Kalle Lyytinen, PhD
Dear Colleagues and Alumni,
We've had an eventful academic year so far and it shows no signs of slowing down. We have made great strides and changes on several fronts, many of which you are likely to see and experience when you interact with our doctoral programs.
First, we admitted a new cohort (Class of 2027) of 15 new students. We are especially happy with the strong local presence and diversity of the program participants. In the steadily maturing executive DBA market, this is a great achievement, and we look forward to continuing in the same direction! We are also making strong efforts to enroll a cohort of the same caliber in the coming year for fall 2025.
One reason for this success is that we have recently invested more in the program marketing and branding. We have better backing at the school level for marketing the program and also are engaging in marketing through webinars (We have organized them more frequently and systematically than in previous years.) Thanks to the help and effort of Jürgen (JB) Brock who joined us last summer, we have renewed and more clearly targeted our marketing messages and brand. Based on this, we are renewing our marketing materials, the web-presence, and how we position ourselves in the tightening market.
On the curriculum side, we are fully implementing this year all planned changes in the method sequence. In the Fall, we introduced a new course on how to find, integrate, and apply different forms of archival data as part of the student’s research. This spring a course on experimental designs and how to use such designs as part of DBA student’s research journey will be taught.) These are all efforts to be more open to various types of digital data available and how to leverage that in more innovative research designs. We will see in the coming years how this allows students to leverage more local data sets and improve the impact of their research. We have high hopes that this will improve our program’s engagement and impact.
We also have some changes in the faculty who teach in the program. Dr. Jürgen (JB) Brock joined Weatherhead School last summer in the Design & Innovation department as a Non-Tenure Track associate professor. Given that he is a role model of a successful scholar practitioner with a successful career in leading executive roles globally while at the same time conducting research and publishing at highest academic levels, it was natural that he adopted a visible role in the program management and teaching. His personal introduction is elsewhere in this DM Digest. I look forward to a long and successful collaboration and leadership role with Dr. Brock. We also have two other new faculty members who have adopted a more visible role in the quantitative method sequence, Dr. Christian Hughes and Dr. Miyeon Jung. Dr. Jung will teach parts of the experimental design course this spring and Dr. Hughes will teach a new research workshop course in Spring 2026. Welcome on board!
Finally, in this DM Digest we have a personal statement and introduction of our new DM alumni council chair Dr. Richard Bonaccorsi. Rich is a double alumnus of our program (DM 2002) and PhD (2021) and a long term and staunch supporter and friend of the program. I have known Rich for 10 years and collaborated successfully with him during his PhD study and also lately in working on a publication from his PhD study. Our most important task together with Rich and the program staff, Sue and Shelley, is to plan and organize the best and coolest 30-year anniversary jubilee for the program. Rich and the council have been working steadily and hard on the program for the event. So, mark your calendars to be in Cleveland Oct. 23–25, 2025! More details of the event will be announced later during the spring and summer. The aim of the event is to showcase our program and our alumni’s achievements in research, impact of practice, education and so on. We also want to touch upon hot button topics that are on our minds currently such as the global political and economic situation and the impact of technology on work, management and organizing.
Finally, just during the time of writing this, we heard the sad news of Marilyn Chorman’s passing. She served in many important roles in the program administration from nearly the start of the program until her retirement in 2019 when she moved to Florida. My warmest memories are of how she truly helped me to organize and manage the new PhD part of the program when we introduced it in 2010. She coordinated these activities with hospitality and great efficiency until her retirement. Even during her retirement she continued to help numerous students in preparing and managing their IRB applications. Her warm spirit supported the culture of the program as experienced by all the students, alumni, and faculty. Her impact was immeasurable. We sorely miss her, and our support and condolences go to her family.
As a statement of exciting activities, I am including a picture of PhD cohort 14 during our January residency in Helsinki, Finland, at Aalto University. The visit and the ensuing discussions with them are but one of the examples of the great experiences we provide to our students in the program.
Looking forward to meeting you all in person in October.
Kalle Lyytinen, PhD
Faculty Director, Doctor of Business Administration program
Iris S. Wolstein Professorship in Management Design
Distinguished University Professor
Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University
