Dean Clark on the New Academic Year HBS Alumnae Chart Career Choices and Transitions Ready for Takeoff: Web Portal Enters Second Phase Ethics Fellowship Announced Porter Directs New Institute at HBS The Eyes Have It: Business Plan Winners Pursue Global Vision Gordon Celebrates a Century My Lunch with Jack: Student Dines with GE's Welch Porter Directs New Institute at HBS A new Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness (ISC), directed by Michael E. Porter, opened at HBS in July. The interdisciplinary ISC is dedicated to enlarging and disseminating the body of research on competition and strategy pioneered over the last two decades by Porter, Harvard’s Bishop William Lawrence University Professor. “This is a tremendously exciting undertaking,” declared HBS Dean Kim B. Clark. “Under Michael Porter’s leadership, the ISC will quickly become a highly valuable and visible source of important ideas, information, and analysis that will help extend the reach and impact of Harvard’s intellectual capital.” Research at the ISC will span a wide array of topics, such as regional cluster development, the impact of the Internet on competitive positioning, antitrust policy, and strategies for philanthropic organizations. In pursuing these avenues, the institute aims to collaborate with interested faculty and related programs in different parts of Harvard and beyond. The ISC (www.isc.hbs.edu) will focus its activities on three principal areas: the study of competition and its implications for company strategy; the competitiveness of nations, regions, and cities; and the relationship between competition and society. In addition to Porter, the core ISC team will consist of eight research and administrative staff members; the ISC will also host visiting scholars and researchers. Nonresident scholars from around the globe will also contribute to its efforts, and the institute will work closely with other academic institutions and nonprofit organizations. Some of the ISC’s major projects include Baltic Rim Competitiveness, the Innovation Index, the Global Competitiveness Report, Environmental Policy and Competitiveness, and Japanese Competitiveness. In these and a number of other areas, the ISC seeks to develop new theory, assemble bodies of data to test and apply theory, and share its ideas broadly with business, government, academia, and nongovernmental organizations. The institute also intends to produce curricular materials (related to the microeconomic foundations of economic development) for use at Harvard and other institutions, as well as for dissemination using Web-based technologies. It further aims, in collaboration with HBS, to offer specialized educational programs for top-level business and government leaders. “The ISC seeks to foster the integration of competition and corporate strategy with economic policy and social development in ways that not only advance theory but also connect with actual practice,” Porter observed. “It will be a vehicle for partnering with scholars throughout Harvard University as well as with leaders in academic, corporate, and public life from around the world.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE   The Eyes Have It: Business Plan Winners Pursue Global Vision   It is estimated that one billion people around the world need vision correction but don’t have glasses because they are too expensive or simply unavailable. The resulting losses in productivity and self-sufficiency may reach as much as $70 billion annually, experts say. Neil Houghton (MBA ’01) hadn’t really thought about this problem until he visited Peru and noticed that hardly anybody there wore glasses. Back at HBS, in Associate Professor Stefan Thomke’s elective course Managing Product Development, Houghton started developing glasses that would be inexpensive to produce and ship and that could be prescribed, assembled, and fitted in the field by trained microentrepreneurs rather than by optometrists or ophthalmologists. The next step was to form a “Low Cost Available Eyeglasses” (LCAE) team and enter the HBS Business Plan Contest, which this year for the first time had a separate social-enterprise track to complement its traditional business competition. Houghton was joined by Ashley Magargee and Naomi Weinberg (both MBA ’01), along with Marcel Acosta, a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and Rachel Ross, the enterprise’s first employee, who conducted field research in Nicaragua. Last spring, the plan designed by the LCAE team, whose advisors included Thomke, entrepreneurs, consultants, product designers, and ophthalmologists, was selected as the winning entry over ten other social-enterprise submissions. For many people in the developing world, a pair of eyeglasses can cost more than a month’s wages. That’s because much of the world relies on highly trained specialists who use sophisticated and expensive equipment, in a market that provides consumers with choice and fashion in eyewear. By contrast, with the Low Cost Available Eyeglasses solution, a microentrepreneur borrows from a microfinance institution, such as ACCION International or Grameen Bank, to pay for a testing kit and eyeglass supplies. The entrepreneur, who also undergoes a one-week training session, will then be able to sell eyeglasses for less than five dollars a pair, with a margin of about one dollar to repay the loan and earn a profit. The LCAE team is in the process of selecting countries in which to operate, examining factors such as market size, regulation, and access to suitable microfinance institutions. Houghton emphasizes that Low Cost Available Eyeglasses is an enterprise, not a charity: “We’re trying to set up a system that, as it becomes more useful to people and is used more, will be inherently better funded because it’s funded by the end user.” Adapted from an article, by Andrea Schulman and Carla Tishler, posted on the HBS Working Knowledge portal www.workingknowledge.hbs.edu. RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE   Gordon Celebrates a Century On July 21, Albert H. Gordon (MBA ’25) celebrated his 100th birthday with a group of about thirty family members and friends at Fishers Island, New York. In honor of the day and as a tribute to Gordon, a lifelong athlete who ran his first marathon at the age of 81, the Gordon family organized a 100-mile relay race that began at 4:30 a.m. and finished at 8:30 p.m. Twenty family and community members participated, each running four to eight miles. Gordon, the legendary Wall Street figure whose career at Kidder, Peabody spanned six decades, was in fine spirits and excellent health. He still keeps an office at Deltec Asset Management in New York, a Kidder spin-off run by his son, John R. Gordon (MBA ‘74). At an office celebration at Deltec, Gordon’s nephew snapped the photo of his uncle (at left) two days prior to his birthday. On campus last year for his 75th Reunion, Gordon told the Bulletin his secret for how to live a long and happy life: “Keep moving.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE     Lunch with Jack: Student Dines with GE's Welch   Few student exploits over the summer could match the power lunch enjoyed by Reginald Sanders (HBS ’02), who broke bread and talked business with Jack Welch, the legendary force behind General Electric. Sanders earned the honor of dining with Welch by placing the winning bid of $3,200 in an auction sponsored by Section NG that was held on campus last April to benefit Summer Search Boston (SSB). A nonprofit organization, SSB provides scholarships for summer programs to high-school students who demonstrate strength of character and leadership abilities. “I received help to get where I am,” says Sanders, a Tennessee native who graduated from Florida A&M University with a degree in accounting. “It was great to be able to give back to an organization that could have a similar impact on someone’s life.” By his own account, the two hours Sanders spent with Welch left a deep impression. The pair met for a catered lunch in a room next to Welch’s office on the 53rd floor of the GE Building at Rockefeller Plaza. “We talked nonstop,” says Sanders, who spent his summer in Boston at the investment management firm of Gannett Welsh & Kotler. “There was lots of back-and-forth, just as you’d have in a normal conversation.” In addition to counseling Sanders on how to proceed with his planned career in the investment management industry, Welch offered a sneak preview of his new autobiography, Jack: Straight from the Gut. “He advised me to start off at a larger firm that would give me more access to management teams,” recalls Sanders. “That way you can get to know the people who are responsible for a company’s strategy.” Other topics included GE’s bid for Honeywell and Welch’s confidence in his successor, Jeffrey R. Immelt (MBA ’82). “It was a rare opportunity to learn from someone who has a long-term record of success in business,” notes Sanders, who says Welch offered to set up meetings for him with managers in the investment management field. “This is why I came to HBS — to meet people and take advantage of experiences like this. It’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE