How History of Science and Technology Can Forge Marketing Careers

Vol. 41, No. 3, July 2012
Printer friendly version of Newsletter

by Brett Steele

(This is the second installment of a two-part series in which the author describes opportunities for historians of science outside of academia. Part one highlighted the kinds of sophisticated strategic reasoning that graduate training in the history of science can impart (Teaching Old History to Promote New Innovation: Part I). Part two discusses how this type of preparation helps those who are seeking careers in fields such as marketing, sales, and advertising.)

What follows are my personal observations about the value of the academic discipline of history of science and technology for marketing careers, especially in the high-tech domain. My intention here is to help orient graduate students in this field who are seeking more lucrative career options, as well as point out to their professors a potentially "practical" benefit of their work in the corporate domain.

I was working in Washington, D.C. as a researcher at the newly established Homeland Security Institute for over three years when I was suddenly laid off in 2007. The senior management had apparently decided to purge their organization of the economics-oriented researchers. Fortunately, I soon found another position with Ideal Innovations, Inc., a high-tech government contracting firm that pioneered the use of biometrics in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was hired to serve as a Program Manager at the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), a position in which I hoped to gain more practical science and engineering experience. Unfortunately for that goal, I soon received praise from the senior management of Ideal Innovations, Inc. after writing some fairly diplomatic letters in response to Congressional inquiries about particular technological developments at JIEDDO. Within a few weeks, Ideal Innovations asked me to join their just-created marketing office to improve their ability to win government contracts.

In my new capacity as a marketing manager, I quickly learned that a central challenge in winning government contracts involved designing and constructing a compelling proposal narrative. This involves synthesizing a great deal of complex scientific and technological information, clearly presenting the historical development associated with the firm and the government agency in question, and incorporating a perceptive strategic vision into the proposal. What surprised me was how useful my education and experience as a historian of science and technology could be in such work. Sure, my scholarly abilities as a historian was essential in my prior research positions at the RAND Corporation and the Homeland Security Institute, but it had never dawned on me that it could be this useful in corporate marketing. The basic proposal-writing "best practices" all proved to be quite obvious to me. These included developing a compelling narrative flow, breaking down complex scientific and technical concepts into coherent bite-size pieces, minimizing the passive voice and nominalized verbs while writing instead about "actors engaging in action," and highlighting the drama of individual achievements. In contrast, my engineering and business colleagues struggled to even recognize the relevance of such practices. As a result, I spent considerable effort editing and rewriting their contributions to maintain such basic marketing standards.

My responsibilities as a marketing manager went far beyond proposal writing. After becoming Ideal Innovation Inc.'s Energy Programs Manager, I had to learn about writing white papers to attract potential clients. Much to my astonishment, articulating the historical context of the innovation being marketed was a central requirement, as recommended by Michael Stelzner in Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep them Engaged (2007). Yes, the ability to engage in historical research about science and technology, and develop it into a coherent narrative that retains the reader's interest is a critical marketing talent in the high-tech domain. I also found that offering a potential client a white paper, modeled partially after an Isis or Technology and Culture article, significantly increased my ability to have senior government officials take me seriously. A lot of marketing managers and sales agents lack such academic means, as I observed in government-sponsored trade shows.

Marketing a high-tech product involves much more than writing and distributing persuasive sales arguments, of course. It must also be accompanied by both informal and formal presentations to establish your trustworthy character. Yet again, my training as a teaching assistant and my experience as a university lecturer in history of science and technology was invaluable for this task. It likewise shocked me how similar the experience was of presenting a complex sales presentation to skeptical government officials and giving a history of science and technology lecture to fault-finding graduate students. The experience of my PhD oral exams and the interrogations of academic search committees also went far in helping me transform hostile government officials into enthusiastic clients. In short, the experience of becoming an academic historian of science and technology delivered unexpected dividends when working on either the demand-side or marketing domain of a high-tech firm.

Another practical issue should also be considered. Introducing a product to a new market or a new customer base requires a tremendous amount of research to understand the orientation of that "alien" culture. You cannot possibly make a compelling sales argument unless you have a reasonable understanding of the customer's cultural outlook—especially from an organizational perspective. And people here in Washington, DC wonder why virtually all retired generals and admirals earn such lucrative salaries as consultants in the military-industrial-academic complex. My training as a historian certainly equipped me well with the necessary research mindset to accomplish such a task. After all, researching actors and organizations of the past also involves trying to understand profoundly alien cultures.

Unfortunately, PhD-level humanities students lack a great reputation in the corporate business world. The common stereotype includes being easily bored, having a narrow range of interests, being poor team players, and having insufferable egos. And successful corporate marketing and sales work certainly demands a consistent detachment from your ego given all the rejection one inevitably encounters. So, what is an enterprising history of science and technology PhD student to do? My suggestion is to augment your graduate studies with some formal marketing or strategic communication courses, as well as relevant internships in the corporate or government domains. And if your traditional-minded academic advisors protest, simply say that you are seeking to become a more persuasive historian and a more strategic-minded professor.

…………

Brett Steele received his PhD from the Program for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a dissertation on the history of calculus-based ballistics and artillery practice in the eighteenth century. He subsequently taught at UCLA, Stanford University, Georgetown University, and National Defense University. His publications include The Heirs of Archimedes: Science and the Art of War through the Age of Enlightenment (MIT Press, 2005), UN Nation Building from the Congo through Iraq (RAND, 2005), "Rational Mechanics as Enlightenment Engineering: Leonhard Euler and Interior Ballistics," in Gunpowder, Explosives and the State, Brenda Buchanan, ed. (Ashgate, 2006), and finally, "An Economic Theory of Technological Products," in Technological Forecasting and Social Change (March 1995). Dr. Steele recently received the 2012 Engineer-Historian Prize by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for his work on the history of ballistics.

History of Science Society

How History of Science and Technology Can Forge Marketing Careers

Quick Links....

Primary Navigation

Search

History of Science Society

Frequently Used Sites