Volume 3, Issue 2 2009

• 01 In focus
  Read more (PDF)

• 04 Talking Shop
  2009 International Deans Programme (IDP)
  1st Global Peter F Drucker Forum
  EFMD-EURAM launch joint programme on research leadership in Europe
  Quality Services to hold first accreditation seminar in Latin America. Read more (PDF)

• 08 Separating the wheat from the chaff
  Should business research have its social implications made explicit? Scholarly journal publishers John Peters and Rebecca Marsh think so. Read more (PDF)

• 12 A question of priorities
  The global economic crisis has raised many questions about the current state of management education. Sandra Waddock has some suggestions for how it should respond. Read more (PDF)
• ...

The priceless rollout continues: Google Books

www.welchway.com

"A Lesson in Virtuous Values for Business School" for BizDeansTalk

Linda A. Livingstone, Ph.D., Dean and Professor of Management
Graziadio School of Business and Management www.bschool.pepperdine.edu
Pepperdine University www.pepperdine.edu
Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International Board of Directors

In recent months, MBA programs and a few of their less-than-savory products – John Thain, Richard Fuld, Stanley O’Neal, Vikram Pandit and John Paulson to name a few – have been paired together like a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.      

That some senior-level business executives were able to create and carry out elaborate Ponzi schemes for decades is beyond comprehension.  That large bonuses were doled to senior level executives who brought their companies to the verge of bankruptcy is equally reprehensible.  That graduate business school was a common thread is disturbing.    

The current tenuous business climate coupled with unprecedented changes in the American economy furthers the case that executives must employ a more ethical decision-making framework.  I believe business school has an important role.  

It has become clear that generating revenue, maximizing profit and increasing shareholder value cannot take precedent over reasonable, ethical decision making – in business and business school.  Certainly, employing sound business skills such as marketing, accounting and finance will remain at the core of business school.  However, through activities such as thought leadership and accreditation, business school leaders need to lead the way to advance quality global management education that includes greater ethical consciousness.  

Even though they may have received an MBA, many senior level executives aren’t prepared for the weight or consequences of the decisions they make. 

For years there has been too little accountability or too few repercussions.  There is no system of values.  There are no well-defined roles or written standards. When faced with a decision about right or wrong, some high-level executives see no alternative but the latter.  More often than not, the greater challenge is that there is no clear right or wrong answer. There is no foundation upon which to draw for guidance in such grey areas. Executives are left to react to ethical challenges on a personalized and untested basis. This inevitability leads to haste, inconsistency, mistakes and failure on matters of ethics.  

At the center of the debate is a question of character and values.  Ask a group of executives to name virtuous values and they are likely to use such expressions as self-esteem, assuredness, independence and decisiveness.  This is the legacy of focusing on developing “hard” quantitative skills and “soft” managerial skills.  It also demonstrates the absence of skills based on virtuous values.  True virtuous values are those that deny self and put others first (stewardship), offer help without expecting an immediate return (generosity) and pursue truth (moral excellence).  Those who regularly and consistently employ virtuous values are said to have character.  Historically, people go into the military, the seminary, and medical school to develop character – not business school.      

Business school leaders should be communicating and encouraging leadership qualities that harness virtuous values to improve self, organization and community.  Business schools should be evaluated on such measures.  Most importantly, those earning their MBA should be learning how to employ those qualities.

Increasingly, MBA candidates are now being exposed to exercises that explore virtuous values and encourage civic leadership.  (At the same time they are delivered doses of humility and keep outsized egos in check). For example, some MBA programs encourage executives to coach homeless people to prepare for and find suitable employment.  Others work with at risk young adults to build self-empowerment, personal confidence and competence through interviewing and resume preparation. Executives are also working with those with special needs to build awareness of personal space and respect for others; at the same time, executives strengthen their own listening, questioning and coaching skills and establish meaningful relationships.   

There also are ways to prepare executives to understand and weigh the consequences of their decisions.  Harvard Business School professor Joseph Badaracco has made famous his approach of using characters from literature to teach lessons on self-discovery. He has challenged students to explore enduring hardship by examining Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” take responsibility by looking at the central characters in Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” and, perhaps most relevant, carefully evaluate high-pressure and hasty decisions by examining the disastrous actions of Antigone in Sophocles classic work by the same name.    

At Pepperdine, our course “Virtue and Commerce” is built on the premise that acting well is a matter of finding stories illustrating good character.  Stories that are strong on heroism and good behavior that provoke the imagination, renew curiosity, and corroborate the benefits of reason and good behavior.  Using “shared inquiry” and readings from literature, business, philosophy, contemporary business cases and media clips students grapple with the complexity of moral reasoning. Other schools are introducing similar programs in which students examine their behavior against popular film, television and modern day literary characters. Progress is being made!   

