Associate Professor, Marketing
Department of Marketing, Law & Social Responsibility

Edcuation:
Ph.D., MBA – Syracuse University
MMS, BSc – University of Bombay

Arrival at Loyola: 1992

Research/Teaching Interests: new product development and innovation management with a particular emphasis on the commercialization of technology-based innovations; marketing management; technology and innovation management (TIM)

Professionally Speaking: "Loyola offers a quality program delivered in a relevant fashion."

Personally Speaking: "Loyola’s flexibility, freedom and trust make it possible for me to be innovative."

Spotlight
Gerard Athaide, associate professor of marketing, has a strong belief in innovation. It’s what he teaches his students – and what he learns from them on a daily basis.

“I teach new product development. My students have to develop an innovation relevant to their organization. By going through this hands-on process, they learn to appreciate the importance of their product/service and why it will or will not do well,” he says. “It’s only by experiencing the process that one can completely understand it.”

Just as Athaide asks his students to assess the relevance of their innovation, he also invites them to evaluate the relevance of his instruction in today’s global business environment. Together they explore up-to-the-minute challenges such as how the product development process can work if the design team is on one continent and the manufacturing team on another.

Athaide believes that this type of collaboration is crucial in the social sciences, where the answers are rarely black and white. “Loyola students are extremely respectful of one another. They may challenge certain business practices and disagree with one another and with me, but always with mutual respect,” he says. “And they come to agree that many areas are grey in the business world.”

It is often in these grey areas that an education based in the Jesuit tradition proves most helpful. By educating the whole person, Loyola’s graduate programs stress not only academic excellence, but also social responsibility, service to community, ethics, and practical applications in professional settings.

“I believe that students come to Loyola because of the quality of the programs,” says Athaide. “But they find that it is the Jesuit emphasis that keeps it relevant not just in subject matter but in the daily practice of business and life.”