VC Luminary John Doerr: Education Reform Critical to Success of New Economy
Priceline's Jay Walker: The Future is Wow
Student and Business Leaders Look to Africa's Future
The HBS Show Must Go On: STARt-up WARS Continues Tradition of Smash Hits
Harbus Foundation Supports Community Projects
HBS Community Reaches Out
HBS Business Plan Contestants Pin Their Hopes on the Internet
Of Dugouts and Sweatshops: Robert Reich Urges MBAs to Keep "Public Ethics" in Mind
Professors Fox, Mace Remembered

ast February, in his first speech at HBS in six years, L. John Doerr (MBA '76), a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and one of the world's foremost venture capitalists, confessed that he stumbled into his line of work with no elaborate strategy in mind. "I just wanted to build a company with a few of my friends," Doerr told an audience of nearly one thousand HBS students who had gathered for his presentation, offered as part of the Social Enterprise Speaker Series.

Since joining Kleiner Perkins in 1980, Doerr has played a major role in planting the seeds of the new economy, working with start-ups such as Amazon.com, drugstore.com, Netscape, Excite, and Sun Microsystems. Through the years, Doerr and his partners have invested more than $1.3 billion in 250 technology ventures in the United States, creating companies that have generated more than 190,000 new jobs and annual sales in excess of $73 billion.

After chronicling the landscape of the new economy, Doerr remarked, "You probably figured I was going to come here and talk about technology and venture capital. But I think education is the biggest problem we have as a nation, and we have yet to face up to it." Doerr explained his focus on education and literacy by saying that "education is the key" for a new economy characterized by, and based upon, lifelong learning, multiple careers, and the acquisition and creation of intellectual property. His concern, he said, stemmed from troubling data that suggest that many Americans will be unable to participate in an information-based economy.

"Forty percent of eight-year-olds can't read," he observed. "If you can't read, you can't run a Web browser. You just fall further and further behind." Asserting that the American educational system is in crisis, he argued for smaller classes, longer school days, and lots of innovation. "The answer is not just more PCs in the classroom," Doerr emphasized, as he called for the development of more charter schools and stricter standards of school accountability. He stressed the importance of private-sector organizations in helping public schools improve their curricula and their methods of working with disadvantaged children.

Doerr is cofounder of the New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF), a venture philanthropy fund created by technology venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Its aim is to help transform public education by developing a nationwide network of entrepreneurs and educators. The NSVF will leverage the expertise and resources of these new-economy pioneers in order to assist promising nonprofit and for-profit K-12 education ventures.

"The NSVF," Doerr explained, "is not about money -- it's a network of advisors for systemic change" that imports the philosophy of true incubation and venture capital into the education sector. "This is just a seed fund," he said. "Twenty million dollars won't make a dent, but the entrepreneurs will."

Doerr also spoke of his lobbying efforts in California, where he has urged state lawmakers to support legislation favorable to charter schools and to repeal laws that impede them. "Four million dollars and some lobbying efforts," he said, "resulted in one thousand schools and three billion dollars invested over ten years. That's big, scalable social change, and that's just one story. It's the kind of work that should go on throughout the country."

Addressing questions about the future of technology, Doerr stated that the Internet is not only the key to social change but also to economic growth and income redistribution on a scale not seen since the first Industrial Revolution. The wiring of the world with fiber-optic cable, he said, combined with the launching of a new generation of satellites, presents the potential for revolutions in communications and health care, as well as in education.

However, Doerr concluded, it's really too early to get a handle on the changes to come. "It feels like we're just milliseconds after the Big Bang," he said, "with only a few laws of physics in this new universe in place."

This article was based in part on material in the Harbus, reported by Susan Wolf (HBS '01).

Priceline's Jay Walker: The Future is Wow

The future of e-commerce will be shaped by a new generation of companies that can consistently deliver convenience, information, entertainment, and savings -- an as-yet-unrealized package that will have an impact summed up by Priceline.com founder and vice chairman Jay Walker in one word: "Wow."

Walker, who was invited by the student-led High Tech and New Media Club to speak at the School in March, equated the changes brought about by the Internet with the transformational effect the automobile, the telephone, and television have had on the U.S. economy and culture.

According to Walker, online stock trading and online auctions are the few places in e-commerce that approximate "wow" today. Noting that 30 percent of all securities trading is done by individual investors online, Walker said that the Web has turned the securities business upside down by providing online convenience, information, and savings. "An entire industry imploded," he asserted. "Now the industry is driven by the retail marketplace. And [online traders] are having fun." Indeed the "fun," or entertainment value, of e-commerce cannot be underestimated. "Even the front page of the Wall Street Journal has to be entertaining," Walker said.

Priceline.com, a consumer-to-business Web site launched in 1998, sells groceries using the same "name your price" scheme it uses to sell surplus airline tickets and hotel rooms to travelers. Online shoppers are treated to a computer-generated slot machine that virtually determines whether or not they get the items in their market basket for the price they are willing to pay.

The e-commerce companies that consistently deliver savings to their users will be the biggest leaders. "If it works, you havea Wal-Mart," Walker said. Although Wal-Mart may not be the most convenient place to shop ("7-Eleven is more convenient, but it doesn't have the retail share Wal-Mart has"), the discount retailer gained market supremacy by proclaiming, and delivering, "always the lowest price" -- typically by wringing out every possible cost factor in the supply chain.

"If consumers can save money, and suppliers can make money," Walker concluded, "then you have the future of e-commerce."

Students and Business Leaders Look to Africa's Future

"Africa in the New Millennium: Invest in the Future" was the theme of the 2000 HBS Africa Business Club conference, held on campus the first weekend in April. More than six hundred students and representatives from over two hundred organizations around the world participated in the event. The conference examined the business potential inherent in Africa's unparalleled natural resources, awe-inspiring geography, unexplored markets, and population of over seven hundred million.

Maurice Templesman, chairman of the Corporate Council on Africa, and The Monitor Company's Michael Fairbanks were featured speakers. Panel discussions focused on topics such as information technology, financial services, agribusiness, media and communication, infrastructure development, and social enterprise.