The Intent vs. Impact Gap

Professors care about the relevance of their work. Executives don’t see it.

A recent survey found that more than 80% of business school professors say their research should have value beyond academia.

It’s a striking number, not just because of its size, but because of what it suggests about intention. Most faculty in management education believe their ideas should matter to the world outside the ivory tower. They want their insights to shape how companies operate, how decisions are made, how leaders lead.

And that makes sense. Business schools are, after all, professional schools. They exist to serve the profession of management. Like medical schools or law schools, they train practitioners. They exist not only to think, but to inform practice.

The intent is there, but when you ask the practitioners professors hope to reach whether the research has an impact on what they do, the answer is almost always the same: not really. Managers don’t look to academia for insight. They don’t read the management journals, and, in most cases, they don’t even know the research exists.

And, sadly, they don’t particularly miss it. Executives turn instead to consultants, TED speakers, bestselling authors, and each other. There is huge market for management knowledge, but academia isn’t there.

This is the paradox. Professors believe their work should matter. The profession they aim to serve could benefit from it. And yet, most of what is published in management research never reaches a manager at all.

Professional Schools Without Professional Development

When I speak with professors, one of the most common questions I get is how got published in places like Harvard Business Review or MIT Sloan Management Review. There’s a genuine curiosity, mostly because these outlets actually reach the people we claim to serve.

The subtext is always the same: How did you figure that out?

What’s surprising isn’t the question. It’s the fact that so few professors have ever been taught to even ask it. In most doctoral programs, there’s no seminar on writing for practice. No guidance on how to frame ideas for executives. No training on how to identify problems that actually matter to decision-makers. Certainly no roadmap for translating academic insight into practitioner formats like articles, talks, or workshops.

And yet, we teach in professional schools.

You would think that learning how to engage the profession would be a core part of the job. But it’s not. In fact, in many academic circles, trying to do so can be met with suspicion. Writing for Harvard Business Review might get quite respect, but it won’t count toward tenure.

The result is a strange sort of cognitive dissonance. Professors believe their work should shape practice. They admire the few who’ve figured out how to do it. But they rarely see it as a skill to be learned, or as a professional responsibility to be developed. And somewhere along the way, the hope of reaching real-world decision-makers becomes more aspiration than expectation. A bonus if it happens. But certainly not the goal.

Developing the Skills of Impact

We live in a remarkable moment for professors who want their work to matter. The old barriers have fallen. Gatekeepers no longer hold the keys. You don’t need a book deal, a speaking agent, or an op-ed editor’s blessing to publish your ideas. You can reach your audience directly and you can do it now.

Through newsletters, LinkedIn essays, podcasts, practitioner journals, and digital courses, the tools of impact are more accessible than ever. The path is open. But to walk it, you need a new mindset.

Academic training teaches you to be rigorous. It doesn’t teach you to be clear. It rewards you for theoretical contribution, not practical relevance. It prepares you to write for reviewers, not for readers. Developing the skills of impact means learning a parallel craft.

And you don’t have to look far to find professors who have figured it out.

Scott Galloway at NYU doesn’t wait for academic journals to validate his voice. He publishes a weekly newsletter read by hundreds of thousands, hosts multiple podcasts, and produces video explainers that reach more managers than most journals combined.

Amy Edmondson at Harvard didn’t just write about psychological safety, she gave it a name, a frame, and a relevance that made it a topic in boardrooms around the world.

Tsedal Neeley took decades of rigorous research on global collaboration and turned it into books, keynote talks, and executive education programs that equip managers for the realities of hybrid and cross-cultural teams.

These professors didn’t abandon scholarship. They learned to share it with audiences beyond the academy, and they earned authority by serving those audiences well.

Bridging the Gap

Academic ideas can shape how managers think, how organizations operate, how problems get solved. But only if those ideas reach the people who need them. Intent is good, but it is not enough. What the 80% of professors wanting to their work to be relevant need is some new skills.

The desired for impact should not be treated as a “side hustle” but a central part of what it means to work in a professional school. That means training scholars to engage, not just critique and to write with force, clarity, and relevance. The good news is, it’s a learnable craft. One conversation, one article, one post at a time.

If you’re a professor who wants your work to matter, know this: the tools are within reach, the audience is listening, and the path is already being walked.

You don’t have to wait for permission.
You just have to begin.

More professors are stepping into this space through podcasting, self-publishing, speaking, consulting, and teaching beyond the classroom. They are reclaiming relevance not by dumbing down their work, but by making it resonate.

This is the work of academic authority. It doesn’t reject rigor. It amplifies it.

Done right, relevance isn’t a detour from scholarship. It’s the destination.