When Matthew Waller joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas' unranked business school in 1994, there were 2,000 students.
"Today we have 6,000 students, and we are among the top 30 public business schools in the country," he said.
This progression has a great deal to do with Waller's own field of study -- retail logistics and supply chain management. After graduate school on the East Coast, Waller recognized that interesting things were happening in Northwest Arkansas and took a job here.
He became dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business in May, one of the first deans of a business school to come from his relatively young discipline.
Since his arrival, the field has exploded in the area, to the benefit of the Walton College.
Certain benefits are obvious, like the "Walton" in its title and other business school buildings named for J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. and Willard J. Walker, a former Wal-Mart executive. And Wal-Mart CEO and Walton College alumnus Doug McMillon and his wife recently donated funds for a retail innovation and technology lab on campus.
Beyond industry-related funding around campus, Waller believes the college's business students have an advantage from their location in a hotbed of supply chain innovation.
"Being in supply chain management here when I was, I was actually living through history being made, and I didn't know it," Waller said. "I was fascinated, but I didn't know how big of an impact it was going to be.
"History was being made and our students started benefiting from it. It propelled their careers and now we have alumni in senior positions at some of the biggest companies all over the world."
McMillon, and J.B. Hunt CEO John Roberts are two of many such alumni.
Beyond his years of research and teaching, since moving to Arkansas Waller has been the founding chairman of the Department of Supply Chain Management, co-founded a software company that worked to optimize retail shelf inventory and space, co-invented a related patent, served as co-editor of the Journal of Business Logistics and published a book about inventory management.
"I think Matt Waller is a superb choice for dean. I'm delighted that he was chosen," said Curt Bradbury, an Arkansas business school graduate and chief operating officer of Stephens Inc. "He's a very clear thinker."
Waller outlined several examples of innovative thinking in the region with industrywide outcomes that he says have set Northwest Arkansas companies apart.
To him, Lowell-based J.B. Hunt's foray into intermodal freight was groundbreaking.
"No one had really figured out how to take truckload transportation and move it to rail. J.B. Hunt figured it out," Waller said, attributing it to the company's entrepreneurial approach to completely redesign its business practices and invest in the overhead to do so.
Terrence Matthews, executive vice president and president of J.B. Hunt's intermodal division, agreed.
"Over time, we have learned much about the challenges our customers face in their supply chains and have developed a strong culture and belief in our intermodal solution," Matthews said.
"I've been around a lot of companies, and I still think J.B. Hunt has a culture of innovation. I think Northwest Arkansas has a culture of innovation, which is surprising to people not from here," Waller said.
He cited another example, this one out of Bentonville, when Sam Walton and his executives made a decision to continuously share point-of-sales data with all Wal-Mart suppliers.
"Today, this doesn't sound as innovative as it did back then, but it is huge," Waller said. "The fact that Wal-Mart took the leap of faith to trust their suppliers with this data was amazing."
Until then, most retailers were worried that suppliers would use that data to compete against them. Suppliers previously only received order forms, with no warning of changes. Wal-Mart and its suppliers since have cut costs all along the supply chain by constantly insuring inventory matched demand.
"One of the unintended consequences, in my opinion, is that once they became the only retailer to provide this data, suppliers saw an opportunity to learn and started sending their top analysts to Northwest Arkansas," Waller said.
Waller added that the change gave Wal-Mart a competitive advantage it still retains.
"Suppliers moving to Northwest Arkansas have helped provide great service to our customers and our business," Wal-Mart spokesman Scott Markley said.
From the face-to-face collaboration came some groundbreaking innovations such as Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR), said Waller.
"CPFR is a global business process now," he said. "It's everywhere."
CPFR means that instead of retailers and suppliers making their own predictions on sales, they would combine their data to produce a better forecast.
"It doesn't sound like a big deal, but in the past retailers would have their forecast and suppliers would have theirs and they didn't necessarily match up."
To Waller, Arkansas' Fortune 500 companies have set a tone.
"If you think about it, J.B. Hunt, Tyson and Wal-Mart are still relatively young and still entrepreneurial companies. I believe some of the people there still think like entrepreneurs."
"Northwest Arkansas now is starting to emphasize entrepreneurship and innovation," Waller added. "The business school is really trying to engage the business community and collaborate, because most job and wealth creation in the U.S. comes from startups and small businesses."
Innovation isn't limited to the Northwest, Waller said, pointing to Stephens Inc., a privately held company.
"When you're publicly held there's this desire to make your numbers each quarter," Waller said. "When you're privately held, you can be patient. [Stephens] wants their companies to succeed, and they're willing to wait. This has been a big advantage for Arkansas."
Stephens took both J.B. Hunt and Wal-Mart public.
"There's concern all over the business world about short-term decision making based on where markets work now and quarterly reports ... being independent of that sort of thing is always important," Bradbury said. "What that means is you can be patient."
More broadly, Waller noted the importance of other collaborations between industry expertise in Little Rock and the Northwest.
"This is critical to our state. In the Northwest we have some of the best consumer packaged goods knowledge in the world, and in Little Rock we have some of the best knowledge for health care and finance," he said.
Waller believes that while much has changed in Northwest Arkansas since he arrived, the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation has and should continue to remain.
To reinforce his belief, he ends each email with a quote from Stephens CEO Warren Stephens: "Success in the 21st century economy requires more than financial capital. It demands thought capital: breakthrough ideas that drive innovation and create value."
SundayMonday Business on 08/07/2016