Vita
Dr. Cory T. Cromer
(cory_cromer@uml.edu)
617-596-7114
WORK: Assistant Professor of Marketing & Entrepreneurship, Oregon State University, Fall 2008-Spring 2012,
Assistant Professor UMASS Lowell Summer 2012-current.
EDUCATION: Ph.D., Marketing Strategy; September 2004- June 2008 (Strategic Management, minor)
University of Massachusetts Amherst: B.S. Marketing and Pre-Med, Montana State University
HONORS AND RECOGNITIONS
2008, 2009, 2010 OSU College of Business Newcomb Teaching Excellence Award & Grant (Highest Ratings of
all Faculty in 2008)
Selected Chair: Marketing Strategy, Marketing Management Association
Selected Co-Chair: Innovation and New Product Development, AMA Academy 2011
Selected Chair: Innovation & e-Commerce, Academy of Marketing Science Conference 2010
Isenberg Award Winner 2006-2007: $10,000 grant awarded for recognition of research that combines research of
business and technology.
Harold E Hardy Scholarship Recipient: Isenberg School of Management, 2006.
Sheth Doctoral Consortium Representative, 2006.
Chair for four honors theses, outside committee member for PhD student in Engineering.
REFEREED PUBLICATIONS
Cromer, C., Dibrell, C,. Craig J. (2011) “A Study of Schumpterian (Radical) vs. Kirznerian (Incremental)
Innovations in Knowledge Intensive Industries”, Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability Vol. 7(1): 28-42.
Cromer, C. & Hodges, S. (2011) “Analysis of the Microcar Market in the United States and India: Impact of
Macroeconomic Forces and Cultural Values”, Journal of Applied Business and Economics Vol. 6 (2):121-135.
Cromer, Cory (2011), “Consumer e-Commerce Dissonance: Innovating Without Alienating Before Information
Overload”, Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, Vol. 5 (4).
Cromer, Cory (2010), “Understanding Web 2.0 Influences on Public e-Services: A Protection Motivation
Perspective”, Journal of Innovation; Management, Practice, and Policy, Vol. 12, No.2: 192-205.
Milne, Labrecque, and Cromer (2009) “Towards an Understanding of Online Consumer’s Risky Behavior and
Protection Practices”, Journal of Consumer Affairs, Vol. 43, No. 3: 452-477.
Asare, Cromer, and Manz (2008), “The Impact of Uncertainty and Relationships on a Leader's Decision to Resist the
Introduction of Self-Managing Teams”, International Journal of Leadership Studies, Fall 2008, (Vol. 2) 1.
FULL CONFERENCE PAPERS ACCEPTED
Cromer, Dibrell, and Craig (2011), “The Role of Radical versus Incremental Innovation on Firm Performance”,
Academy of Marketing Science Conference 2011.
Cromer, Cory (2011), “Marketing Process Innovation: Integrating a Producer Network to a Complements Network
for Creation of Sustainable Customer Solutions”, AMA Conference 2011.
Cromer, Cory (2010), “Consumer e-Commerce Dissonance: Innovating before Alienating”, Academy of Marketing
Science Conference 2010.
Cromer, Cory T. (2009), “Process Innovation Redefined: Moving from a Producer Network to a Complements
Network for Creation of Customer Value”, Business Development and Innovation Conference 2009 (Best Paper).
Milne, Cromer, and Culnan (2008), "Cyberactivism: Consumer Strategies for Addressing Privacy Concerns”, AMA
Marketing and Public Policy Conference.
Cromer, Cory T. and Lisa Keller (2008), “Do Mia and Lebron Belong on the Same Field? The Effect of Multiple
Athletic Endorsers on Firm Products and Brand Awareness”, AMA Summer Educator’s Conference.
Milne, Cromer, and LeBrecq (2008). “Toward an Understanding of the Online Consumers’ Risky Behavior and
Privacy Protection Practices,” AMA Marketing and Public Policy Conference.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
BA 458
Innovation and New Product Development
BA 460
Entrepreneurial Marketing
BA 590
New Product Development (MBA)
Rating 5.4/6.0
Rating 5.3/6.0
Rating 5.4/6.0
Working Papers (does not include all works in progress):
Cromer, Cory T. and Kate Loveland, “Innovation Nets: The Role of Total Market Orientation on Firm
Performance”. (Under Review, Journal of Marketing) With such movements as open innovation, firms realize
that outside knowledge and resources can help them with creation of new ideas and innovation that may not of been
realized relying solely on their own internal resources. This has created an environment in which I have described
as “Knowledge Nets”. Firms are able to orient themselves based on their innovativeness, for the exploration and
exploitation of dynamic capabilities for optimum firm performance. A network of over 160,000 technology data
points of a 142 firms in biotechnology and 163 in consumer electronics are analyzed in a three-stage process model.
Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis is used to purify the dynamic capabilities captured in the second stage.
Next, using partial least squares, the firm’s level of market orientation and dynamic capabilities is examined for the
effect on firm performance. PLS is used due to the nature of the data and model. PLS provides the ability to not only
capture the explanatory power, but the predictive power for future applications. In addition, 16 phenomenological
interviews were done with key new product development professionals from lead firms in biotechnology and
consumer electronics. This is the first study of its kind to look at market orientation from a mixed
quantitative/qualitative study, with consistent findings in both that support a firm’s proactive market orientation as
the key to key firm performance measures and public stock support.
Cromer, Dibrell, and Craig “Radical vs. Incremental: The Impact of Innovation Orientation on Firm
Fundamentals and Performance” (Under Review Journal of Product Innovation Management) Utilizing the
NBER’s groundbreaking new patent database – we evaluate the relationship between R&D, firm fundamentals and
firm performance. Patent counts and patent citations are used to measure R&D quantity and R&D quality
respectively. All of our R&D variables are positively associated with growth and negatively associated with
profitability. When used to form stock portfolios, the R&D spending and citations intensities are able to distinguish
winners from losers in firm performance. In this study we draw upon Schumpeterian and Kirznerian theories of
innovation, to frame through use of U.S. patent data for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries for
investigating the value of an organization’s knowledge through its intellectual property. We use patent count, patent
cycle time, and patent citation index in relation to radical and incremental innovations, and the resulting relationship
to organizational performance (i.e., profitability and market valuation). Our findings support the perspective of
knowledge generation increasing financial and market performance returns for ventures concentrating their
resources on the pursuit of Schumpeterian radical innovations through a strong organizational emphasis on the
knowledge impact compared to lower performance returns for ventures which sought Kirznerian incremental
innovation.
Cory T. Cromer and Sasha Dorbola, “New Product ‘Dysfunctional Teams’; What Your Best Researchers
Don’t Want You to Know”. (Under Review, Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice) A key message of the
current innovation literature is that an effective way of enhancing creativity and innovation is to use cross-functional
collaborative teams. Although the virtues of cross-functional product development teams have been widely
extolled, few would argue that the mere formation of such teams is sufficient to enhance innovation meaningfully.
Despite the growing popularity of cross-functional collaborative teams there has been little research on how these
teams are constructed, essentially, what people thrive in a collaborative team, and as important, and who may fail.
Therefore, this study explores how various aspects of cross-functional collaborative teams enhance or diminish
innovation and creativity. A phenomenological approach will be used to conduct qualitative interviews of a 6-person
new product development team. This method is used to examine the team’s interaction on a specific project. This
will be followed by subjecting the transcripts to a series of critical discourse analysis to further expand upon the
gradations of team members’ interaction with each other and individual attitudes towards the new product
developed.
Cory T. Cromer, “Marketing Process Innovation: Integrating a Producer Network to a Complements
Network for Creation of Sustainable Customer Solutions”. ( Targeted for JPIM in March 2012). The purpose
of this article is to enhance the understanding of market dynamics, value creation, and competitive advantage in
network markets in relation to rates of both product and process innovation. The author presents a framework and
method in which outcomes of new products may be modeled for strategic planning in moving from producer
networks to complement networks via Marketing Process Innovation for continued competitive advantage and to
extract maximum utility rents from products that have reached a steady state of product and production process rates
of innovation. By mapping a resource based view of a critical issues grid, we are able to see how one key component
of the environment may dramatically influence the outcome. By using an even/history analysis that produces
feedback loops into the situation analysis, that than feeds into the Bayesian network model, a more accurate view of
potential customer value solutions can be capitalized on and measured.
(Cromer and Dibrell) “Overcoming Small Sample Sizes in Entrepreneurial Research: A Game Theory
Methodology” (Submit to Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, June 2012).
Corporate entrepreneurship researchers are often confronted with the problem of small sample sizes. This constraint
is particularly evident for research involving primary data collection efforts where respondent participation is
limited by proximity, the corporate entrepreneurs’ willingness to participate, attrition of key individuals, or venture
termination. Often, otherwise valuable data may be discarded by researchers believing their sample size is too small
for statistical power.
