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2010-07-21T20:10:00.004-04:00

The Quotable Executive

"Technology is easy to develop. Developing a new attitude, moving the culture from one mental model to another, that's the difficult part. You give people a solution to a problem and the great irony to me is that even though they're unhappy, they have high inertia. People don't like change. The reason it takes technology 15 to 20 years to come in is because 15 years is the time it takes a kid who saw it when he was young to become a functioning adult."

- Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter and head of the DEKA design and research firm, as quoted in The Economist Technology Quarterly, June 2010

2009-12-10T22:40:00.004-05:00

It's about time...and it's about jobs...

The NC Biotechnology Center announced today that Gwyn Riddick will be promoted to the new position of Vice President for its AG/BIO initiative (view the press release here). As a member of the NC Biotechnology Center's Agricultural Biotechnology Advisory Committee and an ag biotech entrepreneur for the last decade, I am pleased to see this development and the recognition of the value ag biotech can bring to the state and to the world. I am also pleased to hear about the emphasis being placed on spinning out new technologies applicable to agriculture from NC research universities into commercial ventures such as start-up companies (view a follow up article in Tech Journal South here). It has been my experience that it is in small biotechnology companies that true innovations are being developed and real risk taken to find solutions for tomorrow's problems. It is also happens that small businesses (biotech start-ups included) are where true job growth occurs. However, it has also been my experience that traditional venture capitalists don't have much of an appetite for ag biotech ventures. Interestingly, State Treasurer Jane Colwell's recent proposal to focus a portion of the state's pension money to fund NC companies (view the Triangle Biz Journal article here) could potentially help jump start this initiative and help move ag biotech in NC from the benchtop to barnyard.

2009-12-08T00:13:00.002-05:00

But by the grace of emerging markets...

This "great recession" (or whatever the economists call it) is far from over for the millions of unemployed and underemployed, for the retailers, for the home builders, for the automotive manufacturers. It's hard to find any sector of the economy or any corner of the world that hasn't been affected. I recently started subscribing to the Economist magazine for its comprehensive coverage of world markets, and on the last page of each issue is a table of GDP growth by country and region. Quite sobering - every single country listed has had negative GDP growth (i.e., shrinkage) in 2009, every one except for China and India (Indonesia, Australia and Pakistan are also notable for being in positive GDP territory). Interesting. It's no wonder then, the Asian markets are the hottest ones for my company's products (also helping is the devalued US dollar making our products cheaper in overseas markets). But have the emerging economies gotten a bit too "frothy"? My stake in the emerging markets mutual fund NEWFX is up over 60% for the year. How long can the party last, especially when everyone else (US included) is left out in the cold?

2009-09-04T00:06:00.001-04:00

Health Care Unfair...

Just found out the health insurance premiums to cover all full-time employees at my company will go up by 20% next year. No matter what you think of health care reform, there is something fundamentally unfair with having to have a job in order to get affordable health insurance in the US and for US companies to be burdened with the cost of health insurance and remain competitive globally against companies in other countries that subsidize their health care.

2009-08-30T11:55:00.002-04:00

The Quotable Executive

"I've been able to create an environment where people work very hard, but we also play hard and celebrate our successes."
- Christy Shaffer, CEO of Inspire Pharmaceuticals, as quoted in the News and Observer Aug 1, 2009 article announcing her stepping down from the CEO position at Inspire

and from the same article...

"She makes sure people feel appreciated. She realizes that people are the most important part of an organization. It's marked her style all along."
- Joan Siefert Rose, President of the NC Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED)

2009-08-21T00:08:00.003-04:00

Entrepreneurial Execution (not in the literal sense...)

I gave a talk at the NC Chinese Business Association tonight and shared some of my experiences in starting our company, BioResource International, as well as giving some "take home messages" for the audience gathered. Here are some "nuggets" from my talk...

- "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together" - David Gergen, quoting a former director of the Gates Foundation
- E-myth qualities are Entrepreneur, Manager, Technician (not one person has all these qualities/strengths - you need to build a team of individuals who each has strengths in different areas)
- Turn focus from "me" to "we"
- Communication and trust are critical in a team (focus on the problems at hand and work toward consensus, but know that not everyone will agree all the time; it has been said that if two people always agree on something, then one of them is redundant)
- Create an environment of openness and optimism
- Celebrate wins and admit losses as soon as possible, as often as possible (paraphrasing Jack Welch in his book, Straight from the Gut)
- Beware of fundamental attribution error (wrongly attributing success to a characteristic or skill that a successful leader demonstrates); sometimes it's just about being persistent so that you end up in the right place at the right time...

2009-08-19T23:23:00.002-04:00

The Quotable Executive
"We're a personal- and career-develpment company...it turns out the by-product is engineered rubber, metal, plastic and foam."
Robert Aliota, Owner of Carolina Seal (Charlotte, NC), as quoted in Businessweek SmallBiz (Feb/Mar 2009)

2007-01-06T13:26:00.000-05:00

The Quotable Executive

"Anybody who wants to make a revolution shouldn't grab a gun - just go and start working like we do to change the world by using science and technology."

- Stanford Ovshinsky, President of Energy Conversion Devices, Inc., inventor and developer of batteries used in electric vehicles, as quoted in the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

2006-11-19T00:04:00.000-05:00

The Facts of Life...

"You're born, you take shit...
you get out in the world, you take more shit...
climb a little higher and you take less shit,
until you get to that rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like.
Welcome to the layer cake..."

"The art of good business is being a good middleman...putting people together. It's all about honor and respect."

- Fictional Gangster Eddie Temple in the movie "Layer Cake"

2006-11-17T10:47:00.000-05:00

Ruminating on "Fast Food Nation"

As I sat watching a recent sneak preview of the movie “Fast Food Nation,” director Richard Linklater’s fictional movie based on the 2001 book by Eric Schlosser, the quote “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see either of them being made” came to mind. Clearly, sausage-making, and the whole stomach-turning process of turning livestock into meat for that matter, is not a pretty business. As the owner of a company that provides feed additives to the animal industry, I have seen my share of chicken houses and processing plants, and while it’s not all bucolic red barns and farmers in overalls, the process is efficient and safe and provides a steady supply of affordable and healthy food to homes all over the U.S. and across the world.

Therefore, I must respectfully disagree with the premise of the movie that modern agricultural practices and food processing techniques somehow dehumanize and contaminate the food chain and only serve money-grubbing multinational corporate types whose chief desire is to create chemically treated, hormone raised, genetically altered food and market it in colorful packages decorated with cartoon characters to unsuspecting children. Yes, there are some things that the food industry can do to tackle the complex problems of obesity and diet in this country and yes the animal industry could adopt more environmentally friendly measures. However, the system works, and advances in the breeding and management of crops and livestock over the years have increased productivity and improved safety margins that benefits producers and consumers alike.

Organically grown foods and community-based farming, increasingly popular and mainstream recently, is not the complete answer. While these types of practices may have less impact on the environment and connect people to where their food comes from, organic farming can only feed a subset of the overall population. And until we are prepared to pay significantly more for the foods we buy, conventional farming practices will be the way most of the meat and produce we consume is delivered.

2006-08-08T08:58:00.000-04:00

Starting a Business and Yoga
I have been suffering from lower back pain for almost a year now - I've tried just about everything, short of back surgery...including going to a chiropractor, massage therapist, physical therapist, and more recently Pilates yoga. Of all the methods, Pilates yoga seems to be giving me the best long term prospects of overcoming my back pain. For the uninitiated, Pilates yoga consists of a number of movements that stretch and strengthen the area known as the "core" - the joints and muscles that support the abdomen, hips and lower back. By doing the regimen of elaborate crunches, kicks, backward tumbles and "teasers" each morning and evening, I'm feel my core region tightening and increased flexibility in my lower back.

It occurred to me that running a successful business is in some ways similar to doing yoga. In some regards a business needs to focus on buiding its "core" strengths, what it is that it does well. A common mistake small companies (especially technology-oriented ones) fall into is pursuing too many projects or ideas at the same time, rather than sticking with one or two "bread and butter" business ideas. It has been my experience you end up spreading your "butter" too thin and not do justice to any of the projects. But at the same time, you also have to adopt an almost contradictory attitude of flexibility to react to market trends, competitive threats and macroeconomic shifts. It's the balance between focus and flexibility that makes for a successful business venture and the challenge that small business managers must face every day.

2006-08-03T22:56:00.000-04:00

It is business and it is personal...
Anytime anyone says to you "It not personal, it's just business," you need to be prepared that this person is about to do or has done something that is borderline unethical or callously disrespectful to you. The two times I have heard this spoken to me, it has resulted in at best a broken trust and at worst, potential legal action against the speaker of those words.

It is very disheartening to me that some people out there believe that doing things in the name of business absolves them of any modicum of consideration or regard for the people and/or communities around them. Call me naive, but I still believe at the end of the day, your reputation and integrity is your business and chosing between doing good business and being a good person is a false dichotomy. If that is not the case and I need to screw over the other guy to get ahead in the marketplace, then I should just pack up my bags and do something else besides running a business because that is not what I'm about.

2006-08-01T08:59:00.000-04:00

What I'm listening to right now...
To pass the time on my commute to and from the office these days, I am listening to an audiobook of "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi, networking guru and accomplished business leader, mainly to learn how to be an effective networker and how to use it to advance my company and my career.

Ferazzi talks about the concept of the "blue flame" in the book - that burning hot passion that one has in his life. He claims that part of the secret to success is to figure out what it is you really want to do in your life and then set goals to achieve it. He cites the oft-heard statistic that more than 50% of people work in jobs they are not fully satisfied with, even if they are successful or make money doing it. It got me thinking what is my "blue flame" - what is the one thing I would do regardless of being paid for it? I decided it has something to do with writing .

Hence the blog... my putting thought to paper (or computer screen) is not so much for fame or notoriety, but to follow, as the writer and lecturer Joseph Campbell would say, "my bliss."

I blog, therefore I am.

2006-07-27T13:53:00.000-04:00

Start-up Lessons
In light of the increased amount of startup activity percolating up in the area these days, I thought I would weigh in with my 2 cents worth of advice to the novice entrepreneur. To be sure, six years of running a business doesn't qualify me to be an expert in anything, but I've had a few hard lessons driven into my thick head from the school of hard knocks. So here goes...

Start-up Lesson No. 1 - Do it Yourself
When you start a company, there is no shortage of consultants and advisors who come out of the woodwork who will promise to raise money for you, to introduce you to big companies, to get you grants, to negotiate deals, whatever you need. It is tempting to put your faith in these practitioners...after all, they usually have more gray hair, more credentials and better connections than you.

Or so you would think... but before you go spending your hard-earned venture capital dollars or Aunt Sally's retirement fund, just know that really the only two types of service providers you need when starting out are a good accountant and a good lawyer. If they are good, they will naturally attract other good people around them (e.g., the aforementioned investors, companies, partners, etc.) that can help you.

OK, once you have those two types on board, you need to work like hell to figure out who the customer is for the product or technology you are developing and get close to him/her as soon as possible.... Spend as much time talking to people OUTSIDE the company as inside - the more time you spend talking to your own people the higher the probability you start drinking the company kool-aid and trip off into the land of unreasonable assumptions. I'm not saying to ignore your team - communication is important. But make sure you don't reject what the market tells you just because it doesn't fit with your paradigm. You have to go to the mountain...the mountain doesn't come to you.

Next time - how building a business is like doing yoga...

2006-02-23T23:05:00.000-05:00

Google, tech transfer, and the weather...

As I attend many a biotech event, I find that wherever one or more business development executives are gathered, a favorite topic of conversation is to bash the local universities' technology transfer programs. It's easy to do and everyone clucks at the dearth of good technologies getting commercialized out of the universities and medical research centers. Unfortunately, whining about tech transfer is like complaining about the weather...despite our best efforts, factors that determine whether a technology is successfully commercialized is out of our control. At best, a high throughput rate or more observations could increase your chances of a "hit" or give you some patterns that could be indicative of a cold front or hot technology.

At a recent function at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, invited panelist Brook Byers, of the storied West Coast VC firms (what other type is there?) Kleiner Perkins Caufied & Byers (www.kpcb.com), commented that the Stanford Tech Transfer Office every year asks their staff to pick the one technology they license out that year which will hit it big in the future, write it on a piece of paper and put it in a sealed envelope to be opened after five years. So far, most of their predictions have missed the mark - most famously, none of the staff picked Google to be the big technology behemoth it is now when it was first licensed out to those two Stanford drop-outs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

2005-12-01T23:08:00.000-05:00

The 3 P's and Bird Flu

Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spoke at Fuqua tonight to talk about Failures of Imagination, Connectivity and Scalability and how it relates to Pandemic Bird Flu (more on that later). Her Duke connection is the Chief Operating Officer of the CDC, Bill Gimson, a Global Exective MBA (GEMBA) from Fuqua. I wish I had thought of this question at the Q&A session after her talk, but it occurred to out me afterwards that I should have asked her what governtment agencies can learn from the business sector and what the business sector can learn from government agencies.

Dr. Gerberding's take home message is that we must remain vigilant about the possiblity of global pandemics, stating that complacency is our greatest enemy. Just as our failure to imagine the possibility of a terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001 caught us unprepared for an attack, our failure to imagine another global flu pandemic (there have been three global flu pandemics in the last century) could leave us vulnerable to its spread.

By the way, the 3 P's are: pigs, people and poultry. Apparently, many new strains of influenza originate in Asia because people in that region live in close proximity to pigs who are natural reservoirs for poultry and human flu, giving the flu virus the opportunity to recombine and mutate into new forms of the virus. Scary stuff.

2005-10-31T13:22:00.000-05:00

The Quotable Executive

Matthew Szulik, Chairman, CEO and President, Red Hat, speaking at the NC State University College of Management Graduate Symposium Oct. 21, 2005...

"Running a startup is great, until you get your first customer."
"A lot of people want to work for great companies, but not many people want to build a great company."

2005-06-04T17:16:00.000-04:00

Market Confluence

Every once in a while there is a rare confluence of events in the classroom in which things start to “click” and real learning happens. Having been a Teaching Assistant in my grad school days, I know what a thrill it is to witness that instant when light bulbs go on and fresh young brains add a new wrinkle. That confluence of events is happening this term in my Marketing Strategy class, capably led by our professor, Darryl Banks. I had high hopes for this course this term, because I opted out of the Entrepreneurship elective to take this elective, plus the fact that Marketing was something that seemed to resonate in me in terms of interest and abilities. It is a pity that not more people opted to take this elective, yet at the same time it is fortunate that this class is not filled to capacity, as the dynamics would have been very different. With 18 students in the class, there can be no wallflowers or idle seat warmers and the discussion is sure to be lively.

The class is more seminar than lecture, Dr. Banks more philosopher than pedagogue. Darryl has the ability to let the discussion get out of control a little bit and then reel it back in, sometimes cajoling, sometimes humoring, but always with candor. Just to give you a flavor of the discourse, our class discussions this weekend ranged from “is every possible customer response quantifiable?” to “has technology qualitatively or quantitatively changed business?" and finishing up with a discussion on what is “rational” behavior. Some real tasty morsels there.

2005-04-10T20:40:00.000-04:00

Debrief on "the brief" Fourth Term

Another term down - each term seems to go by faster than the previous one.

Just like our team case study, the Corporate Strategy course started strong with great expectations but finished with a muddled whimper, repeating the refrain “innovate or die” and other bromides… like a cat imitating a lion. The one big bonus was the guest speakers – a slice of CEO life and times…what I found out is that Corp Strat actually all comes down to leadership – whether the leader can define a strategy and execute it effectively, “let your employees have it your way.”

Like a high speed assembly line, Operations Management maintained a hyper-efficient full-force, hit-on-all cylinders state through the term and it was all I could do just to keep up with the process – just like the beer bottling plant in the Laverne and Shirley show where the bottles keep coming down that assembly line and you have to keep up or give up. Interesting side note…after taking this course you never see standing in line the same way again – first off, it’s now a queue and you start to analyze where the bottleneck is and how to calculate the expected waiting time using a complicated mathematical formula with a forest of square roots and a fraternity of Greek symbols.

Speaking of symbols, Organization Design was symbolized by one huge question mark with the letters H-U-H before it. Sorry Gerry, I just couldn’t get my arms around the concepts in any meaningful, practical way like I could for Managerial Effectiveness. And trying to use a computer algorithm to diagnose cultural and organizational “fit”? Fuggadaboutid!

Apparently, there are just 10 more residency weekends to go before we get to wear those silly square hats and smile that dopey graduation smile in front of all our families and friends...the proverbial light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

2005-03-05T16:36:00.000-05:00

What is the Value of Values?

We did a case study about Nike in our corporate strategy class today. Not the glitzy glamorous athletic side personified by Michael Jordan, but the seedy darker side that exploits child labor in low wage countries personified by the thirteen year-old child stitching Nike soccer balls in Pakistan. The question essentially boils down to this – what is the responsibility that companies bear for the social problems in the world (e.g., poverty, pollution, child labor, human rights)? Nike encountered this issue in a big way in the late 90’s, due to negative publicity about the labor practices of its contract factories in Indonesia. On the one hand, you could argue, as economist Milton Friedman does, that the only responsibility that corporations have is to their investors and employees (and I suppose even that is arguable vis à vis Enron, and MCI). However, companies like Starbucks and Reebok have built successful brands on doing the right thing with their suppliers and contractors. Our professor quoted Angel Martinez, the former Chief Marketing Officer at Reebok and Executive Producer of Reebok's 1988 Human Rights Now! Tour, saying that as a company, you have to set your values and act in a way that is consistent with them.