Addressing the issue head on, the Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education is encouraging innovative curriculum for developing the skills, knowledge and commitment required to implement values-based leadership.  The program called “Giving Voice to Values” focuses on ethical implementation and asks the question: What would I say and do if I were going to act on my values?  The program trains business school students how to raise value-based issues in an effective manner, presents examples of when people have spoken up, provides scripting and practice responses in specific situations and is accompanied by peer feedback and coaching.   

The fact is the majority of executives choose to behave ethically.  Most executives understand the rules of serving more than self and shareholders.  However, too many who rise to the executive suite fail to employ virtuous values and demonstrate character.  In that way, business school is failing business.   

There is a silver lining to the financial and economic crisis we are experiencing: business culture will change.  Business schools can be at the heart of this change.   To get there, business schools have to broaden the scope of ethics training to exploring values and character.  The goal of earning an MBA should be to generate interest in ideas like vocation

www.endeavor.org   ("boards & team" shows it's globality)

Mission statement: Endeavor transforms the economies of emerging markets by identifying and supporting high-impact entrepreneurs.

One of FastCompany´s 2008 45 Social Entrepreneurs who are changing the world.

Fast Company in 2008 on Endeavor:

Goal

To date, Endeavor has supported over 320 entrepreneurs from over 190 companies. Endeavor Entrepreneurs have created more than 80,000 new jobs, paying on average ten times the national minimum wage, and generated approximately $2 billion in new revenue. Today, 95% of Endeavor Entrepreneurs' companies are still operating in countries where entrepreneurial ventures typically close within 42 months. Just as importantly, Endeavor Entrepreneurs have become role models, inspiring others in their communities to start businesses. This is Endeavor’s "multiplier effect," which spurs economic and cultural transformation.

educationtoday
 
Bookmark this page:  www.oecd.org/edu/lighthouse 

We welcome you to register to join this collaborative space and help chart the way for the education sector to navigate through the current crisis and shape the post-crisis economy and society.

OECD’s education lighthouse offers you:

• Up-to-the-minute information, evidence and analysis on the impact of the crisis on education, with concrete examples of how governments and institutions in different countries are coping with the crisis.
• Information on high priority issues such as education budgets, education in stimulus packages, how unemployment affects motivation and learning attitudes … and much more.
• An opportunity for you to contribute to this information sharing platform with other members of the fast-growing OECD social network.
  

Register now by following these instructions

If you do not already have a MyOECD account

1.   Go to MyOECD

2....

06-07-2009
The World Conference on Higher Education, gathering close to 1,000 participants from 148 countries, opened on 5 July at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris with a call for higher education to address global development challenges.

“Higher education institutions play a strategic role in finding solutions to today’s leading challenges in the fields of health, science, education, renewable energies, water management, food security and the environment,” said UNESCO’s Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura. 

Speakers at the opening ceremony highlighted the importance of education as a response to the global economic crisis and stressed equity, quality and international cooperation as critical challenges for all governments.

“President Obama sees higher education as critical to the administration’s plans to revitalize the American economy and he has moved quickly to support students and their families,” said Jill Biden, wife of US Vice-President Joe Biden and a community college teacher...

05-07-2009
World Conference on Higher Education webcast links More

Calling all entrepreneurs – introducing PitchTV, March 31st, 2009. 

As part of it’s 25th Anniversary celebrations, Virgin Atlantic is launching a new show, PitchTV, which will air onboard and will also be available online here.

We’re now inviting entrepreneurs in search of investment and exposure for their business ideas to upload short video pitches.

The community here will vote for their favourite video pitches and each month, the winning videos will feature as part of Virgin Atlantic’s PitchTV show which will air on their inflight entertainment system – gaining exposure to the hundreds of business professionals who regularly fly Virgin Atlantic. Anyone interested in hearing more about the most popular entrepreneurs’ business ideas will then be able to get in contact and maybe help take their ideas further.

When I was starting out, I wish I could have had the chance to pitch my business ideas directly to people who could help make my ambitions a reality. We can now make that happen for you.

If you’re a budding entrepreneur, we’re giving you the unique opportunity of getting your ideas by top business professionals from around the world on board Virgin Atlantic planes as well online here.

Who knows – among the viewers might be someone with the power to bring your idea to life.

All you have to do is film yourself delivering the very best pitch possible, but make sure it’s no longer than 2 minutes. Then simply upload your video pitch here.

Each year, I will also personally select my favourite pitch, and the winner will receive a very special prize which I’ll reveal more details about later on…

In the meantime, get your 2 minute pitches together, film them, upload them and may the best pitches get the exposure they deserve!

