September 15, 2000

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Business is offering a unique addition to its Masters of Business Administration program with a new course called Product Innovation Management, beginning Winter Quarter, January 2001. The course will teach students how to take an emerging technology from the lab into the marketplace.

“High tech counts for 65 percent of new business in the current marketplace,” said Robert Holmes, Ph.D., School of Business dean. “If we provide education to help take new and emerging ideas to market, we are not only building our program, we are building the economic base of our community.”

The goals of the course are two-fold: to develop managerial talent in the Birmingham area skilled in guiding new high-technology companies to maturity; and to improve the success rate of technology transfer from the laboratory to the marketplace for commercially viable products.

“This class offers students an innovative and integrative team-based educational experience, allowing them to work on a real case involving a UAB Research Foundation scientist who has a high-tech product with commercial promise,” said Richard Burns, Ph.D., chair of the UAB Department of Finance, Economics & Quantitative Methods.

The course will be team taught by UAB professors with specialties in technology transfer, new venture creation, patent law and other related areas along with guest lecturers.

“We want to appeal to students who find entrepreneurial work attractive,” said Mike Bowers, Ph.D., chair of the UAB Department of Management, Marketing and Industrial Distribution. “There is also the possibility for career advancement for these students because we will be putting them in contact with potentially successful high-technology ventures.”

Students must be selected by professors to register for the class. Interested students should submit a letter of application explaining how participation will help them achieve their career goals and attach a resume. Applications should be sent to Bowers, Burns or Gail McGee, associate dean of the UAB Graduate School of Management. (See Addresses Below).

Michael R. Bowers, Ph.D.
BEC 210B
1530 3rd Avenue South
Birmingham, AL 35294-4460
Phone: (205) 934-4648

Richard Burns, Ph.D.
BEC 319C
1530 3rd Avenue South
Birmingham, AL 35294-4460
Phone: (205) 934-8832

Gail McGee
BEC 219C
1530 3rd Avenue South
Birmingham, AL 35294-4460
Phone: (205) 934-8817