I found myself pondering this issue after the Tsunami disaster hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand late last year and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and exacted an even greater toll on people’s property and livelihoods. As an executive at a small start-up company, what is my proper response to this human tragedy? If I have employees in or do business with companies in the affected countries, it is undeniable that my company should respond immediately and deliberately (e.g., Starbucks donating funds from sales of their Sumatran coffee for Tsunami relief). But if I don't have any direct ties to that region, what is my company's responsibility to our employees and/or customers who want to help? Should I offer a donation on behalf of my company to the American Red Cross or some similar relief agency? As a pre-revenue development stage company, what would my shareholders say about that? In the end, I decided the right thing to do was to send a list of relief organizations out to my employees and let them choose how best to help. My wife and I donated our own funds to American Red Cross and Stop Hunger Now, a non-profit charity organization that partners with aid organizations worldwide.

All things considered, there is a value to values. While we live in a capitalistic society, we are all citizens of the world and should have an obligation to leave the world a better place than when we found it. While it may sound hokey to an economist, ultimately we are all driven by forces beyond what Michael Porter or any pointy headed economist can come up with.

2005-02-19T15:40:00.000-05:00

MBA's Dilemna

A bit of insight into the method of my madness in posting to this blog. During the course of my weekends at Fuqua, some theme or comment sticks in my mind as a something I could write about and at the end of the last class on Saturday afternoon, while everyone is hopping into their cars and heading home, I stick around the Fox Center atrium, log into the wi-fi connection, and compose my blog.

Nothing really stood out for me this weekend, mainly because I was so tired from compiling our Corporate Strategy case late into the night last night. For an assignment that constitutes 50% of our final grade in the class, our team became increasingly cavalier about the case as the night wore on (and we wore out). Anyway, I was pretty out of it for most of the classes – just mustering enough stamina to make it through to this afternoon, let alone trying to absorb something from Org Design, Operations and Corporate Strategy.

However, the last comment from the last class this afternoon got me thinking. For this thought to make any sense, I have to back up and tell you about the “Prisoner’s Dilemma.” The concept goes like this – two suspects are brought in for questioning regarding a particular crime. They are interviewed separately and each is offered the following choice: “If you are willing to testify against your partner on this crime, you will go free and your partner will go to jail. However, if neither of you confess, we will take you to court and let the courts decide your fate. What is the “prisoner” to do? If he indicts his co-conspirator, he will go free. But if his co-conspirator also indicts him, both “prisoners” will go to jail. The optimal solution is for neither prisoner to “squeal,” but if both act out of self-interest and “rat” on each other, than neither party wins.

The comment made in class today was that based on studies of undergraduate students offered the same type of situation, the types of student who were the most likely to “defect” (or rat out their co-conspirator) in this game was the business and pre-med majors, presumably because these were the most self-interested groups on campus (what about the pre-law students?). So what does that say about business and medicine in general, and more interestingly, how does that reflect on a school with a top-ranked business school and medical school?

2005-02-05T16:20:00.000-05:00

Culture cause or effect?

I was about to give up hopes of getting anything useful out of the Organizational Design class this term, mainly because the concepts we've learned thus far seem so nebulous and have so little predictive value as to whether an organization will be successful or not. You see, correlation does not imply causation. For example, take Southwest Airlines. In the airline industry, it's fair to say Southwest has been successful where most of its competitors have failed. After taking a Southwest flight, one might get the impression that the airline is successful because they nurture a culture of fun and creativity and that is the secret of their success. But if we were to impose the Southwest "culture" on US Airways, would it help turn that company's fortunes around? Not likely. You see, Southwest Airlines is more than just about perky flight attendants - they hire good people, leverage operational efficiencies and execute on their strategy better than other airlines. But is it because of the culture at Southwest that it is able to excel in these areas? Aye, there's the rub.

You see, strong companies foster strong cultures that align their employees interests with the mission of the company. All companies have a culture, but its effectiveness depends on whether the mission is relevant and adaptable. So I guess the object lesson here is that by studying other companies and cultures and learning what worked for them and what didn't, we can begin to discern those concepts and frameworks that are a good "fit" with our own companies and reject those that aren't. Who said this was easy?

2005-01-22T15:58:00.000-05:00

Welcome to WEMBA world...

For those incoming WEMBA’s (class of 2006), I thought I would post a couple of my own thoughts and reflections as you prepare for your own personal Fuqua “journey of discovery” over the next couple of years…

Dress nice for your first day – pictures will be taken and posted on the class board…if you are having a bad hair day that day, you will have to live with that picture for the next two years. Because it had snowed heavily (by NC standards anyway) the night before orientation last year, I dressed casually in jeans and a rugby shirt. As a result, I came across looking like a precocious 20 year-old college student in my class photo.

Try to meet and remember as many people’s names in the first few weeks. They gave us handsome Duke MBA lanyards and nametags, but those got chucked after a few weeks into term one.

If you haven’t taken classes in a while, make sure you have a designated study area in your house where you can spend uninterrupted study time. Prepare your spouse, children, pets, etc. for the fact that you’re not going to be able to spend as much time with them as they (or you) would like. The first term is tough not because the material is hard, but because it moves so quickly and it takes time to adjust to the pace while trying to balance a full-time work load.

In the first class on the first day, choose wisely where you sit– it will be your place for all classes for the next 2 terms. If you want to keep a low profile, sit in the middle rows. If you are looking to be a class stand-out, the aisle seats and front rows are for you.

Get a fully-functional laptop computer that is running Windows XP, and make sure it isn’t one of those 8 pound desktop replacements. You will be shouldering enough weight with all the lecture notes and reading material you will have to carry around.

Most important – enjoy yourself! You will be challenged and stretched in ways you didn’t think you could challenge/stretch yourself. Don’t be afraid of saying the wrong thing or asking dumb questions in class or talking to people outside your comfort zone. The environment is very collegial and set up in such a way that is is very difficult to fail out of the program. Good luck!

