By Kameron Brooke | Reporter
C.J. Jackson, assistant dean for communications and marketing, hosts a podcast called the Business Review in which she discusses trends in business and research from across the world. It has won the Communicator Award every year since 2012, setting the stage for new ventures.
The Innovative Business podcast, hosted by marketing specialist Bo Mello and publication manager Justin Walker, will explore studies done by professors in the Hankamer School of Business and will debut in January 2023.
The faculty of the Hankamer School of Business conduct research that strives to improve lives in the community and educate people on entrepreneurship, consumerism and discrimination in the field. Jackson said she realized how much research takes place in the school and decided that needed to be shared in the form of a podcast.
Jackson has been a radio host for the Business Review since it launched in 2005 at KWBU, Waco’s NPR affiliate. The program typically puts out an episode once a week.
“We ended up hiring producers because it just became too much work,” Jackson said. “But it’s a nice, crisp two-minute show that’s once a week and now distributed to 200 other public radio stations.”
Prior to hiring producers, Jackson would conduct interviews and KWBU employees would edit.
“I called it ‘the little station that could,’” Jackson said.
Jackson said having producers allows the station to produce more episodes and reach more radio stations. The podcast does not solely focus on Baylor professors, since it goes out to multiple stations outside of Waco.
“I speak to CEOs of companies, famous chefs who own restaurants, and I try to get the flavor of a lot of different things,” Jackson said.
Jackson said the episodes are practical, as they focus on the academic aspect of the research so that listeners have the opportunity to learn.
While the podcast is aimed at people in the business world, Jackson said a younger demographic has been listening as well, which has brought the number of listeners of the podcast up.
“Even though it’s distributed, the stations we send it to get to decide whether they want to run it or not, and I would love to see the podcast in more markets,” Jackson said.
The Innovative Business podcast cohosted by Mello and Walker will solely focus on the Hankamer Business School and the research conducted within it.
This podcast has a few differences from the Business Review. It will produce 10 episodes a year and take December and July off. Eight of the 10 episodes will be focused on research; however, it is similar in that it will highlight research that is being done within the Hankamer School of Business.
The episodes run a bit differently as well. In each episode, an abstract business scenario is created, which frames the episode.
“We introduce the professors, what research they’ve been doing and why,” Mello said. “We ask them to explain why they decided to do their specific project and what real-life implications it has based on the scenario we presented at the beginning.”
The podcast strives to show students what professors are doing outside of teaching and to highlight the discoveries they are making in their research.
“We want students to know what it really means to do business research,” Mello said. “This podcast is a space for professors to speak about why they came up with their ideas, how and what they’re doing.”
The research that is discussed is a combination of hard science and soft science.
“Finance and economics are more of the hard science, but most of the research is softer science such as human behavior, anecdotal evidence and focus groups,” Mello said.
The podcast will debut in January 2023 in order to give Mello and Jackson enough time to consistently produce episodes and coordinate episodes with the Baylor Business Review magazine.
“All episodes are turned into articles for the Baylor Business Review, and we don’t want the podcast to come out too far away from the magazine,” Walker said. “The podcasts are not restricted to practitioners or business students. Business is something people interact with every day, so all people can pull the potentially useful information from the podcasts.”
Walker said the research done in the Hankamer School of Business deserves more recognition.
“There is incredible work that researchers are doing, and it needs to be heard by more people,” Walker said. “The excitement in their voice really changes the way you interact with their work, and I love the way the podcast is able to pull that out.”