Good luck!

Wikipedia: Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference

->Sun Valley Buzz: Tough Times and Twitter

Download the poster (PDF 535 KB)

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

Click here for the article of the Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2009.

The five most common flaws—and how to fix them.

An economic downturn is a great time to start a business.

It sounds paradoxical, but think about it. Costs are lower, and more talent is available, thanks to layoffs. Prospective clients are more likely to try a new supplier who can help them cut costs or increase their competitiveness. Established players, too, are focused on cutting costs instead of increasing market share...

Program

Post of Techcrunch, June 27, 2009.

So which venture investors have the best networks? Here are the top 10:

1. Draper Fisher Jurvetson
2. Sequoia Capital
3. Accel Partners
4. Intel Capital
5. First Round Capital
6. Dag Ventures
7. New Enterprise Associates
8. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
9. Benchmark Capital
10. Ron Conway

Vijay Dondeti, a graduate student in bioinformatics, applied the analysis in the Hochberg paper to about 2,700 investors in CrunchBase who participated in over 3,300 startup funding rounds between 2006 and 2008. He scored each investor based on how well connected they are to other investors as well as how well-connected their co-investors are to other investors. “In summary,” says Dondeti, “to get a high score, you need to co-invest often with others that also co-invest often.”

Whom You Know Matters: Venture Capital Networks and Investment Performance -

"Start-Up: What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley"

Post from www.startup-book.com March 12th, 2009

A new report has been published about the Entrepreneurial Impact of MIT

It is full of data and even if obviously self-serving, it remains very interesting. Let me just quote what I noticed:

- Growth: the number of “first-time” firms has increased from about 2′000 in the 70s to 6′000 in the 80s and 10′000 in the 90s.

- Origin: Non-US founders had slight visibility in the 40s, grow to 12% in the 90s and 17% in the 00s. 30% of MIT foreign students founded a company at some point.

- Age: Before and during the 70s, 24% of first-time entrepreneurs were under 30, growing to 31% in the 80s and 36% in the 90s. There is no real difference between industry segments.

- Serial entrepreneurs: I have a small disagreement on that point as I am not sure serial

matters, but… about 40% are serial entrepreneurs so 60% are not…

- Engineering vs. business degrees: EE/CS degrees is 22%, management is 16% for the 90s. Clearly science and technology matter.

- Location: in the 50s and 60s, majority of companies were in Massachusetts, but thereafter Silicon Valley has become a critical locus. In the 00s, 26% are in MA and 22% in CA.

Then the report talks about the culture and the ecosystem. It is also very interesting. We should always remember that:

- Tons of money went to research from the militaries and space agencies.

- MIT had more of a tacit and hands-off role, but much encouraging.

- Role models: “entrepreneurs could name about ten other new companies before they started their own”. Authors compare to another study where “Few of the Swedish entrepreneurs could name even one or two others like them”. They quote Schumpeter: “The greater the number of people who have already successfully founded new businesses, the less difficult it becomes to act as an entrepreneur. It is a matter of experience that successes in this sphere, as in all others, draw an ever-increasing number of people in their wake”

- Feedback loop: there is a positive impact of such examples and this may be the main reason of the creation to tech. clusters.

- Culture: the best is a quote by Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet inventor, founder of 3Com and now a partner at Polaris Ventures: “It’s not just that MIT’s entrepreneurial environment flourishes under its institutional commitment to technology transfer,” he said. “It’s also that MIT includes both ‘nerds’ and ‘suits.’ Divergent life forms, yes, but necessary to and working together at MIT on entrepreneurial innovation. And what keeps MIT’s entrepreneurial ecosystem accelerating is that nobody is in charge. There are at least twenty groups at MIT competing to be the group on entrepreneurship. All of them are winning.”

… Nobody is in charge…

- Tech. transfer: the majority of the exclusive licenses go to startup companies. The TLO’s strategic dependence on startup companies has been the reluctance of large companies to invest in “university-stage” technologies, because the risk and cost of development is high and the time to market is long.

- License deals: For startups, instead of cash up front and in lieu of some of the royalties, the TLO usually takes a small equity ownership that is less than 5 percent of the new firm.

And some conclusions:

- Universities that are strong in research and technology are at the forefront of knowledge creation and potential application. When the university is able to couple this capability with the inclination and resources needed to connect ideas and markets, impressive possibilities exist for generating entrepreneurship-based economic impact at the local, as well as national and global levels.

- Numerous changes are needed in most universities over an extended period of time in rules, regulations and, more important, attitudes and institutional culture.