2005-01-08T22:45:00.000-05:00

Jargon Bugaboo

After a long four week break, Term 3 is a distant memory, like that vague feeling you get thinking of an ex-girlfriend, a bittersweet remembrance of having learned something about life and about oneself, but overall not an experience to repeat again soon…

So, here it is January 2005, and I am back at Duke and jumping right into Term 4. This term journeys from the land of quantitative deterministic thinking (finance, econ, accounting) in the last term and crosses into that more nebulous region of stochastic models, the “it depends” school-of-thought. Corporate Strategy, Organizational Design and Operations Management are the flavor this season. And as such, the jargon also changes...no more simple terms like options and futures, or neat little acronyms like ROI and EVA. We are now in the realm of concepts and multi-word, multi-syllabic descriptors, such as “social complexity”, “causal ambiguity” and “time compression diseconomies.” (When I was in grad school, we used to call this "hand-waving”, when you use big words to speculate on the less tangible conclusions of scientific data – little did I know that much of business theory is like this).

Some initial thoughts… despite my pooh-poohing the jargon, I have high hopes for Corporate Strategy – Rick Wagoner, CEO of GM, and Rick Goings, CEO of Tupperware, are scheduled to be guest speakers this term, and judging from the syllabus it looks like we will delve much into the business of doing business. The aim of Organizational Design is a bit less clear to me right now. It seems to be a hybrid of Managerial Effectiveness from the first term, with a bit of analytical modeling thrown into the mix (to the extent one can analyze and model an “effective” organization). Operations Management should prove useful as my little company scales up production and takes on the supply chain “bugaboo” (that’s my jargon for one big hairy audacious mess).

2004-12-05T15:50:00.000-05:00

Morale Hazard

In Economics, there is a concept known as moral hazard that attempts to describe human behavior in response to particular circumstances. For example, people who drive SUVs believe their cars to be safer, and as a result, will be less likely to take precautions driving in adverse weather. In this term we did a case study about the Argentina economy and how, because the policy makers in that country knew that the International Monetary Fund would bail them out, did not take measures to control their increasing deficits.

It occurred to me that a similar phenomenon could exist in the WEMBA program. Because the Executive MBA program is so lucrative for Fuqua, the program staff would be hard pressed to fail any of the students and risk the loss of funds from companies subsidizing the tuition of their employees. Knowing this, WEMBA students may not study as hard as if they knew that failure was a real possibility, and as a result, that causes them to perform less well on finals.

For me, it seems like I have to get to the end of the term before everything starts to come together, supply and demand curves move in predictable ways, and concepts and computations come into focus. It’s a pity it comes at the end of the term, when I'm time-crunched and cramming for finals.

One last parting thought (shot) about this Term. What do finance and accounting professionals get out of taking MBA core courses? I can only imagine it must be drudgery and tedium for folks that do this for a living to sit through a class about trading options or doing activity-based accounting – and torturous for poor souls like me seeing this stuff for the first time.

2004-11-20T16:12:00.000-05:00

My own Tour de Fuqua...

What started out as sunshine and hope this spring is turning into a winter of discontent (and disconnect) . I feel like one of those sprinters in the Tour de France every year who take early wins in the flat stages of the race and then just try to hang on through the steep mountain stages in the middle of the race, waiting for their moment of glory to come around in the final stages, and win that final sprint in Paris. I am climbing the steep hills of Term 3, just trying not to get dropped off the back of the pack. In two weeks we have finals, and I will reach the summits of the Col de Bareket (managerial accounting), Mt. Brav (finance) and L'Alpe de Albanesi (macroeconomics). After that, I will be able to cruise into the Villages of term 4, past the halfway point to graduation and the glorious finish on the tree lined streets of the Champs Elysees. My early victories in Managerial Effectiveness and Statistics are far behind me, and I am doing all I can to keep moving forward in this term's classes. The discipline of early preparation and good study habits still elude me, and it has shown in my performance thus far. The regimens of finance and economics do not come easily or intuitively, but just like riding a bike, I suppose that if you do it frequently and long enough, it becomes easier. I hate to just get by - there are so many tasty morsels of business insight that our professors provide to us each weekend, I only wish there were enough time to digest it all.

2004-11-06T15:41:00.000-05:00

Career Conundrum

One of the benefits of sending a quarter of my paycheck to Fuqua B-school every month is the opportunity to use their Career Management Center (CMC) once in a while. Dr. Peter Romanella, a creative guy with as diverse a CV as you will ever see in a career counselor (appropriate, perhaps), serves as director of Career Services for Executive MBA students at Fuqua. Once we got the paperwork signed certifying that I was "self-supported" (WEMBA students have access to CMC services inversely proportional to the amount of support they get from their sponsoring companies, with self-supported students getting the most and company-sponsored individuals getting the least), Peter went to work, providing me with a three page email of weblinked resources to review. At his suggestion, I recently took the Career Leader Survey that is made available for all Fuqua students and serves to match one's values, interests and abilities with various business-oriented careers (http://www.careerleader.com). What I learned surprised and inspired me. Apparently, I have a high match for Advertising Account Management, Marketing Management or Public Relations. I guess I am a closet creative spirit bouncing around in a scientist's body...it kinda makes sense then that I find myself on the non-conventional career path I have taken thus far. I guess the next logical question to ask is "where do I go from here?" Certainly further exploration and information gathering is warranted, perhaps seeking opportunities within and outside of work to try out some marketing and/or PR things...anyone needing some marketing work from an entrepreneurial Ph.D. Microbiologist halfway through his MBA at Duke? Yeah, I'm going to have to work on my personal positioning statement a bit.

2004-10-09T15:06:00.000-04:00

"Rank" Rankings

The Businessweek rankings came out last week, and the Duke MBA (day-time) program dropped two slots to number 11 from number 9 last year. Dean Breeden immediately fired off an email to all students reassuring them that changes are in place and things will get better. It is interesting to me to see how much rankings play in the business school community. In a speech to the WEMBAs last month, Dean Breeden spent a great deal of time listing where Fuqua ranks in finance, marketing, accounting, etc. I remember when I was in grad school at Emory University, the school administration would regularly publish a news release whenever US News & World Report came out with college rankings and say how they don't believe in school rankings, etc., that they don't truly reflect what the school has to offer and the ranking system is flawed. Besides, universities are places for higher learning, and character development, and all that jazz, not just what some two-bit college administrator at some other institution thinks about you. I don't know...perhaps that thinking has changed among colleges too and everyone is more rank-conscious now. Of course, the business world is very different from the academic world, and being a business school, it is all about being the best so as to attract the best and the brightest students, faculty and staff. And I can't say I don't care - that's why I decided to invest my tuition dollars in Fuqua as opposed to some other school under the assumption that the quality name would "add more value." Brand Fuqua reigns...

