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Behram J. Hansotia is Co-founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of InfoWorks. His expertise lies in designing information-intensive marketing processes for customer acquisition, development and win-back. The approach is embodied in InfoWorks’ Customer Value EnhancementTM process. Behram’s post-doctoral experience spans academia, industry and management consulting, with the past several years devoted exclusively to strategic database marketing. Behram is an adjunct professor in the graduate Integrated Marketing Communications programme at Northwestern University, has been a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Interactive Marketing and currently serves on the International Editorial Board of this journal.

Abstract This paper argues that the most useful academic research does not get used by practitioners until many years later. Like any innovation, there is a diffusion process before a method proposed by academics becomes mainstream or at least widely accepted by leading practitioners. Key barriers to faster adoption are identified and some solutions suggested. Rapid knowledge diffusion is important to marketing, since it still lags behind many business functions in rapid productivity enhancements. Academics, practitioners, universities, business and government all have a role in creating faster knowledge diffusion. Academics need to make their work more accessible and easy to use. Universities need to recognise their faculty members’ contributions, when their work changes accepted practice. Business organisations create the environment and the culture for practitioners, and if the culture fosters risk taking, encourages learning and aligns reward systems for pioneering activities, faster adoption can occur. Finally, government can help facilitate the knowledge transfer process by funding university-based institutes, with the specific charter of creating faster knowledge dissemination.

Behram Hansotia InfoWorks, 10 South Riverside Plaza, Suite 1920, Chicago Illinois 60606, USA. Tel: ⫹1 312 589 0261; Fax: ⫹1 312 559 1061; e-mail: bhansotia@ infoworks-chicago.com

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INTRODUCTION Many academics are prolific writers and regularly publish several articles each year. Since there is an enormous variance in their interests and backgrounds as well as the motivation for their writing, there is also an enormous variance in what is written, how it is written and the ultimate audience for whom it is written. At the same time, marketing practitioners, who ostensibly are also a key audience for some of this writing, come from a wide variety of backgrounds, have different interests and

Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management

typically have little patience with things they have difficulty understanding, or feel is of little relevance to them. Much of the writing in the top tier, refereed marketing journals (for example, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Consumer Research) is consumed almost exclusively by academics in major research universities. These journals exist