Biography

Vincent Barabba was born in Chicago, Ill on September 6, 1934. He was awarded a bachelor's degree in marketing from California State University at Northridge, CA and, in 1964, an M.B.A. in marketing from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Work

Vincent Barabba is a noted figure in the field of industrial/commercial market research and political opinion research.
Beginning as political campaign survey researcher in the 1964 California Republican primary between Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...

 and Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater

Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...

, he moved on to become a business market researcher (eventually Director of Market Intelligence) for Xerox

Xerox

Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...

 Corp. and Eastman Kodak

Eastman Kodak

Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....

.
Co-founder and chairman of Market Insight Corporation, Vince Barabba was, until 2003, General Manager of Corporate Strategy and Knowledge Development at General Motors

General Motors

General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

, where he conceived and devised OnStar and MyProductAdvisor.

He twice served as head of the US Census Bureau and currently serves as a Commissioner of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission

Citizens Redistricting Commission

The Citizens Redistricting Commission is the redistricting organization for the state of California. It is responsible for determining the boundaries for the Senate, Assembly, and Board of Equalization districts in the state. The 14-member commission consists of five Democrats, five Republicans,...

. He is chairman of The State of the USA, a nonprofit corporation providing quality information to the American public on key changing societal, economic, and environmental conditions.
He is a Past President of the American Statistical Association

American Statistical Association

The American Statistical Association , is the main professional US organization for statisticians and related professions. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest, continuously operating professional society in the United States...

.
Awards:
In recognition of his private and public sector performance, Vince Barabba was awarded:

• Induction into the Market Research Council's Hall of Fame
• The American Marketing Association
  American Marketing Association
  The American Marketing Association is a professional association for marketers. As of 2008 it had approximately 40,000 members. There are 76 professional chapters and 250 collegiate chapters across the United States....
  
  ’s Parlin Award for leadership (1996) in the application of science to marketing research
• The MIT/General Motors Buck Weaver Award for individuals who have contributed significantly to the advancement of theory and practice in marketing science
• The System Dynamics Society
  System Dynamics Society
  The System Dynamics Society is a not-for-profit organization based in Albany, New York, USA, whose mission is to further research into system dynamics and systems thinking.- Economics Chapter :...
  
  ’s Applications Award for the best “real world” application of system dynamics
• The American Marketing Association’s Explor Award granted to organizations that have demonstrated the most innovative uses of technology in applications that advance research
• The Certificate of Distinguished Service for Contribution to the Federal Statistical System from the US Office of Management and Budget

Publications

Barabba has authored or co-authored numerous books and articles, including:

• 1968 “Political Campaign Management: Myth and Reality” The Ethics of Controversy: Politics and Protest. Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium on Issues in Public Communication, held at the University of Kansas June 27-28
• 1983 (With Mason, R.O. and Mitroff, I.I.) “Federal Statistics in a Complex Environment: The Case of the 1980 Federal Census,” The American Statistician, Volume 37, No. 3, Washington, DC: The American Statistical Association
• 1985 “Steel Axes for Stone Age Men” in: Buzzell, R., Marketing in an Electronic Age, 75th Anniversary Harvard Business School Research Colloquium, Boston: Harvard Business School Press
• 1991 (With Zaltman, G.) Hearing the Voice of the Market: Competitive Advantage through Creative Use of Market Information, Boston: Harvard Business School Press
• 1994 “Never Say the Model Says. The Role of Models in Managerial Decision Making” in Wallace, W. Ethics in Modeling, New York: Pergamon Press
• 1998 “Revisiting Plato’s Cave: Business Design in an Age of Uncertainty,” in Tapscott, D. et al., eds., Blue Print for the Digital Economy, New York: McGraw-Hill
• 2002 (With Huber, C., Cooke, F., Pudar, N., Smith, J., and Paich, M.) “A Multi-Method Approach for Creating New Business Models: The General Motors OnStar Project”, Interfaces, 32 (1), pp. 20-34
• 2002 (With Pourdehnad J.
  John Pourdehnad
  John Pourdehnad is an American organizational theorist, consultant, and associate director of the Ackoff Center for Advancement of Systems Approaches at the University of Pennsylvania.- Biography :...
  
   and Ackoff, R.) “Above and Beyond Knowledge Management” in Chun, W. C. and Bontis, N. (eds) The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital and Organization Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 359-369
• 2004, Surviving Transformation, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 170-171
• 2011, The Decision Loom: a design for interactive decision-making in organizations