2004-09-25T15:50:00.000-04:00

Thinking big...

I have been reading a rather inspirational book "The Magic of Thinking Big." It has me thinking about a lot of "big" things, namely - the power of positive thinking, the importance of finding energizing peers and colleagues, and the leadership paradox. I know I have the tendency to be my own worst critic, and at times, it causes a serious crisis of confidence in my interactions with others. I don't know where it comes from, whether it is innate or ingrained, but it wasn't until I read this book that I learned I could take conscious steps to overcome these thoughts. It makes sense how negative and self-critical thoughts stymie success and lead to mediocrity, but the converse didn't immediately occur to me - that you could think your way to success. It seems that there is something false about that, something delusional, that you can't make something true just because you stubbornly, adamantly believe it to be true. Yet, it is no coincidence that the most positive and happy and confident people are the ones that give out the most energy and in turn are the ones that get things done - they are the ones that become leaders. Ever met a pessimistic CEO who was successful? We think ourselves into action and we act ourselves into thinking.

2004-09-18T22:17:00.000-04:00

Three bricklayers

Three bricklayers at a construction site were interviewed about their jobs. Here is how they responded to the question, "What do you think about your job?"

Bricklayer 1: "What do you mean what I do think? I lay bricks...it's just a job."
Bricklayer 2: "It's a living...it provides an income for myself and my family."
Bricklayer 3: "I'm part of a grand building project that will create new job opportunities and will make life better for generations to come."

Which one of these bricklayers do you think went on to become the most successful in the construction business?

Take home message: "You are who you think you are..."

(adapted from the book "The Magic of Thinking Big", by David Schwartz)

2004-09-11T16:05:00.000-04:00

Building My "Math Muscle"

Term 3 is upon us. From all that I've been hearing, this term is going to be the most gruelling of them all - Global Finance, Macro Economics, and Managerial Accounting (listed by order of my current interest). Also this term the two sections have been scrambled, and we have been assigned to new teams, so there will be some breaking in time to get going again. I must admit that while I do like the three weeks away from Fuqua between terms, it does make it that much more difficult when starting back up. It's like you get used to going to the gym every other day, and suddenly, you don't go for weeks - all that muscle mass that takes weeks to build up turns to mush in a matter of days and those tiddly-wink dumbells feel a lot heavier. My "math muscle" that was getting a good workout last term in Decision Models and Econ, has more or less atrophied.

My Dad asked me the other day about what the most important thing I've learned since starting the program. I told him that the most important thing I've learned so far (aside from the importance of a good night's rest), is that business is more quantitative than I imagined it to be. It seems that much of business is about making decisions with limited resources (such as money, information and time). This means, among other things, knowing how to develop and use mathematics to model risk and uncertainity, given a set of reasonable assumptions. Math is making sense in a way that I never really grasped in my science classes.

We learned the concept of "arbitrage" in my Finance class today. For the uninitiated, arbitrage is the idea of "making something from nothing" - taking a discrepancy in price or value between two or more things, and leveraging that discrepancy to make money. I think that is an appropriate metaphor for my pursuit of the MBA, finding opportunities to arbitrage undervalued concepts and ideas. Plus, the word arbitrage just sounds cool...

2004-08-20T05:27:00.000-04:00

Notes from the other side of the world...

The very next day after completing my last final for the second term (2 down, 3 to go...), I found myself on an airplane heading overseas to Taiwan on business. I have a funny feeling everytime I arrive in the country of my birth. I liken it somewhat to the feeling of being an under-evolved "cultural amphibian." What do I mean by that? I think of a fully-adapted cultural amphibian as one that is at home in both Eastern and Western cultures, linguistically, habitually, and in most major aspects of daily living. In some sense I am there - I speak the language, I look the part - I fit in among all my fellow native Taiwanese brethren. However, I find myself under-evolved in the sense that my language skills (or lack thereof) leave me high and dry. I have mastered living the earthbound life so much so that my terrestrial lungs don't work quite as well under-water, and I find myself coming up short as I try to adapt to my familiar yet, not altogether comfortable surroundings. Have I gone past the evolutionary tipping point, as it were? Is my destiny set such that I cannot go back to from whence I came - as in Thomas Wolfe words "you can't go home again"?

2004-07-25T12:45:00.000-04:00

Tour de Lance

Every year for three weeks in July I am glued to the TV as the Tour de France (TDF) bicycle race winds its way through the sunny countryside and mountainsides of France. Unless you have been hiding in a cave, you'll know that this year is American cyclist's Lance Armstrong's record-setting six straight tour victory. Truly amazing. As I think about Lance's historic achievement, I reflect on how far the sport of cycling has come in the U.S. As a long-suffering TDF fan, I remember how difficult it used to be to catch any significant cycling coverage on TV. I recall having to wake up early in the morning back in 1989 to catch a footage on Good Morning America as American cyclist Greg Lemond won the Tour that year.

And in the years before Lance, it was still a challenge to see any significant coverage of the TDF on network TV. Ever since Lance started racing in the TDF and people learned about how he beat cancer and came back to win consecutive Tours, American TV coverage has improved significantly. I now have the luxury of watching 4 hours of live coverage each day on the Outdoor Life Network. Ironically, the extensive coverage has left me quite overwhelmed - I found myself fast-forwarding through several sections of segments I had taped. Nevertheless, I am compelled to watch every stage of the 25 stages in July and will probably continue to do so for years to come. I think what makes the TDF so exciting and interesting for me is the beauty of the historical French countryside, the harmony of man and machine, and the human drama of the race.

Vive la Lance!

