"New HBS Portal Offers Alumni Just-In-Time Business Information
Good Day, Sunshine: The October Reunions
Hawes Family Funds New Class Room Building
African-American Alumni Conference Considers Success and the Bottom Line
Business Ethics Fellow Honored
Buffett Preaches Investment Discipline
EMC's Ruettgers Finds Gold in Data Storage
Alumni Ticker: A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News
A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News
In the two latest versions of those "most powerful" and "most influential" cover stories that Fortune and Business Week love to run, 20 percent of the people selected in each group were HBS graduates.
Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in American Business" (October 25, 1999) included Amazon.com's Joy Covey (MBA '89), Kraft Foods' Ann Fudge (MBA '77), Bain & Co.'s Orit Gadiesh (MBA '77), Fidelity's Abigail Johnson (MBA '88), Colgate-Palmolive's Lois Juliber (MBA '73), Azurix's Rebecca Mark (MBA '90), People magazine's Ann Moore (MBA '78), Lucent's Pat Russo (104th AMP), Golden West Financial's Marion Sandler (HRPBA '53), General Motors' Cynthia Trudell (62nd PMD), and eBay's Meg Whitman (MBA '79).
Whitman also figured in Business Week's "e.biz 25: The Most Influential People in Electronic Business" (September 27, 1999), where she was joined by Kleiner Perkins's John Doerr (MBA '76), IBM's Louis Gerstner (MBA '65), McKinsey's John Hagel (MBA '77), and FreeMarkets' Glen Meakem (MBA '91).
Carl Chen (24th OPM) has come a long way. The Long Beach, California, Press-Telegram (September 13, 1999) reported that when Chen was four years old, his family fled mainland China for Taiwan. In 1968, he won a fellowship to West Virginia University to study aerospace engineering. "I had $300 in my pocket," Chen recalled of his arrival in America.
After working at Hughes for many years building satellites and at a high-tech trading firm he cofounded, in 1990 Chen helped start his own company, Advanced Aerodynamic & Structures Inc. (AASI), in order to develop high-performance, inexpensive business aircraft. "I knew a little about airplanes but not much," Chen said. "It's different from all the things I did before."
Today, located in a state-of-the-art facility at Long Beach Airport where it's a neighbor of aircraft giant Boeing, AASI has received more than 170 orders for its six-person propjet, the $1.4 million Jetcruzer 500. A jet version of the 500, called the Stratocruzer 1250, is in the works and could help the company expand to one thousand employees and some $600 million in revenues. And Chen could even be building satellites again: "If there's synergy, then we'll do it. That will help us if we can do long-term contract work with the military and satellite business."
Richard Simon (MBA '66) is making Manhattan his playground - in this case, an indoor replica of the Big Apple as it appeared in the 1930s, the New York Times reported (August 12, 1999, and September 23, 1999). Called Broadway City, Simon's fun house overlooks Times Square and is an "amalgamation of the city's most recognizable landmarks" filled with video and arcade games, where, for example, "electronic baseball games await players in a circular room designed like Yankee Stadium."
Broadway City recalls the game parlors Simon's father had owned and operated when young Richard was growing up, with one big exception - it's a clean, well-lighted place. "Most parents don't want to go into a dirty old arcade," Simon noted. "I want to create an inviting atmosphere for the whole family."
Prior to getting back into the family line of business, Simon worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Thailand during the height of the U.S. Vietnam War buildup. He then started a brokerage house in Bangkok before eventually returning to New York and opening his nostalgia-laced startup. "I'm not going to build an Edsel here, I'm going to build a Mustang," said Simon.
"Just like everything from cosmetics to sugar, water is bought, repackaged, and
sold," according to CBS MarketWatch (August 13, 1999). "Today, it's become an
especially big business - a $300 billion one - as deregulation sweeps through the
water industry and governments here and overseas look to privatize water services."
A big fish in the industry is Rebecca Mark (MBA '90), chairman and CEO of Azurix, an affiliate of energy giant Enron that she helped create and which recently went public. (See first item, preceding page.) "We tend to think about water as just being there - that it's our right to have it," Mark explained. "But not much has been done to increase the supply and quality of the supply of water and to be able to economically allocate it to the right locations."
Mark grew up on a farm and as a result was savvy from an early age about crop prices, production costs, and, of course, weather patterns. How those factors played out, she recalled, "determined whether we got to buy our clothes or make our clothes that year." Mark noted that she never expected to find herself again in a business where the bottom line can rise and fall with the rain.
But the forecast for Azurix, both domestically and in emerging markets, looks favorable. "This is a business that has been primarily government-controlled without significant economies of scale," Mark said. "The ownership and operation of assets to improve operating margins will be the key driver of our financial success."
The voiceover industry is booming. Those dulcet tones and distinctive pipes you've long heard on radio and TV commercials are now much in demand for CD-ROMs and the Internet, as well as for traditional markets such as cartoons and industrial films. Indeed, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (August 20, 1999), the voiceover industry currently boasts some eighty thousand union members alone.
