Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Martin V. Marshall Dies at 86

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Obituary

Issue date: 3/2/09 Section: News

Marketing expert was key figure in the School's entrepreneurship efforts

BOSTON, Feb. 20, 2009 -Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Martin V. Marshall, a driving force in the development of the School's Owner/President Management Program (OPM) for entrepreneurs and a marketing and advertising expert whose practice-oriented approach to teaching and course development left a lasting impact on countless Harvard MBA students and business leaders, died on Feb. 16 in Napa, California. He was 86 years old.

"Marty Marshall was a terrific teacher," said Stephen A. Greyser, the School's Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration Emeritus, who was an MBA student of Marshall's and then became a longtime friend and colleague. "Marty would home in on the topic at hand and not let students wiggle or wriggle off their previous statements," Greyser remembered. "He pursued the point by pressing the students, but without being mean spirited."

Marshall joined the HBS faculty in 1949 and was later named the first Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration. He retired from the active faculty in 1993.

He produced some 200 cases and teaching notes as well as several books, including Automatic Merchandising and Cases in Advertising Management. Despite his numerous achievements in the Harvard MBA program, he was best known for his work with the Owner/President Management Program, where he had a loyal and close following among generations of entrepreneurs and helped adapt the curriculum to meet changing participant needs and interests. Many OPM participants kept in touch with him long after they had graduated, often seeking his advice on difficult business decisions.

Marshall began teaching in OPM in the late 1970s, when it was known as the Smaller Company Management Program (SCMP). As program head, he changed the curriculum after noticing that participants no longer represented just small companies, but firms that might be multi-million-dollar enterprises. He also helped devise a unique schedule spread over three years and changed the name of the program to reflect the common thread among participants--their role as both owners and managers.

In succeeding years, Marshall continued to tailor OPM to its constituents, including his tradition of providing them with "marketing yellow sheets"-valued summaries he wrote after each class that contained observations not only on the subjects he taught but salient management topics in general. He also helped establish biannual, participant-organized OPM reunions, events that he often attended both on the HBS campus and at other locations around the world.

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