Urban is a leading educator, prize-winning researcher specializing in marketing and new product development, entrepreneur, and author.
: A Blueprint for Profit in the Era of Customer Power (2004), which launched the field of trust-based marketing.
Urban founded Experion Systems in 1999 and its PlanPrescriber.com comparison tool, as for-profit business applications based on the principle of Trust-based marketing.
In 1999 he was winner of the American Marketing Association and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Charles Coolidge Parlin Award for recognition of a body of work in marketing research.
He was elected to the 2010 class of Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.