Comments

Politics still local - and/or play up international and worldwide awareness / focus as B school MIA?

Posted by Sean at March 9, 2006 1:59 PM

I think instead they were W1C. Without One Clue.

Posted by Trevor Twining at March 9, 2006 3:14 PM

I have lived and worked in Taiwan for ten years.

I fully understand being down on business schools more than a bit. Hearing comments like you quoted are indeed strange. But here is a good story I believe, and an example of people and a program with a different view of entrepreneural thinking.

I did have an entrepreneurship/organization class in my MBA program about 13 years ago, along with some excellent advanced statistical process control (which has helped me better understand testing and sampling (SPC) for electronics manufacturing). I do think an MBA is better for people with more technical backgrounds, if that matters.

The Prof for the entrepreneurship class I took recommended I go to China (at that time, I explained to him I was interested in Greater China business). I have been meaning to look him up and say thanks (I know he does not remember me or our little talk). I think he caught s--- from many people/students that said, hey, if you are such an entrepreneur, then why are you sitting here teaching. That kind of stuff. Unfair I realize now. I think it is tough to bring "real entrepreneurs" into a formal program. But MBA programs can have a structured series of workshops and bring a range of people in to lecture, and call it a class.

The prof advised about going to China, you go there, learn some Chinese, learn some culture, work, make some contacts, make some type of "normal $$ return" and see what happens. He explained, if you put yourself in the middle of change (Delta) and growth, many good things can happen. At the worst, you come back to the US and live your normal "Joe American" life, but with great overseas Chinese experience in a market that will be growing for our lifetimes. His advice helped prod me along and buy a plane ticket (uh...just do it!). I think a big part of "my education" began after I left the US.

The last I Googled up about this Prof is below. He is doing what many experts believe is needed. I do not think he would mind I mention his name, it is all public info. Dr. Jim Fiet..see below

MINUTES OF THE ACADEMIC AND STUDENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Provost Garrison introduced Robert Taylor, Dean of the College of Business and Public Administration and Professor James Fiet, Brown Forman Professor of Entrepreneurship (endowed chair), noting that Dr. Fiet is the school's leading faculty member in entrepreneurship research.

Dr. Fiet briefed the Board on his current projects and his goals for the Institute for Entrepreneurial Research. He stated the purpose of the Institute will be to foster research that develops aspiring entrepreneurs. The goal of the Institute is to establish itself as an international center of excellence in entrepreneurial research. Currently 15 faculty members affiliated with these activities engage in a coordinated, year round submission of papers to conferences and journals, invite scholars from other institutions to visit the University, serve as affiliate scholars, and provide sponsorship for major research conferences. He will investigate the start up of a journal that would add to the University's leadership position in entrepreneurship education. He indicated a direct benefit to students is the transfer of systematic research findings directly into the curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Dr. Feldhoff made a motion, which Ms. Worland seconded, to approve the President's recommendation that the Board of Trustees approve the creation of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Research with a Director assigned by and reporting to the Chair, Department of Marketing, College of Business and Public Administration.

The motion passed.

Posted by Jay Slovic at March 9, 2006 10:28 PM

Since all these things are not part of the usual MBA curriculum, I wonder if there is any "centralized" place, where you could learn (or better get trained) for all these things?

There must be something outthere...if not....Tom, why don't you start one?

Something like.....12 months program...at TP Academy

I am the first to sign-up!

Posted by Bernard at March 10, 2006 6:46 AM

Interesting! and well supported point of view from my side.

I wanted to get a feel of what a MBA can do for you, so I sent a small survey to Business Schools across the globe, with the intention of posting the results to my website, however so far I've had 'don't do this sort of thing' to 'see our site for further information'. All in all a little discouraging from a B-school perspective.

Posted by Phil P at March 10, 2006 9:55 AM

Interesting post. We developed a new courses on creativity taught by Jerry Wind, editor of Wharton School Publishing. Once a week, Wind brings creative professionals from industries as broad as art, theater, video gaming, design, and architecture. The idea is to help student develop difficult links and analogies (that would confuse most people). How do you develop commonalities between acting and business or Excel spreadsheets and Beethoven's 9th Symphony? Such unlikely links would require students to be comfortable with expression and ambiguity. The question of course is whether creativity can be learned. We believe it can at least be ignited. We all have some element of creativity within us.

Posted by Wharton Admissions Officer at March 10, 2006 11:47 AM

Re: post above by Jay Slovic
TLDR
(Too Long, didn't read)

Posted by Michael from UK at March 10, 2006 11:59 AM

Some are thinking outside the old box.

University of Maryland (USA) Center for Entrepreneurship

http://www.smith.umd.edu/dingman/

Posted by Jeff at March 10, 2006 12:16 PM

This is a post on a small technical detail, slightly off-topic. In addition, there is probably a good reason for this and someone else has already pointed this out... but just in case...

Check out the author of Tom's slides.

File | Properties
Select Summary Tab

Look at the Title and the Author
hmm...Conflict Management Inc....

now peek at the Statistics tab
Notice the orginal create date
1995... cool!
(Of course, the total editing time is incorrect. No way over 43000 years.)

Lessons learned

1) Always look to see what is hiddened in Microsoft files.

2) Mr Peters, feel free to promote your brand!

3) Conflict Management Inc needs to have a home page.

4) A good reminder to read more Roger Fisher.

Jason

Posted by Jason Peterson at March 10, 2006 12:52 PM

To the Wharton admin officer... Great to hear you are teaching or "igniting" creativity. As a business consultant, coach and visual artist with interests in music and other creative endeavours, I found it a challenge to work on creativity with business people at first, then I realised it's all about fascination, heck guys like Einstien and Edison were fascinated with 'stuff' and bingo results came.

Maybe we should call it an MBF Master of Business Fascination...

Think about it, an entrepreneur, worker or a supervisor, if they are fascinated with having a great team a result could follow, if they were fascinated with creating an excellent workplace ditto.

Challenge, to all you "business o philes" get fascinated, by anything and everythng and see how it can effect your work, eg Toms pictures from all over the world simply fascinating... gets the mind going... then think of his fascination with everything business, if it were not for this fascination we would not be on this site throwing ideas back and forth.

Posted by Steve Gray at March 10, 2006 4:31 PM

Tom:

An aside, but have you considered posting both the PowerPoint format and Adobe PDF's? The PPT format is really useful for people using your resources but the PDF's display much more rapidly, such as the six slide per page handout format.

I appreciate your blog and your guidance on books as well as the books you have written over the years.

John.

Posted by JMG at March 11, 2006 11:40 AM