High Stakes on the High Seas

In 1998, on the day after Christmas, 115 sailboats crossed the starting line in Sydney, Australia, bound for Tasmania, a 630-mile dash across the Bass Strait, one of the world’s most treacherous bodies of water. The fabled Sydney to Hobart race went ahead despite predictions of hurricane force winds; when it was over, only 43 boats had crossed the finish line. Six sailors had died, more than fifty others had to be rescued, and 12 boats sank or had to be abandoned.

G. Bruce Knecht (MBA ’86), a Hong Kong­based foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, chronicles this disaster in a new book, The Proving Ground. Knecht made ten trips to Australia to research what it was like on board three of the boats, including Sayonara, skippered by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, one of the wealthiest men in the world. Knecht has written a real page-turner — “a sailing masterpiece...The Perfect Storm of blue-water sailboat racing,” says Walter Cronkite. The book captures the fury and drama of a killer storm at sea while illuminating the reasons why some people are driven to risk death in the name of recreation. Anticipating brisk sales, publisher Little Brown is planning a hefty first printing of the book, due out this month.

On the Inside

Top billing, of course, goes to her boss, George W. Bush (MBA ’75), but Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao (MBA ’79) is also making a name for herself in the new administration. Chao, who has previously served in several government posts and as president of United Way of America, arrived in the United States from Taiwan as an eight-year-old speaking no English, the New York Times (February 26, 2001) reported. “I was very lucky to grow up in a family that believed in hard work and education,” said Chao, who favors outreach and access over minority quotas and numerical goals. “The American philo-sophy is equal opportunity for everyone, but you can’t guarantee results. We are a meritocracy.” Her own experience with education is one reason why Chao, a 1993 recipient of an HBS Alumni Achievement Award, wants to “help promote and encourage workers to get into the practice of lifelong learning.”

Other HBS alumni are also feeling welcome inside the Beltway. Among them is longtime conservative tax strategist Grover Norquist (MBA ’81), president of Americans for Tax Reform, who “has the Bush administration’s ear,” the New York Times (March 19, 2001) declared. Indeed, Norquist said, “There isn’t an us and them with this administration. They is us. We is them.” Of the conservative movement, Norquist observed, “Part of what we’re doing is bringingŠthe business community in. They should be an integral part of the center-right coalition. What does the business community want? Deregulation. Free trade. Tax cuts.”

Norquist dismissed those observers who contend that social and economic conservatives often are a mismatch. “It’s like the physicists who tell you bumblebees can’t fly,” he said. “But bumblebees fly.”

A Match Made in Heaven

Back in the 1980s, while working as a high-priced management consultant, Jim Koch (MBA ’74) decided what this country really needed was an exceptional glass of beer. He drained his savings, maxed out his credit cards, and using an old family recipe perfected in his kitchen sink, launched Samuel Adams Boston Lager, the first successful U.S. “craft beer” and the impetus for the microbrewery revolution.

Koch, who is chairman of The Boston Beer Company, was similarly unconventional in assessing the talents of one of his executive hires, Martin Roper (MBA ’90). Koch first met Roper at a wedding in 1993 where he watched admiringly as Roper deftly managed a social encounter involving a former girlfriend, according to the Boston Business Journal (February 23­March 1, 2001).

“You go to Harvard and you realize smart people are a dime a dozen,” Koch observed. “When I saw how he handled what I thought was an impossible situation, I said, ‘Yeah, Martin, go.’” Six months later, Koch offered Roper a job as vice president of operations. A Baker Scholar, the England-born Roper came to Boston Beer in 1994 after specializing in turning around small Midwestern manufacturing companies; last January, he was named CEO. Intent on having Samuel Adams perceived as a world-class product, Roper wants to move Boston Beer beyond its image as a local craft-brewer. “We’re already distancing ourselves from that,” he observed. “We need to take our brand to the next level.”

But It's All Right Now (In Fact, It's a Gas)

In 1978, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal in Boston Harbor was unceremoniously shut down because of contract disputes with its Algerian suppliers. In 1987, the terminal’s owner, Cabot Corp., tapped Gordon Shearer (MBA ’78), “a determined geophysicist born and raised in Scotland,” to somehow revive the dormant business, stated a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal (March 13, 2001).

Seeking a new source of supply, Shearer eventually settled on Trinidad and Tobago, better known as the calypso capital of the Caribbean, because of its large reserves and relative proximity to New England. Industry observers thought his proposal for an LNG plant there, small by industry standards, was “totally harebrained,” Shearer recalled, but Trinidadian officials liked it. Three years of contentious negotiations with energy industry giants, who were needed as investors and suppliers for the project, ensued. One participant reported that Shearer “personally took them on and ran rings around them.” “The big oil companies are used to dealing with smaller players by keeping them in their place,” Shearer declared. “We had to be more proportionately noisy to make sure our interests weren’t swamped.” In 1999, the plant’s first shipment of LNG left for Boston.

Cabot recently sold all its LNG-related business for a handsome sum. Shearer has moved on to new challenges at Poten & Partners, a New York ship-brokerage and consulting firm where, rumor has it, he keeps a copy of The Little Engine That Could on his office shelf.