As the worlds of commerce, entertainment, and technology become ever more inextricably linked, new types of business models arise almost every day. Along with these business models come countless questions, which require serious thought and formal analysis. Back-of-the-envelope calculations are no longer adequate to demonstrate a new model's viability.

At the heart of this “perfect storm” lies the notion of interactive media. While this phrase is used quite broadly, we have a specific definition for it: Interactive media are methods of content distribution and information acquisition that allow for the precise tracking of individual users and their specific actions over time. This definition obviously covers most forms of digital media, but also includes significant aspects of more traditional media - i.e., those that utilize detailed measurement and user-level tracking. A natural corollary to this definition is the matching of content and the subsequent creation of new economic opportunity at the customer level.

The data generated through interactive media are incredibly rich, and thus the challenges to fully capture, understand, and take action based on them are substantial. Many enterprises are placing big bets that the creation of such data - and the insights that they can provide - are key factors that will power their businesses to new heights or, in certain cases, protect older businesses from extinction. It is not clear how often (or under what circumstances) these bets will pay off; this is where Wharton's expertise can help.

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Date: Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Registration deadline: 10:00am Wednesday, September 24th. Due Wharton West security requirements, day-of-event registration will not be available .

The Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI) has been developed to address these major changes in the way firms center themselves around a multitude of customer touchpoints. World-class researchers will collaborate with leading-edge businesses to ask and answer the critical questions. The focus is not on “30,000 foot” perspectives or speculations about far-off future trends; instead we will passionately pursue relevant, well-validated, data-driven research that will drive winning business strategies for years to come. Furthermore, as interactive media are already shrinking the globe in a dramatic manner, we will maintain a global orientation in identifying and addressing these research questions.

Virtually every department at Wharton (and others across the University of Pennsylvania) have something to contribute to this initiative. Likewise, we see WIMI as a clearinghouse for other leading academics worldwide who work in different areas of interactive media and are looking for new ideas, data, and other resources to support and promote their work.

Professor Eric Bradlow
Professor Eric T. Bradlow is the K.P. Chao Professor and Academic Director of the Wharton Small Business Development Center. An applied statistician, Professor Bradlow uses high-powered statistical models to solve problems on everything from Internet search engines to product assortment issues. Specifically, his research interests include Bayesian modeling, statistical computing, and developing new methodology for unique data structures with application to business problems.

Eric was recently named a fellow of the American Statistical Association, is past chair of the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics in Marketing, is a statistical fellow of Bell Labs, and was named DuPont Corporation's best young researcher while working there in 1992.

A prolific scholar, Professor Bradlow's research has been published in top-tier academic journals such as the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Psychometrika, Statistica Sinica, Chance, Marketing Science, Management Science, and Journal of Marketing Research. He also serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, Marketing Science and Psychometrika and is on the Editorial Boards of Marketing Letters, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and the Quarterly Journal of Electronic Commerce.

Professor Bradlow has won numerous teaching awards at Wharton, including the MBA Core Curriculum teaching award, the Miller-Sherrerd MBA Core Teaching award and the Excellence in Teaching Award. His teaching interests include courses in Statistics, Marketing Research, Marketing Management and PHD Data Analysis, as well as Essentials of Marketing for Wharton's Executive MBA program.

Professor Bradlow earned his PhD and Master's degrees in Mathematical Statistics from Harvard University and his BS in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Peter Fader
Professor Fader's expertise centers around the analysis of behavioral data to understand and forecast customer shopping/purchasing activities. He works with a wide range of data sources from industries such as consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, and music (online and offline). Much of his research highlights the common behavioral patterns that exist across these and other seemingly different domains.

Currently, he is focusing on demonstrating the usefulness of probability models for data-intensive managerial problems as a contrast to data mining and other popular--but often inappropriate--techniques. Professor Fader believes that marketing should not be viewed as a "soft" discipline, and he frequently works with different companies and industry associations to improve managerial perspectives and practices in this regard. His work has been published in--and he serves on the editorial boards of--a number of leading journals in marketing, statistics, and the management sciences.