There is a dearth of archival data on corporate entrepreneurship (Narayanan, Yang & Zahra, 2009), as much of the
research in the domain relies on small sample surveys and case studies (Hornsby, Kuratko & Zahra, 2002;
Narayanan et al., 2009). While previous research has made great gains in exploratory models and theories, the
challenges of the data make replications, external validations, and empirically driven theoretical extensions of these
seminal findings difficult. The current study proposes a statistical technique for use in corporate entrepreneurship
research that can improve statistical rigor in spite of sample size restrictions or perceptions. This paper discusses
applications for bootstrapping in corporate entrepreneurship research. In addition, we provide an example of its
successful use and examine implications of this statistical technique for driving an agenda of future research in the
field. This study uses data on 150 internal corporate ventures (ICVs) from 76 corporate parents to demonstrate the
method and utility of bootstrapping. A random sub-sample of data is taken from the complete dataset using resampling with replacement. Statistics from each bootstrapped sample are generated, and then final parameter
estimates and standard errors are calculated on the basis of the sampling distribution. A re-centering technique is
introduced to demonstrate congruence between the bootstrapped samples and the distribution existent in the dataset
taken as a whole.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
September 1998-August 2003 Protogenex (nanotechnology delivery systems) Boston, MA
(acquired in July 2003 by Infomed Rx, Inc.)
CEO
 Led funding road show in successful 1st and 2nd rounds of private funding.
 Developed 12 commercial products from
concept>prototype>production>marketing>distribution.
 Launched all commercial products on e-commerce enabled website, doubling revenues and
increasing average profit margin by 16%.
 Developed Partner Plan with 2 major pharmaceutical companies for cross selling and
promotion of Protogenex’s products by the partner’s sales force.
 Created rollout plan for retailers and distributors including: territory planning, pricing models,
incentive systems, competitive intelligence, and product support.
 Handled all aspects of Marketing as acting Chief Marketing Officer
 Employee turnover was less than 4% annually.
 Member of Massachusetts Biotechnology Council.
May 1996-September 1998
Parametric Technology
Waltham, MA
Director Business Development
 Developed and implemented partner strategy with entire technology development team, BPO
consultants (big 5 at the time), and systems integrators, over 55 partners total.
 Trained internal employees and external partners on competitive positioning, cooperative
marketing, and product profiling.
 Managed Marketing & Sales communications with all major partners including: IBM, Siebel,
Oracle, Microsoft, KPMG, Accenture, and Oracle.
 Developed new business model to reflect the addition of an indirect sales channel and new
major account strategy. Redefined product positioning, strategic positioning, management
structure, geographical territory alignment, quota assignment.
Manager, Marketing & Sales Development (ProEngineer CAD/CAM, Windchill Enterprise,
technology management software).
 Was part of a 5 person team that oversaw marketing training and development of over 1,100
sales and marketing personnel worldwide.
 Trained Account Executives, District Managers, Regional Directors and Vice Presidents in
Strategic, Consultative, and Spin Selling. Personally trained over 292 people.
 Completed coursework and study manuals on all 62 software modules for entire company.
 Developed and implemented training curriculum for U.S. and Europe, including 4-2 week
courses and 8 two day boot camps.
 Developed 2 day course on analyzing and simulating ROI given different business models and
industries. Transferred course onto CD simulator for computer based ROI modeling.
Account Executive
 Created justification for starting a new Biotechnology Practice (that did not exist before) and
generated over $6 million in new sales during first 7 quarters.
 Created “Proof of Concept” sales methodology to decrease average sales cycles times from 5
months to 3.5.
 Received company’s highest sales award 2 years in a row.
 Took over territory ranked 356 out of 404, left territory with it ranked 38 th out of 416.
October 1993-May 1996
Genzyme (formerly Snowden Pencer)
Cambridge, MA
Marketing Product Manager
 Led successful launch of 6 new products within Cardiovascular Instrumentation.
 Monitored, measured, and analyzed global product portfolio performance, market share,
product life cycle changes by key region and targeted segments.
 Acquire and disseminate knowledge of global competitive marketing activity, industry trends,
and offline results as appropriate for enhancement of product portfolio.
 Developed and implemented pricing strategies for all Cardiovascular product line.
 Developed pricing elasticity & retention models to combat loss of market share due to HMO
formulary emergence upon market.
Business Analyst-West Coast Region
 Coordinated marketing activities for region. Approve regional tactical plans to ensure
consistent, effective, and successful product messaging.
 Identified and managed Regional advertising spends.
 Negotiated local media contracts and media planning.
 Identified opportunities to speak at key conferences for developing awareness and thought
leadership within the biotechnology industry.
 Streamlined system for providing internal briefings about marketing initiatives that was
eventually rolled out to entire U.S. team.