2004-06-12T15:28:00.000-04:00

"Weekend Worrier"

I've been giving some thought to worry recently (you could say I've been concerned about worrying). As Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine fame used to say, "What, me worry?" and Bobby McFerrin entreats to "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Obviously, people have been worrying for a while, for there is even the verse in the Bible where Jesus tells his disciples (paraphrasing Matthew 6:25-34) not to worry about what they will eat or what they will wear. So why worry?

I would propose that we worry because we desire things but are separated from doing the things to meet those desires, or don't get what we desire right away, or feel powerless to get what we desire. So in a feeble attempt to have things go our way and to regain some control over the matter, our minds continue to race, cognitively mulling over the scenarios and processing the outcomes, even if there is little to be done. Hence worry.

Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, has a book called "Only the Paranoid Survive." This may be a catchy title for a book and perhaps even a good strategy for business success, but does it make sense in our personal lives? Can we live our lives free of worry - or is it just the unintended by-product of our ever-busy and desirous lives?

2004-05-29T16:16:00.000-04:00

Garbage in...

In our Marketing class today, the professor mentioned that things will get less structured, and that we should expect that as we go along in our courses, the right answer will be less and less clear and that we should expect a certain level of discord among our team members. Huh?! I thought education was supposed to elucidate and dilineate, not confuse and obfuscate. You would think as companies and consumers get more sophisticated and more efficient, that business would become more predictable. However, it seems that things in the real world just don't work out quite like they do on Excel spreadsheets. Part of the problem is is incomplete or inaccurate information or metrics. Unlike word problems on a quiz or exam in which all the variables are presented in black in white, it is far less clear in the real world what the probability for certain events are. For example, what is the probability that this new product my company is developing will be readily adopted by the industry? 80%? 75%? And what sort of market share would we expect? 10%? 25%?

Certainly there are principles, models, historical data and frameworks to consider, and they can be useful for constructive discussions, but in the end, there will always be risk and uncertainty with business. But rather than throwing our hands in the air and say "who knows," and least I can now say, "we can build a model around that and test its elasticity and utility functions..." Garbage out.

2004-05-17T23:45:00.000-04:00

I'm Back!

...And live to blog another term. I am happy to report that I successfully passed all my classes last term, even Financial Accounting (partial credit...it's a beautiful thing). My best class by far was Managerial Effectiveness, which I managed to effectively knock out an "SP" (superior pass).

The three week break between terms was quite nice and much needed, allowing the stress and worry to wash away and the dark bags under my eyes to gently yield to a more lively shade of pink. Did I mention I lost five pounds in the first term? My classmates look at me incedulously and ask, "how can it be?" It's a combination of stress and lack of sleep, I joke. But really what has kept me from tipping the scales is the voice of my conscience made manifest in my workout buddy Laurence, who calls me to the gym every Monday and Thursday. I must say I have never been one to mess around with "dumbells" (or dumb belles), but I have been pleased with my progress since the beginning of this year.

This term promises to be an interesting one - we have Decision models, Microeconomics, and Marketing. I think Marketing is going to be the most relevant and helpful to my biz. I actually used the 4 "P's" of marketing with one of my employees the other day and felt kinda smart for a couple seconds, until I realized he knew the 4 P's also...

2004-04-24T14:55:00.000-04:00

Memoirs of a "Former WEMBA" Student?

I have now successfully suffered through three final exams in two days to close out my first Term experience as a Fuqua WEMBA. How do I feel? Lousy and tired. If you asked me the same question yesterday, I probably would have answered "tired, but content." The difference? My two exams on Friday (Statistics and Managerial Effectiveness) were challenging but fair - the kind you step out of thinking "I actually learned something in that class." Today the daily special was Financial Accounting. And we are now talking potentially a wholesale dismantling of my dreams of MBA stardom. I don't mean to make excuses, but I truly believe that if I had spent time working over problem sets and old quizzes into the wee hours last week, I would have had a fair shot of getting by on the exam today. Instead, I was up into the wee hours last week reworking our business plan so that my father could have something to present to potential investors in Taiwan during his travel there this week. It was an unfortunate collusion of time and pace (too little time and not keeping pace with classes). Perhaps I will have to prematurely sign off this blog...or maybe the merciful god of partial credit will have pity and I will live to suffer another term. Stay tuned!

2004-04-10T15:44:00.000-04:00

The end is near...

As I approach the end of the first Term and face the looming specter of final exams (wow...when's the last time I took finals?!), I thought I would just reflect back on the first term and what I have learned inside and outside the classroom so far:

1. The answer is "It depends." As we got further along into the term, the right answers seemed to become more elusive and more complex. I suppose this happens to some degree in any discipline, that the phrase "the more we know, the less we understand" (as sung by Don Henly) takes on more meaning. I just didn't expect it would become so uncertain so soon! In the sciences, you have at least 2-3 years of "by-the-book memorization" before you can start to explore the boundaries of that knowledge. In our last statistics case study, there seemed to be about as many regression models as there were teams.

2. We are "branded." I mean this in the total sense of the word - from the stuff they do to cows to the stuff that P&G does for soap. The nametags and tent cards we are issued from the first day of class gives us two brand identities - our name and our company's name. An interesting thing happens in the first term - if no other traits supercede, we default to our corporate brand identity - e.g., "that's Tom from Bank of America," or "Sheila from IBM," etc. This personal branding is limiting in the sense that we are labeled by our affiliations (and if the company is a start-up no one has heard of, like BioResource International (yet!), you really have no brand equity to leverage). On the flip side, brands are useful in the sense that it helps to place us each into a broader context on the business playing field, if you will.

Well, that's about enough pontification for now - it is time to cram for finals!

2004-03-27T21:46:00.000-05:00

To boldly go...back to school

I knew that the march back to the ivory towers of academe after having been away just 5 years would yield a few nuggets of learnin' here or there. What I did not expect is that these nuggets might teach things about myself. Here's what I have learned so far...I enjoy writing and seem to have some knack for it. It's as if I have a writing itch that needs a thorough and cathartic scratching lately, and I don't know how it got there. My team members have caught on to this and have assigned me editorial duties on our case studies. I am happy to oblige, but my perfectionist tendencies to get just the right meaning out of a word or phrase is time-consuming. Hopefully, it gets easier with practice.

