P.V. (Sundar) Balakrishnan

About Dr. Balakrishnan

Professor P.V. (Sundar) Balakrishnan obtained his Ph.D. in Marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has an undergraduate degree in Engineering from I.I.T. Delhi, a Masters’ in Industrial Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a Masters’ degree in Marketing from The Wharton School. He is the recipient of the 2011 University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award medal.

Professor Balakrishnan has been recognized for fundamental contributions to more than one research domain. His work has impacted both the theory and practice of marketing. The substantive areas of Prof. Balakrishnan’s research are directed toward studying New Product Marketing & Marketing Strategy, Buyer-Seller Negotiations, Relationship Marketing, and Retail Locational Decisions. He is recognized as one of a handful of marketing scholars whose work has had a major impact on other disciplines e.g., artificial intelligence, strategy, organizational behavior, and negotiations.

Professor Balakrishnan joined the University of Washington, Bothell in 1994 as a founding faculty member of the new Business Program. He was promoted to full Professor in 2004. He has served in numerous administrative roles. He was the Acting Director (similar to Dean) of the Business Program for two years where he was responsible for managing and running a business school involving both Strategic and day-to-day operational activities, and launching a number of new options and initiatives. He helped spearhead the AACSB re-accreditation efforts successfully in 2000. He has most recently served as the faculty mentor; and as Chair of the Faculty Personnel committee for the Business School. Among other university level assignments, he has served as Senator to the UW Faculty Senate; Search Committee member for the UWB Chancellor, and Vice-Chancellor; the 5-year Review Committee member for two different Chancellors; Chair of search committee for the Director of Computing & Software Systems; and as Elected Member of the Campus Council on Promotion, Tenure and Faculty Affairs. He is currently Senator (elected) to UW Faculty Senate; member of the Faculty Council on University Libraries – overseeing all 16+ UW libraries with 9+ million books, etc.

He was the Academic thought leader for all business school graduate studies in his recent role as Associate Dean of the Graduate – with Responsibilities that included:

• Taking the lead in crafting an academic vision that encompasses all of our graduate programs both MBA & MS Accounting; MBA has Two Locations x 3 MBA Options.
• Working with faculty, staff, school leadership, and all relevant internal and external stakeholders to manage, vitalize and grow graduate curricula, and experiences.
• Collaborating with staff to ensure effective recruiting, admission, and advising of students- including staff structure design, hiring, review, development, and, promotion.
• Leading accreditation and review activities pertaining to graduate programs.
• Exceptional Results and turnaround of our Graduate Programs. MBA Applications increased by almost 100% in two years, and 65% from last year. At a time when schools nationally are retrenching or shuttering, our entering class is at operating capacity two months before our deadline.
• MS Accounting program turnaround has been completed! Historic accumulated budget deficit has been completely paid off resulting in improved faculty morale. Program will now be returning surplus funds back to the school.
• Accreditation Report on the Redesign, Launch, and Implementation of the New MBA Programs (6 flavors of MBA now available) has been completed. 5 Year Review report of the MSA Program completed.
• Graduate Programs Staff team hired and trained over the last year and a half are now functioning like a “well-oiled machine” in their own words.
• My 360 Review completed in May 2020. Net Positives on every dimension. OEHR Consultant’s comment: “borrow your genius”. Blown away by the positive feedback. Thanks to my entire team of staff, and faculty.

He is very proud of the fact that the Business School that started out as tiny one in rented facilities with about 30 students has now grown to have an international reputation in a beautiful campus. The business school is the same age as his twins, and he thinks of it as his triplet!

He was previously on the Marketing faculty as an Assistant Professor in the College of Business at The Ohio State University. He has been a visiting faculty member at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He served as a Visiting Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Business of The University of Chicago. At Chicago, he taught at three campus locations, including Hyde Park, the Gleacher Center and Barcelona.

