McArthur Hall Dedication
Conference Brings Global Perspective to Cape Town
Sixth Annual Cyberposium an SRO Success
Myra Hart Named to Professorship
Alumni Ticker: A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News
A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News
Have you heard the one about the minister and the stockbroker waiting in line at the Pearly Gates? St. Peter smiles and says to the stockbroker, "My son, take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Then he tells the minister, "Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Just a minute," says the minister. "The stockbroker gets a silken robe and a golden staff but I, a minister, only get a cotton robe and a wooden staff? How can this be?"
"Up here, we go by results," St. Peter replies. "While you preached, people slept; his clients, they prayed."
HBS's answer to Leno and Letterman, Larry Klein (MBA '80), who fully intends to keep his day job as an investment advisor, has recently packaged that and some two hundred other jokes to help financial professionals add a humorous spark to their presentations to prospective clients. "I've been doing financial seminars for fourteen years," Klein, president of NF Communications, Inc., told Business Wire (March 22, 1999), "and I have never been able to find a good source of humor and jokes for my speeches." Klein's new book and audiotape, 200 Greatest Jokes for Financial Professionals, is available on the Internet at www.nfcom.com/jokes.htm.
HBS classmates Humphrey Chen (MBA '96) and George Searle (MBA '96) first met in the HBS parking lot when Chen helped Searle recharge his U-Haul's dead battery. So it's fitting that the two would start a business, called ConneXus, for people who spend a lot of time in their cars. Recently, Chen and Searle began market tests for *CD ("Star CD"), their new cellular-phone service that identifies songs and artists for listeners who call wanting to know more about the music they've just heard on their car or home radio. The service then offers callers the opportunity to purchase the relevant CDs. The *CD service "enables real-time impulse buying," Chen told the Philadelphia Inquirer (February 11, 1999). "It is a lost sale if you can't act on it."
Currently being tested in Philadelphia, *CD uses computerized song-recognition technology that monitors radio broadcasts and frequencies and identifies songs as they air. Songs are scanned into a computer to create a digital "fingerprint," which is then matched against music played by radio stations monitored by ConneXus around the clock. When a caller presses "*CD" on her cellular phone and reports the station and approximate time she heard a song, she receives information about the song and how to purchase the CD on which it appears.
With the troubled Salt Lake City Winter Olympics Organizing Committee
sorely in need of a scandal-buster, there was little doubt about whom
the committee's board of trustees was going to call: Bain Capital CEO W.
Mitt Romney (MBA '74, JD '75). Although he is a Massachusetts resident,
Romney's Utah roots run deep: his ancestors journeyed west with Brigham
Young, his parents were raised in Utah, and he himself is a Brigham
Young University graduate with a second home in Utah.
Nonetheless, according to the Boston Globe (February 12, 1999), Romney was surprised to be chosen to take on the Organizing Committee's vacated CEO position. "Never in a million years had I thought about taking this job," he said. "The idea was completely foreign to me." But as the Globe reported, "The lure of the Olympic rings, the idea of returning to Utah on a near-spiritual mission, and the challenge of straightening out a $1.5 billion corporation proved irresistible."
Looking for a case of the same champagne that's served on the Orient Express? How about a piece of jewelry shaped like one of Dennis Rodman's tattoos? If it's a higher-priced, hard-to-find product or service, chances are you'll soon be able to find it at www.buyerweb.com, the site for a new Internet company founded by Teymour Farman-Farmaian (MBA '95) and Andrew Kosztyo (MBA '95).
A busy executive at Time Warner's RoadRunner cable modem group, Farman-Farmaian had been struggling to find a specialty sofa when the idea for BuyerWeb first hit him: Why not set up an Internet site where he could request what he needed and have merchants get back to him with an offer? Farman-Farmaian and Kosztyo have made that concept a reality, with BuyerWeb currently boasting some five hundred participating merchants (mostly small or specialty businesses) from fourteen different categories of products and services, including items such as cigars, coins, wine, and sports memorabilia.
