outside
the course, 1 st -year MBA student, Christopher
Leidel also helped Mullen with financials.)
Following some preliminary marketing research,
Mullen realized that he had previously been hasty
in identifying his principal target market—parents
of mentally challenged dependents. Better to
focus on school and health care professionals
like occupational therapists, teachers, and speech
language therapists—all who have greater leverage
over their institutions’ resources and purchases.
“That insight allowed me to create a distribution
plan and a viable marketing strategy,” explains
Mullen. “You can’t attach financials without
a marketing strategy.” With his plan in place,
Therapeutic Systems went on to capture the
$50,000 prize, most of which Mullen immediately
invested in the development of an improved vest
prototype. “Winning the challenge was not an
end point,” notes Mullen. “It’s been a momentum
builder in bringing the vest to market.”
The Technology Innovation Challenge received
financial support from the following Isenberg
School corporate friends and alumni: SABIC
Innovative Plastics, Paul Carney ’82, and Eugene
’50 and Ronnie Isenberg.
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