Better Mousetraps: At Product Design Fair, Student Ideas Get Real
The Future Is Now: 21st-Century Business Pondered at HBS Forum
Executives Convene to Discuss Consumer-Driven Health Care
Health Industry Alumni Launch New Organization
Spangler Center in Top Form
OPM Honors Marty Marshall with Professorship
HBS Honored for Addressing Business and Societal Issues
Alumni Ticker: A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News
A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News
"Information is no longer power, it's the interpretation of information that is important," Martin Sorrell (MBA '68), chief executive of London-based WPP Group, told The Times of London (November 20, 1999). "Our clients are in an overcapacity situation in virtually every industry in which they operate. As a result, branding becomes more and more important - differentiating what they do and what they sell. That's good for us, because we're in the differentiation business."
WPP is one of the world's largest advertising and marketing-services companies and includes firms such as Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, J. Walter Thompson, and Hill & Knowlton. Through his clients, Sorrell has his finger on the pulse of a wide range of industries. Speaking of the Internet, he observed that "the great analogy for the Web is the nineteenth century flotation of the railroads, where every issue opened at three times the placing price. You had this financial bubble but it doesn't alter the fact that the underlying commercial activity - the way we live, the way we travel, the way we communicate - fundamentally changed as a result of the railroads. The same thing is happening as a result of the Web."
Sorrell also noted the irony of investment professionals with "all their portfolios in traditional businesses, who are now running hotfoot to invest in all these new models that threaten to destabilize and disintermediate all these traditional investments. Maybe this is the ultimate form of socialism."
In 1994, Sarah Hoit (MBA '93) became director of business planning in the White House Office of National Service, designing and implementing AmeriCorps, the Clinton administration's $600 million national- and community-service organization. As she worked with service issues, it became clear to her that one of the biggest problems affecting the country's youth was the number of children being left on their own after school hours. That realization inspired Hoit to look further into the situation - and do something about it. As she told the Chicago Tribune (October 27, 1999), "We are losing our kids after school. Children need quality after-school activities."
After completing her White House service in 1995, Hoit became managing director of Sylvan Learning Systems, a national supplemental education company. With that experience under her belt, in 1997 she founded Explore, Inc., a Baltimore-based company that provides before- and after-school programs at eighty schools in nine states. Half the programs are in poorer school districts and are supported by federal funds.
With a student-teacher ratio of 10:1 and a specific curriculum for each program, Explore's approach to learning emphasizes teamwork and fun. "Getting the ball down the field together is a lot more efficient than trying to do it yourself," Hoit said. "A lesson in teamwork is an important lesson to learn early on." To that end, students undertake community-service projects and develop businesses (creating and selling calendars, for example) to raise money for charities. Children in Explore's programs have already shown improvement in math, reading, and behavior.
With revenues of $600 million in 1998, the Szczecin shipyard in Poland is one of that country's most notable post-Cold War economic successes, according to an article in USA Today (November 8, 1999). The yard's turnaround is all the more remarkable for having been achieved without benefit of foreign investors or foreign capital.
In 1991, due in large part to defaults on payments by customers in the Soviet Union and other crumbling communist economies, the shipyard found itself $260 million in debt, hounded by five thousand angry creditors, and targeted for shutdown by the Polish government. Enter Robert Pollan (MBA '88), then thirty years old, a man with a plan that became the blueprint for Szczecin's transformation. "It was a unique moment in history," said Pollan. "My parents were Polish; there were lots of emotional reasons to try and help."
Pollan's plan was executed by the shipyard's new director, Kryzstof Piotrowski, a former worker at the yard who had been dismissed six years earlier for political reasons and had gone on to get a doctorate in maritime engineering. Piotrowski performed wonders, restructuring the yard's debt, appeasing creditors, and focusing on building midsize container ships, for which there was steady demand.
The Szczecin shipyard saga became the subject of a 1995 Harvard Business Review article touting it as a model of post-communism management. But yard officials aren't resting on their laurels as they face ongoing challenges stemming from industrywide overcapacity and stiff competition from Asian shipbuilders.
According to the headline in the Wall Street Journal (October 26, 1999), Gregory Slayton (MBA '90) is a "Silicon Valley Hybrid: A Boss Who Makes Others' Ideas Pay Off." Slayton, president and CEO of ClickAction, Inc., an Internet marketing-services company, is credited with reviving the slumping firm (formerly MySoftware, Inc.). Since coming on board in 1997, Slayton has cut costs and sharpened strategy at the company. But perhaps his most significant impact has been rallying the firm's demoralized employees, largely through the force of his energy and enthusiasm. He also reinvigorated the work force by making them shareholders in the company. "If you own something," Slayton told the Journal, "you take better care of it. Whenever I take over at a company, I make everyone a significant shareholder."
Prior to HBS, Slayton spent seven years in Asia and Africa running an orphanage and a drought-relief operation, among other activities. "I'm the only CEO who flew a bush plane and rode camels for work," he said. After contracting acute viral hepatitis in 1987, he returned to the United States and enrolled at HBS. There followed stints at McKinsey, Paramount Studios, and two small Silicon Valley companies before his accession to his current post.
Slayton sees himself as an "implementer" of other people's good ideas; his value, he believes, lies in his drive to make things happen, willingness to make decisions when information is limited, and ability to forge trusting relationships. He's drawn to situations where he believes those traits can be utilized. "I always look for opportunities where there's a vacuum that my particular skills can fill," Slayton said.
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