Reasons for getting into the business vary. David Keane (MBA '70), whose day job is consulting, took it up "to challenge his artsy side," the article asserted. "I did a lot of acting when I was younger, but I knew I'd probably be a poor man if I made that my career," said Keane, who has done voiceover work for Sprint, Pacific Bell, Hewlett-Packard and others. "Every time I do a voiceover, I think, 'What if my mom could see me now? I went to Harvard for this?' But it's fun work, and even better, it's fun work that pays."
A new chair has been established by André R. Jakurski (MBA '73) to support research in the area of global finance. Professor Kenneth A. Froot will be the first incumbent of the André R. Jakurski Professorship of Business Administration.
Jakurski, a native of Brazil, is the first Latin American to endow a chair at the School. After graduating from HBS as a Baker Scholar, he worked for a number of years at Unibanco, Brazil's third largest bank, including service as executive director. In 1983, he and three partners founded Pactual, a Rio brokerage firm. During a period of financial uncertainty in the region, Jakurski oversaw the firm's growth and transformation into what is now a full-service investment bank. In 1998, Jakurski sold his shares in Banco Pactual to start a global hedge fund, JGP Nextar.
Professor Froot has been an HBS faculty member since 1993. He currently serves as a Director of Research and teaches courses in capital markets, international finance, and risk management. He received a BA from Stanford in 1980 and a Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied international finance.
Froot's research and publications span a variety of topics in international finance, including securitization of insurance risks (particularly those linked to catastrophes), risk management for corporations and financial institutions, and asset allocation for investors. He is a founding partner of Emerging Markets Finance, LLC, an investment management and advisory firm. Froot has served as a consultant to many companies, countries, and institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the staff of the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers.
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HBS professor Michael Tushman has been named the first incumbent of the Paul R.
Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professorship of Business Administration. Tushman is
internationally recognized for his work on the relations between technological
change, executive leadership, and organization adaptation, and the management of R&D
laboratories. At HBS, he teaches courses in managing organizations, innovation, and
international competitiveness. He is a consultant and an instructor in corporate
executive education programs around the world. In addition, Tushman has served on the
boards of many scholarly journals and in elected positions at the Academy of
Management.
Before joining the HBS faculty in 1998, Tushman taught most recently at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, where he was honored for excellence and innovation in the classroom, and as a visiting professor at both MIT and INSEAD. He holds degrees from Northeastern University (BSEE), Cornell University (MS), and MIT's Sloan School of Management (Ph.D.).
Tushman's professorship, conceived by the Class of 1942 to commemorate its 50th Reunion, was established in 1994. Recently renamed to honor HBS professor emeritus Paul R. Lawrence (MBA 2/'47, DCS '50) for his many contributions to the School during his remarkable career, the chair is intended to support research and scholarship in the area of leadership.
Tushman's expertise in organizations recalls the earlier contributions that Lawrence made with his pioneering work in the field. Perhaps best known for his landmark volume Organization and Environment (with HBS professor Jay W. Lorsch), Lawrence also produced the definitive work on matrix organizations (with Stanley Davis). Lawrence, who retired in 1991, remains active with his own research and as a research mentor to younger faculty.
As noted briefly in the last issue of the Bulletin, two distinguished members of the HBS faculty, C. Roland Christensen and Raymond Vernon, passed away last August. Highlights of their illustrious careers follow.
One of the founders of the field of business strategy and the world's leading authority on case-method teaching, C. Roland ("Chris") Christensen (MBA 3/'43, DCS '53) was the Robert Walmsley University Professor, Emeritus. He died on August 28 in Nashville, Tennessee, from complications following open-heart surgery. He was 80 years old.
Remembering Christensen, HBS Dean Kim B. Clark called him "a pioneer in turning the classroom into a transformational experience and in preparing leaders for both business and society. An extraordinary teacher and human being," Clark continued, "he made an indelible mark on the history of this institution." Harvard University President Neil L. Rudenstine added, "He was one of Harvard's, and the world's, rare human beings, capable of guiding discussions, courses, or institutions with the kind of ingenuity that is born of deep knowledge and experience."
Christensen began his career on the HBS faculty in 1946, and although he formally retired in 1990, he continued to write, teach, and offer seminars on case-method teaching until the last months of his life. Thousands of his students, including HBS professor Michael E. Porter, have never forgotten the impact he had on their lives. "His commitment to ideas and his personal interest in me were the reasons I considered an academic career and developed a passion for research," said Porter, who holds an endowed professorship named after his mentor.
Born on August 17, 1919, Christensen grew up in Iowa City and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1941. After earning his MBA at Harvard, he served in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps from 1943 to 1946 before returning to HBS to continue his education and launch his teaching career. In the mid-1950s, he played a major role in developing the concept of corporate strategy as the organizing principle for a revised version of the School's Business Policy course.
