Traditional teaching methods are changing, and the skills future marketers need are evolving faster than universities can adapt. How can post-secondary institutions prepare students for a profession where change is the only constant? In today's episode, CEO of the CMA Alison Simpson interviews Kyle Murray, Dean of the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfred Laurier University. Kyle's approach: Embrace experiential learning, integrate Generative AI, and prioritize uniquely human skills such as adaptability and emotional intelligence. His most important insight? Cultivate a 'forever student' mindset - because in marketing, the most valuable skill is learning.

[00:00:00 ] Presenter: Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs with your host CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

[00:00:26 ] Alison: For today's episode, I'm pleased to welcome Kyle Murray, the Dean of the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfred Laurier University. Kyle took over as Dean in July of 2024 after a distinguished career at the University of Alberta School of Business, where he served as the acting Dean with a PhD in marketing and psychology.

[00:00:44 ] Alison: Kyle brings deep expertise in innovation and behavioural change, utilizing experimental psychology and behavioural economics to better understand the choices that people make. He's consulted with clients in government and Fortune 50 companies and also been a founder, advisor investor in a series of startups.

[00:01:02 ] Alison: In his new role as Dean, Kyle is focused on expanding the university's leadership and experiential learning, also in engaging alumni and enriching a culture of innovation that encourages risk-taking and challenges convention. With generative AI and other technological disruptions reshaping how we educate future marketers and the skills that they'll need to succeed, this culture is even more important than ever before.

[00:01:25 ] Alison: Kyle's recent transition from Alberta to Ontario has also given him some fresh insights into regional differences in our Canadian education system, as well as their impact on business talent development. And this is one of the many topics that we will discuss today. Kyle, I'm really looking forward to a great conversation, and it's an absolute pleasure to share the mic with you today on CMA Connect.

[00:01:46 ] Kyle: Thanks, Alison. I'm really excited to be here. I'm a big fan of CMA and my first time on the podcast, so yeah, I'm looking forward to it. 

[00:01:53 ] Alison: Kyle, I'd love to start by hearing your story. First, what drew you to higher education and teaching the marketing profession? 

[00:01:59 ] Kyle: Yeah, I think it's just, I love learning and I really enjoy the university environment. I'm a researcher at heart and I like the scientific method.

[00:02:08 ] Kyle: This time of year, especially, the university is just such an exciting and energizing place to be, so that's really what drew me into it. I actually started my career as an entrepreneur. I was involved in a few startups, and that sounds better than it is. What really happened was I graduated in the early 1990s with an undergraduate degree in psychology.

[00:02:28 ] Kyle: And I could not find a job, so I had to start my own, make my own job, start my own business. But that, that worked out well because after a few different endeavours, I was able to sell them and that allowed me to go back to get a PhD. So I suddenly found myself with some time and a little bit of money and flexibility, and so I went back to get a PhD.

[00:02:48 ] Kyle: I still wasn't entirely sure what I'd do. I knew I liked research. I didn't know how I'd like teaching in the university environment. I taught my first class. I fell in love with it. I got a great job offer here in Southern Ontario, actually at the Ivey School at Western Ontario, and that's where I started my career.

[00:03:04 ] Kyle: And I've been in academia ever since. Marketing in particular, I think I was drawn to just because I find people fascinating. My, my background was in psychology as well as marketing. So just consumers and consumer decision making, why they do what they do. I still find it fascinating and I'll probably never get tired of asking questions about that.

[00:03:25 ] Alison: I love that, in many ways, necessity is the mother of invention. You graduated in a challenging economy and created your own path, which is amazing. I also love that you've got that entrepreneurial and builder mentality and experience, and then came back to higher education, because I think having that real world experience is so powerful for educating the marketers of tomorrow as well.

[00:03:49 ] Kyle: I agree. I think it's a helpful mindset to have, but I have to say sometimes it's a mindset that bumps up against the bureaucracy that is a large university or even a mid-sized university. It can be challenging at times as you wanna move quickly, and one of the things I've really had to learn is patience.

[00:04:04 ] Kyle: Things don't move as fast in a big organization as they do when it's a small shop. And I think I've learned that over time to some extent. But it's still certainly a challenge. 

[00:04:13 ] Alison: Before joining the CMA I spent four years in the startup world. It really is about evolve or die. So I can absolutely relate to needing to relearn some patience when I came back to a bigger organization for sure.

[00:04:25 ] Alison: So I know you've worked in Ireland and Australia as well as Canada, so I'd love you to share any differences that you've seen and how marketing's taught internationally compared to how we teach it here. 

[00:04:35 ] Kyle: Yeah, good question. I was also in France for a little while, but I was at INSEAD, so it was an English program, which luckily for me 'cause

[00:04:42 ] Kyle: my French is terrible. So that was, I had enough trouble just getting groceries. I wouldn't want to teach in French, but there's small differences regionally for sure. Like I would say both Ireland and France, you get some of that European flavour. There's a different perspective on the world, certainly geopolitically, and Australia too, a little bit more of a Commonwealth and maybe Asian influences there.

[00:05:05 ] Kyle: But t the end of the day, whenever I taught marketing or taught people about marketing in any of these places, it just comes down to the same thing that we'd always talk about anywhere is, you need to understand your customer and then find some way to create some compelling value for them. And there's some, there's definitely some cultural pieces there that are different.

[00:05:23 ] Kyle: What might be compelling in Ireland is different than what's compelling in Canada some of the time. But at the core it's just trying to understand people. 

[00:05:30 ] Alison: That's a great reminder that as much as the world around us is different, as much as technology and other things are changing, how we market the basics are still mission critical.

[00:05:40 ] Kyle: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. And I think we get challenged sometimes with changes in the world, whether it's tariff policies or new technologies, and it is easy to get caught up in those things because they're so important and they're so immediately critical. But we're still very much people-driven.

[00:05:57 ] Kyle: Commerce is still people-driven, it's relationship-driven. It's that understanding people, understanding customers, understanding clients, why they buy what they're buying, what's gonna motivate them, that's really universal, at least in the western world. Might be a little bit different if you get into the Middle East or Asia.

[00:06:13 ] Kyle: But in the Western world it, it's pretty much the same.

[00:06:17 ] Alison: Now after a very successful decade teaching at the Alberta School of Business, what attracted you to make the move to Waterloo last year? 

[00:06:24 ] Kyle: This is gonna be a bit of a biased a response, but really I'd known about the Lazaridis School for a while, the Bachelor of Business Administration Program,

[00:06:32 ] Kyle: the BBA program in particular, is truly one of the best in the world. They're global leaders here in undergraduate education and especially experiential education, and I thought this was really important. My view was the future of education in business, and, but maybe in other fields too is experiential.

[00:06:50 ] Kyle: It's more and more learning by doing, so we can adapt quickly. We learn some of those people skills that we need in organizations. Lazaridis is very good at that. So it's a big part of what attracted me. I have to say that some of it is also just timing. Both my daughters were at an age where they could be independent and that freed my wife and I up to consider making a move.

[00:07:11 ] Kyle: I also, I always liked Ontario and I like Southern Ontario and I've enjoyed being, close to Toronto, but also having the tech community around here in Waterloo, there's just I think a lot of exciting things going on. And when it comes to the students themselves, we have really strong demand for this program, but we're also really good at placing students.

[00:07:31 ] Kyle: And so if you're a Dean, it's nice to come to a place where, we had 12,000 people apply for 1500 spots last year. And when they graduate, we place 97% of them. So that is a foundation. Really makes my job a lot easier. And so that was a big part of why I was drawn here. 

[00:07:50 ] Aliso