Joel facing the camera while standing in the hallway of the business school.

Marketing executive is changing how students do business

February 24, 2022

For business students studying marketing and innovation, Netflix makes an excellent case study. Luckily, Robins School of Business marketing lecturer Dr. Joel Mier brings more than a bit of inside knowledge to the classroom.

Before teaching at UR, Mier's professional experience spanned industries, from Adobe to Genworth to, yes, a tenured run as marketing director at Netflix.

Mier was among the media company's earliest employees and was on-hand for a number of pivotal shifts in the Netflix business model. In 1999, he participated in the company's pivot from one-off DVD rentals to a subscription model. And in 2006, his last project focused on the creation and launch of Netflix's then-new video streaming platform, which now has more than 200 million subscribers worldwide.

He knows when to leave a core business function behind in favor of a new model, as well as how to maintain focus on long-term growth.

Mier brings that expertise — and plenty of real-life examples — to undergraduate and graduate students in his marketing and innovation courses.

Take the new Bench Top Innovations course, a pilot program offered by the Robins School of Business in partnership with UR's Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative (CIE) that takes a product from ideation to revenue-generation in less than nine months. Last semester, students started to get a taste of entrepreneurship as they studied food trends, ideated and prioritized those to focus on, and then created innovative food or beverage products in a kitchen on UR's campus. Now, they're working together as a company to launch and scale the business both online and in retail.

Every decision is made by students, with plenty of chances to analyze the possibilities and course-correct as needed.

"[It was] an opportunity for students to create a business, run a business, grow a business, crash a business, whatever is going to happen is going to happen," he said in an article for Richmond Inno. "But that's real life, and I think those are important lessons to learn in a safe environment."