- Until quite recently, MIT had followed a “hands-off” approach toward entrepreneurial engagement, in contrast with many other universities in the United States and abroad. MIT has neither created an internal incubator for ventures nor a venture capital fund to make life easier for prospective startups.

- Instead, MIT has relied internally on growing faculty, student, and alumni initiatives, especially during the most recent thirty years, to build a vibrant ecosystem that helps foster formation and growth of new and young companies.

- Educational programs require investment in and acquisition of faculty to develop and teach such programs. Effective and well-trained academics are, unfortunately, still scarce in most entrepreneurship related disciplines. Fortunately, successful practitioners are available everyplace and the MIT history indicates that they are quite willing and enthusiastic about sharing their time and experiences with novice and would-be entrepreneurs.

For those who have been so far, first you should read the full report and second I aggregate below a few tables from the report...

The Stuff You Really Want Will Still Cost -- a Lot, Advertising Age, June 29, 2009.

by Henry Blodget

Finally, a smart person who is widely considered cool calls B.S. on Chris Anderson's popular argument that everything should be free.

Here's an excerpt from Malcom's New Yorker piece pointing out the flaws in Chris's argument. Malcolm was paid to write the piece, of course. Handsomely. As was Chris for writing his bestseller:

There are four strands of argument here: a technological claim (digital infrastructure is effectively Free), a psychological claim (consumers love Free), a procedural claim (Free means never having to make a judgment), and a commercial claim (the market created by the technological Free and the psychological Free can make you a lot of money).

The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, "has so far failed to make any money for Google."

Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It's Time to Manage for Abundance, Not Scarcity (includeds video)
By Chris Anderson 06.22.09

Free: The Future of a Radical Price

This title will be released on July 7, 2009.

Amazon: The New York Times bestselling author heralds the future of business in Free.

In his revolutionary bestseller, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson demonstrated how the online marketplace creates niche markets, allowing products and consumers to connect in a way that has never been possible before. Now, in Free, he makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. Far more than a promotional gimmick, Free is a business strategy that may well be essential to a company's survival.

Jane Park, June 26th, 2009

The report is available in PDF via CC BY-NC-ND.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/Future_of_Learning.pdf  (2.45MB, 82 pages)

HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) announced a new report called, “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age,” now available at MIT Press. The report is in response to our changing times, and addresses what traditional educational institutions must know to keep up. From the announcement,

“Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg in an abridged version of their book-in-progress, The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, argue that traditional institutions must adapt or risk a growing mismatch between how they teach and how this new generation learns. Forms and models of learning have evolved quickly and in fundamentally new directions. Yet how we teach, where we teach, who teaches, and who administers and serves have changed only around the edges. This report was made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in connection with its grant making initiative on Digital Media and Learning.”

A central finding was that “Universities must recognize this new way of learning and adapt or risk becoming obsolete. The university model of teaching and learning relies on a hierarchy of expertise, disciplinary divides, restricted admission to those considered worthy, and a focused, solitary area of expertise. However, with participatory learning and digital media, these conventional modes of authority break down.”

Not coincidentally, one of the ten principles for redesigning learning institutions was open source education: “Traditional learning environments convey knowledge via overwhelmingly copyright-protected publications. Networked learning, contrastingly, is an “open source” culture that seeks to share openly and freely in both creating and distributing knowledge and products.”

Click here for the article of the New York Times, June 20, 2009

INNOVATION — the tricky, many-step process by which ideas become products and services — has typically been seen, studied and celebrated at the micro level, as a pursuit for entrepreneurs and clever companies.

But governments are increasingly wading into the innovation game, declaring innovation agendas and appointing senior innovation officials. The impetus comes from two fronts: daunting challenges in fields like energy, the environment and health care that require collaboration between the public and private sectors; and shortcomings of traditional economic development and industrial policies...

Reaction from Huffington Post, Innovating or incrementing?

www.competinginaflatworld.net

On Google Books,  On Amazon

From the Back Cover

“This is essential reading for anyone seeking to compete–and succeed–in the flat world.”

–John Hagel, Chairman of Deloitte Center of Innovation

“Competing in a Flat World provides an extraordinary glimpse into a new kind of organizational architecture, one built around the notion of orchestrating resources you don’t control and doing so in a way that builds both trust and agility. This architecture may well turn out to be the dominant model of the firm for the 21st century. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to compete in a flat world. Every chapter details new and powerful ideas.”

–John Seely Brown, Former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and coauthor of The Only Sustainable Edge

“We are led by unstoppable economic forces to connect our resources to form smart networks, either wired or unwired. The authors bring forward the notion of ‘network orchestration,’ an almost one-size-fits-all strategy for organizations to survive and excel in an ever-flattening world.”

–John Chen, Sybase Chairman, CEO and President