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Porter Appointed to University Professorship
The Road Taken: One Family's Worldly AdventureThe first in a series of occasional articles on HBS graduates who have taken a leave from their careers to explore personally enriching projects off the beaten track. For some busy executives, spending quality time with the family means dinner at home a few nights a week and maybe attending an occasional Saturday soccer game with cell phone at the ready. But for Dick Simon (MBA ’80), his wife, and three children, last year quality time meant — among other memorable adventures — camping together at 12,000 feet under a full moon on a snowfield in Bhutan, drifting to sleep to the sound of monks chanting at a nearby monastery.
The decision to take Alex, Katie, and Ben (ages 10, 8, and 6) out of school for a year wasn’t hard, says Simon, the owner of RSI, Inc., a real estate investment and commercial development firm based in Newton, Massachusetts. “We knew they’d be very excited to learn about volcanoes, for instance, when they could be right there, seeing a real one,” he notes. But just laying the groundwork for such an extended absence took close to a year. To gear up, Patty worked with the children’s teachers to set up lesson plans so the kids could be “homeschooled” during the trip. “Patty created thirty lesson packets for each child,” explains Simon. “The kids also interacted regularly with their classmates and teachers through e-mail.” Arranging for schoolwork on the road is one thing, but what about running a company? That was the question Simon heard most often from his HBS classmates when he took a quick detour from the trip to attend his 20th Reunion last spring. Simon, who admits to “evangelizing” about the joys of family travel, has some simple advice for interested peers. With a little effort, he says, it was possible to extricate himself gradually from direct responsibility on projects at work. Simon explains that it’s a matter of logistics — of planning ahead. “If you were suddenly sick for a few months or if you had to care for someone else, you’d make room in your work to do that,” he reasons. “It’s the same with a trip like this. You have to organize your life to make it happen. By far the hardest part is making a commitment.” With school and work taken care of, the family arranged to rent out their house while they were gone and set up a Web site so that friends and family could follow them on their journey through Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Japan, China, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and several countries in Europe. For others considering such an undertaking, Simon cautions, “First, recognize that this is a family trip, not just a trip for you and your spouse. It has to be oriented toward everyone. If you plan to have a great time with your kids, then it will work.” The family slept in tents, hotels, lodges, and palaces. They ate steamed duck tongues, caterpillars, gazelle, and crocodile. They hiked through rain forests in Costa Rica and across high mountain passes in the Himalayas. They camped on the Serengeti surrounded by wild animals and slept in Japanese ryokans. Simon says the benefits of the trip are long lasting. “It put a lot of things in perspective,” he notes. “When you’re out in the world like that, you’re an island,” Simon continues. “It really brought our family together and made us understand how important it is to share experiences. This trip was a reawakening.” — Margie Kelley (Visit the Simon family’s detailed travel journal at www.simonfamily.org.) RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE Teele Hall Dedication
HBS Dean Kim B. Clark recalled Dean Teele’s contributions to the growth of the School and noted that Teele Hall is an important fixture as HBS and the University begin to expand their presence on the Boston side of the Charles. Also offering tributes and remembrances were HBS professor emeritus Ray A. Goldberg and Dean Teele’s son Tony. Teele Hall houses some 150 staff members from External Relations, Executive Education, and other administrative departments that formerly occupied buildings on the main HBS campus. The original Teele Hall, which is located behind Baker Library, will now be known as South Hall. RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE HBSi Combines HBS Content with State-of-the-Art Technology
HBSi aims to be the world’s premier source for custom executive education offerings that use interactive, Internet-based instruction; for online materials in business education; and for online access to the intellectual capital of HBS. It draws upon the breadth of the HBS faculty as well as the unparalleled resources of Baker Library. HBSi’s products will complement classroom Executive Education programs at HBS or at client companies, ranging from individualized online offerings to comprehensive “suites” of courses that utilize a variety of media, as well as participating faculty and live interactive activities. Emphasizing critical management skills in a just-in-time and personalized way, HBSi will shorten the time between the creation of leading-edge business knowledge and its dissemination to executives. “HBSi’s winning combination of e-learning technology and seasoned educators will extend the reach and impact of the School to every level of a firm and to all corners of the world,” said HBS professor W. Earl Sasser, Jr., who will serve as chief content officer and chairman of HBSi. “We believe that through the power of HBSi’s custom education approach, we can help nurture an accomplished and influential group of managers and leaders who seek to improve their personal, organizational, and business performance.” “HBSi will add many new dimensions and capabilities to the School’s already extensive portfolio of custom Executive Education programs,” added Robert Fogel, the former executive director of Executive Education who will serve as president and CEO of the new venture. “It will allow us to create new hybrid learning models — both face-to-face and electronic — in a world where place and space continue to blend.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE HBS and Stanford in Online Collaboration
The collaborative program will involve HBS, HBS Interactive, and the e-Learning Division of HBS Publishing. Stanford’s participants will include the Graduate School of Business, the School of Engineering, and the Learning Technologies organization. RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE |
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Following their love of travel, their desire to spend meaningful family time
together, and the belief that a trip around the world would offer their kids an
education they couldn’t possibly get in a classroom, Simon and his wife, Patty,
embarked in 1999 on the odyssey of a lifetime. They journeyed with their children to
25 countries in ten months, starting in Costa Rica in November 1999 and ending in
Norway last August.
Last October, the School’s five-story office building at 230 Western Avenue was
formally renamed Teele Hall, in honor of HBS Dean Stanley F. Teele, who led the
School from 1955 to 1962. Present for the ceremony was a contingent of Teele family
members, including great-grandchildren of the late Dean.
Building on its commitment to delivering innovative custom education programs to
corporations around the world, last November the School launched HBS Interactive
(HBSi). The wholly owned nonprofit organization will pursue an expanded mandate to
combine face-to-face executive education with state-of-the-art e-learning technology.
“HBSi is the magic that melds classroom teaching, long a hallmark of the HBS
experience, with the creative use of the latest e-learning tools — combining and
customizing them to offer a total solution for client organizations,” said Dean
Kim B. Clark. “This new entity reflects Harvard Business School’s tradition
of providing transformational educational experiences for managers and leaders at
every level of an enterprise.”
HBS and Stanford University are teaming up to explore online executive management
education. The new collaboration between these pioneers in electronic learning is
designed to create a distribution platform for nondegree courses. “Stanford and
HBS share a common mission: to educate leaders around the world,” said Dean Kim
B. Clark in announcing the partnership in late November. “We also share a
commitment to using technology in management education. We are enthusiastic about the
opportunity to deliver online an incomparable management education portfolio to
executives and leaders worldwide.” His counterpart at Stanford Business School,
Dean Robert Joss, added, “The worldwide need for management skills has never
been greater, and the demand for innovative approaches to management education is
high. The partnership will offer good prospects for developing new models in both
educational content and delivery.”