Susan W. Sanderson
Associate Professor
sandes@rpi.edu
518-276-2933
Areas: Marketing and Innovation Management, Entrepreneurship, International Business
Areas of Instruction: Marketing, Innovation and Product Development
Dr. Sanderson has developed innovative multimedia material that is used in both campus and distance courses. She is the winner of the 1995 Boeing Outstanding Educator Award and the Hesburg Award Team (for Educational Innovation).
Education
- Ph.D. in Sociology and Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh
- M.A., University of Pittsburgh
- B.A., University of Pittsburgh
Research & Publications
Dr. Sanderson has written about many aspects of innovation and product development. She is author of several articles and two widely cited books, Managing Product Families (Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 1997) and Design Inspired Innovation (World Scientific Publishing, 2007). Her findings have helped shift attention from managing the design of single models to product families in order to better meet the needs of distinct markets, speed the product development process, and sustain competitive advantage in technology and design.
Her current work focuses on winning with “beacon products” and how outstanding product innovations can trigger market takeoff and effectively bridge the gap between early adopters and the mass market. (Products like Research in Motions’s BlackBerry, and Apple’s iPod and iPhone, have had major impacts on their firm’s success as well as their industries.)
In addition to her work on innovation and product development Dr Sanderson has completed studies for the Department of Labor and the Economic Policy Institute on economic development, the labor force and international trade. She is a member of the National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT); a Ph.D. program in engineering, science and entrepreneurship of fuel cells at Rensselaer (http://fuelcell-igert.rpi.edu/). Dr Sanderson is also working on the transition from traditional to solid state lighting.
View Prof. Sanderson's website for more details on her research.
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