Named a full professor in 1958 and the first George F. Baker, Jr., Professor of Business Administration in 1963, Christensen began the second major phase of his career in 1968, when Dean George P. Baker asked him to cochair a program to help other HBS professors improve their teaching capabilities. Christensen and several other faculty members responded by writing numerous cases that focused on the skills discussion teachers must have to be effective.
Building on this HBS work, in the mid-1970s Christensen created two influential teaching seminars that were attended by doctoral candidates and professors from all of the Harvard faculties. He later worked with Harvard Medical School to introduce the discussion method into its curriculum and taught in several other parts of the University, including the graduate schools of Education, Law, and Public Health.
In recognition of his contributions to the entire Harvard teaching community, in 1984 then Harvard President Derek Bok named Christensen to a University Professorship, one of a small group of endowed chairs reserved for scholars whose work transcends a particular campus or academic department.
Christensen went on to become an important figure at Harvard University's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. Beyond Harvard, he served as a visiting professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the University of South Africa (Pretoria), and the Iran Center for Management (Tehran). He was part of a team of HBS professors whose advice to the top executives of Nestlé S.A. led to the creation of IMEDE, the European management school in Switzerland.
Christensen served on many boards and was the author or coauthor of numerous case studies and books, including Teaching and the Case Method. The recipient of numerous honors, Christensen received the HBS Distinguished Service Award in 1993. The Harvard MBA Class of 1963 paid tribute to Christensen by establishing a professorship in his name, and the University of Utah's business school will soon open the C. Roland Christensen Center, a facility designed for case-method teaching that was the vision of one of his former students.
A memorial service was held for Christensen on November 5 at Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. Donations in his memory may be sent to the HBS Fund for Compassionate Support, which helps members of the HBS community, particularly secretarial staff and research associates, who are in need of temporary financial assistance.
Raymond Vernon, the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs, Emeritus, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, died on August 26 due to complications from cancer. He was 85. Vernon, who served on the HBS faculty for nineteen years, was a key member of the Marshall Plan team and a central player in the development of the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, among numerous other achievements in a career notable for its global impact.
"Ray Vernon was one of the most influential scholars of his generation, a true pioneer in the study of multinational corporations and the international economy," said Dean Kim B. Clark. "An inspired teacher and gentle man, he was always eager to share his insights and wisdom with students and colleagues alike. A mentor to many members of our faculty, Ray inspired us all with the extraordinary quality of his work and his life."
Born on September 1, 1913, in New York City, Vernon studied at City College of New York, where he received his BA cum laude in 1933. He earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1941 from Columbia University. He then spent 24 years at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of State working on aspects of the postwar recovery of Japan and Europe. He helped negotiate Japan into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and secured nondiscriminatory treatment for Japanese exports.
Vernon's role in Japan's postwar recovery and development was recognized by the Japanese government when he was decorated with the Order of the Rising Sun, Third Class - one of the highest honors bestowed on a foreigner. In 1952, while acting director of the Office of Economic Defense and Trade Policy, he was in charge of controlling the trade of the Soviet-bloc countries and promoting trade in the free world. In recognition of his contributions leading to the integration of Europe, he received the State Department's Meritorious Service Award in 1952.
After more than twenty years of government service, Vernon became the planning and control director for Hawley and Hoops, Inc., the Newark firm that made M&M's chocolate candies. Committed to new product development, Vernon was in charge of coordinating the new M&M's chocolate-covered peanuts. The candy was a success, and Vernon was dubbed "the man who put the crunch in M&M's."
Vernon, who was the Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Business Management, joined the HBS faculty in 1959 as a professor of international trade and investment. In 1965 he was asked to direct the School's Multinational Enterprise Project to study the operations of U.S.- and foreign-based multinationals. Vernon's team looked at these organizations in terms of finance, organization, production, marketing, and business-government relations, and by 1976, the project had produced a database on hundreds of companies and a bibliography of 19 books, 28 doctoral dissertations, and 184 articles. While holding the Johnson chair at HBS, Vernon simultaneously held the Dillon professorship in Harvard's Government Department.
After retiring from the HBS faculty, Vernon joined the Kennedy School in 1981 and continued his work on multinational enterprises, the global trading system, privatization, and regulation. A wonderful and exacting teacher, his classes drew students from across the University. He was in the midst of putting the finishing touches on the syllabus for his fall course at the time of his death.
In addition to his life in academia, Vernon was a member of the Economic Policy Council of the U.S.-United Nations Association, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a director of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Academy of International Business.
The author of numerous books and articles, Vernon was recently honored by the Academy of International Business for his 1998 book, In the Hurricane's Eye: The Troubled Prospects of Multinational Enterprises. A world class rower, Vernon competed in the Head of the Charles regatta for many years and broke the "indoor crash B sprints" (rowing machine) world record while in his eighties.
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