Prof. Balakrishnan has done the pioneering work in employing Artificial Intelligence methodologies such as, Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms, for addressing important marketing problems dealing with Business Analytics and New Product Marketing. He is the co-developer of his own DSS software GENESYS and PRODLINE software for product line designs. His research has been commercialized in the leading software. He has recently co-developed GADOS, a data analytics program, for market segmentation that results in significant improvements in customer targetability.

His Negotiations research includes a path breaking paper (with Eliashberg) that develops an analytical process model using fundamental constructs from social psychology and which can predict inefficiency. His recent contribution includes the development of an axiomatic solution concept (with Gomez and Vohra) that accounts for modifications in negotiators’ aspirations (i.e., Tempered Aspirations Solution). His conceptual and recent empirical work includes developing Negotiation Agenda strategies when bargaining over multiple-issues. He has published the classic paper (with Oliver and Barry) on extending the customer satisfaction Expectancy-Disconfirmation paradigm to two-party negotiations (this alone has over 1000 downloads). He is the developer of NEGOTIAT, a negotiation training simulator.

Much of his current work is at the interface of multiple disciplines. He has been working on understanding the evolution of markets. His work at the interface of Marketing, Finance, and Economics examines and analyzes the evolution of US Stock markets over a 40-year period. His first paper on this topic was accepted (by Prof. Eric Maskin the Nobel Prize winning economist) at Economics Letters. His current research in New Products is on the Diffusion of Innovations that integrates the Marketing-Operations nexus with regards to supply constraints. He is currently involved in developing Agent Based Diffusion models for research and pedagogy.

His research papers have appeared in PLoS ONE, Management Science, Journal of Consumer Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Production and Operations Management, Psychometrika, Decision Support Systems, Economics Letters, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, International Journal of Conflict Management, Journal of Direct Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Health Care Marketing, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, European Journal of Operational Research, and Decision Sciences among others. He has presented his research at numerous conferences nationally and internationally. He has served as a reviewer for many of the leading journals such as the Management Science, the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Marketing Research. He was ranked as one of the top three Best Reviewers in 2005 and 2006 by Marketing Science. He is on the editorial board from 2000- 2020 of Psychology and Marketing; and is a Senior Editor for Journal of Information Technology and Management. He was listed among the Top 300 most prolific management scholars in a 1997 INFORMS survey based on publications over a ten-year period. He has been listed in various editions of MARQUIS’ Who’s Who in America for many years, including the 70th Platinum Anniversary Edition.

He has taught courses and students at all levels ranging from Undergraduates to Graduates to Executives. He has also been invited to deliver seminars in the United States, Europe, Japan, India, Israel, and Australia. He has received outstanding teaching evaluations from students at all levels. Some of his recognitions for teaching excellence include being recognized as the Business Instructor of the Year 1995 by the UWB Undergraduate Business students; the Best Professor by the Technology MBA students in 2004 and 2007; and in 2011 the Best Professor by the pioneering class of the Leadership MBA program. He was a multiple time nominee or finalist for the University’s Teaching Award. He was awarded the 2011 University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award, which is given only once in a person’s lifetime.

Prof. Balakrishnan has taught a number of different courses at the undergraduate and MBA programs in a number of schools. The courses he has taught include: Marketing Management, New Product Marketing, Advanced Marketing Strategy, Capstone Marketing Simulation, Marketing Research, Marketing Models, Business Marketing, and Project & Operations Management. He has developed and taught new and innovative courses including Marketing Management Laboratory and Artificial Intelligence and Marketing Decision Support Systems. He has served as a consultant to a number of organizations and presented modules in various executive programs. He was a faculty fellow at the 42nd AMA-Sheth Doctoral Consortium where he delivered a talk on “Technology in teaching” in the plenary session. He was the Keynote speaker at the 7th annual Great Lakes – NASMEI International Marketing Conference hosted by the Kotler-Srinivasan center in December 2013. His talk was titled “Diversity, Interdisciplinarity & Cross-Fertilization: Evolution in Research and Teaching”. He helped organize for Prof. Jerry Wind the Wharton Fellows Program in Seattle in 2014 and was a featured Dinner speaker. He gave a talk on “Creating a Culture of Innovation”. He has received media coverage locally and internationally.