Another thing I've learned - never having taken a psychology course in my entire academic life, I find it fascinating to listen and read and think about the organizational behavior constructs and constraints in my Managerial Effectiveness class. Some might find the grayness of this course confounding, as there is no right answer, just different points of view and ways to justify it. I find it liberating. In some ways, it is no different from my research days, playing with different variables and observing the effects, looking for patterns and paradigms, imposing order and systems upon apparent disorder. But of course, here the subject matter is fickle and infinitely more complex - people.

2004-03-23T00:02:00.000-05:00

A very successful CEO was once asked what made him so successful, “Good Decisions” he said. Well, how does one make sure one makes good decisions? “Experience” he said. So how does one gain experience in order to make good decisions? “Bad Decisions” said the CEO.

This quote comes from a father and son dialogue entitled "Avoiding Prattfalls at Pratt" posted on the website for the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke (www.pratt.duke.edu/news/feature_younger.php). I think it is instructive as to the ways we learn...it is far easier to learn from failure than from success. Success breeds false pride and lock-step conformity (if it ain't broke, don't fix it)...failure causes us to re-examine, to repair, to reflect. Of course, a couple of successes here and there doesn't hurt to remind us at least we are on the right path...

2004-03-21T02:32:00.000-05:00

Connecting the Dots...

As I see it, there are two kinds of learning - experience-based and knowledge-based. Experience-based learning is the kind of knocked-down, dragged through the mud, grit in your teeth, stomach turning process that makes you older and wiser, i.e., trial and error. Knowledge-based learning is the internally focused, analytical and observational process that is part laser beam focus and part 30,000 feet aerial view - what are the concepts, theories, patterns, structures, paradigms, etc. at play in this situation? I have the latter in spades by virtue of 6 years of Ph.D. training and can cogitate with the best of them...but the former, execution - getting things done - theory into action, potential into kinetic...aye, there's the rub.

This week was a week of experiential learning...suffice it to say I learned much about labor laws in the State of NC and the validity of contractual agreements. This day-to-day learning laboratory that is my company stands in contrast to my pursuit of the EMBA, a more abstract and contemplative knowledge-based endeavor. I am not quite there yet with connecting the knowledge dots that I gather in school and the real world dots that I see at work. But I suppose just as a practiced astronomer sees constellations, patterns, planets and stars in the sky where a novice sees only points of light, perhaps one day I likewise may be able to connect the dots and see the big picture.

2004-03-12T20:42:00.000-05:00

Reality bites!
I think I was more enamored with the concept of business school rather than the reality of it. The brochures and campus visits and websites all play up the glossy happy images of professionally dressed and well-groomed students gathered around some conference table somewhere, caught up in discussion of some high concept business theory. What they fail to show is the darker reality - long lonely nights staying up to the wee hours just trying to finish up that stats problem set you thought would only take a couple hours to solve and it is three days later and it still eludes you. All this knowing that in 4.5 hours, you will have to wake up and go to a full-time job with full-time problems (er, challenges and opportunities). It used to be that in college (or even grad school), if I did poorly on a test or exam, I would say "I'll just spend more time studying" and get caught up by the next test. Well, I found out this week that I bombed my first financial accounting quiz. And I have no elasticity with time here - my Prof tells me "you just need to do more problem sets." OK, let me quit my job first, that should free up some time. It's challenging enough to keep work at work, reserving my evenings and weekends for hitting the accounting/stats/management problem sets and readings. They say it will get easier, and I can only believe it and keep plugging away. At least now, when they bring the prospective students around, I can flash them a weary smile and say "yeah, they keep us pretty busy around here."

2004-03-09T00:17:00.000-05:00

It's all about M.E.

I was at dinner with a couple of business associates recently and the conversation turned to teamwork within companies (or lack thereof). Seems that we all could benefit from some teambuilding and management skills once in a while, especially those of us in the scientific and technical disciplines, where more often than not, an individual is promoted based on his/her technical skills and merits, rather than ability to work in collaboration with others.

One of the WEMBA classes this term that is new and different for me is Managerial Effectiveness (the other one that is new, different and difficult for me is Financial Accounting...more on that later). Having been in the "hard" sciences for most of my life, I was curious to know if a similar sort of "management science" can be taught to current and future business leaders, or if leadership is more or less innate. Apparently, leadership is teachable, although not in your typical read-a-textbook-work-a-problem-set type of way. I have found the (aptly named) "M.E." course to be relevant and timely thus far, touching on issues of teamwork, conflict resolution, leadership, influence, communication, etc. And that's started me thinking that maybe we all could use an occasional booster shot of managerial skills once in awhile.

2004-02-28T23:21:00.000-05:00

I'll admit it - I'm a Blogger newbie. I'm writing this blog more for my own interest and entertainment as I work my way through the Weekend Executive MBA program at the Fuqua School of Business (Duke University). I make no claims, warrants, or promises about the accuracy, validity or up-to-date-ness of the information. Further, the view expressed are my own, and in no way reflect the policies or opinions of Duke University, it's faculty, staff, students, yada, yada, yada...

If you find this info useful, great - let me know (gshih1@yahoo.com). If not, no worries - maybe someone somewhere somehow might. So what is this blog about? Well, about a year ago, I got the idea in my head that an MBA might prove useful in improving my management and leadership skills as President of BioResource International, an early-stage biotechnology company that I manage in Raleigh, NC. I applied to the Fuqua Weekend MBA program (affectionately referred to here as "WEMBA") and managed to get myself admitted, to the shock and horror of my UNC-Chapel Hill educated wife and NC State University faculty Dad. After my own shock and horror at the first tuition bill, (which, by the way, my rich friend Sallie Mae and I will be financing for the rest of my professional life), I entered the program in January 2004. I am now in my third residency weekend (we meet Friday and Saturdays every other weekend for 20 consecutive months ) and am beginning to ask myself questions like: "what the #@#$% am I doing here?" "When will I get my normal life back?" and "Why do good sane people subject themselves to statistics?" The putative answers to these questions are: "Who knows, Never, and because stats is sexy."