Students

Doctoral journey: A lean startup

Raghu Santanam is known internationally for his research, particularly in the area of health care information and delivery systems. This spring he was named the Outstanding Doctoral Professor for his work teaching, mentoring and collaborating with information systems Ph.D. students. In this role he shares what he has learned as an academic researcher, helping young scholars learn how to identify and pursue promising topics.

2014-06-16

Raghu Santanam is known internationally for his research, particularly in the area of health care information and delivery systems. This spring he was named the Outstanding Doctoral Professor for his work teaching, mentoring and collaborating with information systems Ph.D. students. In this role he shares what he has learned as an academic researcher, helping young scholars learn how to identify and pursue promising topics.

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KnowWPCarey: Raghu Santanam is known internationally for his research, particularly in the area of health care information and delivery systems. This spring he was named the Outstanding Doctoral Professor for his work teaching, mentoring and collaborating with information systems Ph.D. students. In the last ten years, he has chaired or co-chaired eight doctoral student dissertations and has served on the committee for seven more. In this role he shares what he has learned as an academic researcher, helping young scholars learn how to identify and pursue promising topics.

Further, he introduces his students to his network of fellow investigators — helping them to form a foundation for a productive and satisfying career. We recently talked to Santanam about what has changed and what has not changed in the world of research. One thing that has not changed, Santanam says, is the nature of the student-professor relationship. Mentoring begins as soon as the student arrives in the doctoral program and continues throughout the student’s career.

Raghu Santanam: It’s something that doesn’t just span their duration in the program — it’s for life. It’s always been my philosophy so that hasn’t changed a lot. We do meet in person, there’s a lot more email interactions and all of those continue to go on. So, those things remain the same or maybe even more intensive than it was before.

KnowWPCarey: Technology, which has transformed almost every aspect of life, has also impacted research. Beginning with the very first stage of a project when researchers survey what’s already been done. This task takes them deep into the literature. Thinking back to his days as a Ph.D. student 20 years ago, Santanam said the materials he needed for his research were in the library.

It cost money to make copies, he said, so students were careful about the materials they collected. Today all of that work is online and not just articles that have been published — work in progress and under review is available too. This poses a whole different set of challenges to a student working on his first project.

Santanam: It of course creates efficiencies for us because it’s much easier for us to do the steps in the research. But it also poses a challenge in that there is an information overload and your students are now looking at a lot more things. And I’ve noticed that they sometimes seem overwhelmed.

KnowWPCarey: Santanam says that as a mentor he must help his doctoral students learn how to identify the materials they need from the great volume of materials they find.

Santanam: You need to have better filters and that’s something that you can only learn from experience, but as a mentor you keep emphasizing that every time you meet. You need to talk about those articles that they bring and try to get them to use those filters right.

KnowWPCarey: Students come into the program these days with a lot of information already at hand, and many have already identified the area they’re interested in pursuing in their research.

Santanam: If the student has come with something that’s very significant, his job is easy because now you know which direction the student is taking and you’re able to guide the student.

KnowWPCarey: Narrowing down a research agenda is not always a clear path however, and the job of the mentor is to encourage the student to explore — and at the right point to nudge him a different way.

Santanam: You have to be careful in how you get the student to turn around. Anything that you work with a student, first of all the student has to be excited about it. In fact, that is the first conversation that I have with a student and to ask what they’re excited about and why? Now, if it so happens that the area that they’re excited about may not be a suitable one for a variety of reasons, you have to delicately sort of move them from one area to another and still retain their motivation.

KnowWPCarey: One student said that Santanam is at the same time his biggest supporter and biggest critic of his work. The student said that Santanam insists that he push himself harder than he thought possible while continuing to retain his passion for the topic. As a result, the student said, the quality of his work and his chances for success have risen.

Santanam: There is this new book called “The Lean Startup,” that talks about how startups really are testing a series of hypotheses. If they don’t have good measurements and if they don’t have good pivot points where they switch from one direction to another based on the market’s reaction — they’re bound to fail.

So the more successful startups are the ones that have been flexible in their plan. And that flexibility is what helps them in fact move from one product concept or service concept to another very quickly and explore the search space. In a lot of ways, I think the Ph.D.’s should think the same way, that they have certain research questions and they need to know those pivot points quickly. And test those pivot points and make sure that they’re moving towards their goal and again, that’s how mentors can help them.

KnowWPCarey: Areas of research interest expand, Santanam said, not only in terms of the ideas but also the people pursuing them. And so, an academic just getting started needs to find a topic that is the beginning of a trail that will stretch 6 to 8 years into the future. Not only for the wealth of knowledge to be uncovered but also to ensure career success in a university. Every student is different, he says, and what he learns from guiding each one benefits the next student he mentors.

Santanam: That’s one of things that’s unique about the Ph.D. program. Because of that rich interaction, you have a lot more of the personal experiences that suddenly changes your interactions with the student. But at the same time, it also helps another student to get a jump-start based on some practices that their previous students have done.

KnowWPCarey: In the information systems program, students are being encouraged to widen their network at W. P. Carey.

Santanam: Now, one of the things that we’re stressing in our unit is to say that they need to interact more with students from marketing, Ph.D. students from finance or management, so that they have a broader outlook to research in business and then adjust their disciplinary focus. So that is something we’re trying to institute more and more.

KnowWPCarey: For more information about the doctoral program and information systems see: wpcarey.asu.edu/information-systems-degrees

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