Len Coote

Len Coote holds the rank of Associate Professor in The University of Queensland Business School. His primary academic contribution is to the study of economic choices, which are ubiquitous in marketing (e.g., consider the decisions to install solar panels, purchase private health insurance, and use toll roads—to name just a few). Together with his academic collaborators, he developed a very general and flexible model for studying decision making and choice. The model integrates the mathematics of Daniel McFadden’s (UC Berkeley) conditional logistic regression and Karl Joreskog’s (Uppsala) linear structural relations models.

Len’s primary teaching interests are in quantitative marketing, which is a precursor to the new discipline of business analytics. In his opinion, today’s business school students need greater “data literacy” and business schools must place greater emphasis on equipping students to succeed in a world of artificial intelligence and big data. The methods of business analytics—data visualisation, machine learning, optimisation methods, predictive analytics, text mining, and web analytics—have much application to solving business and marketing problems. Len is passionate about bringing these methods to a new generation of business school students.

For the past 10 years, Len has performed several valued service roles at the University of Queensland. He served as Acting Dean of the UQ Business School for 1.5 years through to December, 2017. Before that he served as Deputy Dean of the Business School (1.5 years) and Head of the Marketing Discipline (7 years). As Acting Dean, Len was committed to understanding the needs of business and responding to those needs by introducing advanced and innovative programs. The introduction of the Bachelor of Advanced Business (Honours) program reflects this commitment.

Len is an active participant in community service roles. For example, he is the Vice-Chair of the Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research, Inc. ACSPRI is a non-profit consortium of Australian universities. Its mission is to improve the quality of research in the social and behavioural sciences and encourage Australian governments to take an evidence-based approach to policymaking. Before serving in the role of Vice-Chair, he was an instructor on ACSPRI’s summer and winter programs for circa 10 years (teaching courses on structural equations with latent variables).