"Say I want a pinot noir from California," Farman-Farmaian explained to the New York Post (February 28, 1999). "I name a price range and can add a description." BuyerWeb then contacts the appropriate merchants who have signed up with, and pay referral fees to, BuyerWeb. It's a win-win situation: customers get to choose the best of several offers, while the merchants build an Internet customer base, an otherwise difficult and expensive proposition for small businesses.
by Nancy O. Perry
Proposed Chair Would Honor African-American Business Pioneer
At a special reception in New York City in early March, a distinguished
group of friends, relatives, and admirers of the late H. Naylor Fitzhugh
(MBA '33) gathered at the home of Richard H. Jenrette (MBA '57) to
consider plans for the creation of a Harvard Business School
professorship in Fitzhugh's honor.
Fitzhugh, who passed away in 1992, graduated with honors from Harvard College in 1931, despite being forced to live off-campus because of his race. He was one of the first African Americans to attend HBS, where he excelled in his studies. Shunned by corporate recruiters, Fitzhugh began his career as an independent printing salesman in Washington, D.C., and established the New Negro Alliance, an organization intended to persuade companies doing business in black neighborhoods to hire employees from within those neighborhoods.
He then began a three-decade academic career at Howard University, where he helped to develop a business program by instituting a marketing department, advising business and marketing clubs, and organizing the school's Small Business Center. Switching to a corporate career in 1965, Fitzhugh joined Pepsi-Cola, where he designed and launched one of the first marketing efforts targeted at African Americans, thereby helping to establish that community as a lucrative mass market and contributing to the development of the concept of targeted marketing in corporate America.
A lifelong mentor to young African Americans, Fitzhugh was widely recognized for his community service activities. Among his many honors was the 1987 HBS Distinguished Service Award. The initiative to establish the Fitzhugh professorship is being cochaired by Dennis F. Hightower, HBS professor of management, and Nancy Lane (29th PMD), a vice president at Johnson & Johnson. Alumni who would like to learn more about the proposed professorship may contact Denise Rossman, associate director of Development (617-495-6284), or Louise Packard, director of Corporate Relations (617-496-6424).
Spangler Center Groundbreaking
With six inches of fresh snow underfoot, Dean Kim B. Clark and a hardy
assembly of HBS students, faculty, and staff welcomed a group of
distinguished guests to campus in late February to participate in a
groundbreaking ceremony for the Spangler Center. Boston Mayor Thomas M.
Menino and Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine were among those on hand
to officially launch construction of the Business School's new campus
center.
Due to the brisk weather, speakers' remarks were brief, but poignant. Dean Clark conveyed the School's gratitude to the Spangler family, whose generosity has made the project possible. Attending the event with his family, C.D. ("Dick") Spangler, Jr. (MBA '56), the retired president of the University of North Carolina, spoke eloquently of his family's respect for the School and his affection for the Boston area. In their remarks, both Rudenstine and Menino noted Harvard's long-standing relationship with the city of Boston. Menino cited the importance of higher education to the city's economy and praised HBS volunteer programs that benefit the nearby Taft Middle School and the Brighton-Allston YMCA.
The speakers then put their ceremonial shovels to work at the site of the multipurpose facility, on the quad behind Aldrich Hall. When completed in the fall of 2000, the Spangler Center will provide new space for student services, dining and meeting rooms, student organizations, administrative offices, and commercial services, such as the Harvard Coop and post office. Robert A.M. Stern Architects is designing the building, which will be in the Georgian style, similar to many other buildings on campus.
What's in a Building?During a day of events surrounding the groundbreaking for the Spangler Center, a brainteaser was presented to interested sidewalk superintendents who had gathered for the occasion. The idea was to guess the correct amounts of the various building materials needed to construct the facility. The numbers are based on estimates from Spangler Center project managers William Barry & Son. Test your construction aptitude - match the right number amounts to the relevant building materials or building detail. Answers are below.
ANSWERS: 1f; 2b; 3a; 4c; 5d; 6e |