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Putting Entrepreneurial Skills to Work in City Hall
Now teaching HBS’s first course in “public entrepreneurship,” Professor of Management Practice Mitchell Weiss (MBA 2004) served as chief of staff for late Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, helping lead what the New York Times called “one of the greatest transformations of any modern American city.”
In the video, Weiss explains how his service to the City of Boston became the basis for a new HBS course.
“The late Mayor Menino, my boss, was fond of saying that ‘the government is about helping people.’ That's what we did for four years. I was his chief of staff [during] his final term. We worked hard to help people, to make a difference in their lives, to make Boston a better place for jobs, a better place for families, and to give chances to kids to reach their full potential. We set, I hope, a bit of a standard for cities around the country and around the world too. I know when he left office, the New York Times had called it ‘one of the greatest transformation in any modern American city’ that he'd led. I think I helped make a difference for being by his side for at least part of that.
“Since then, I came here to HBS; I'm on the faculty now. I created and teach Harvard Business School's first course on public entrepreneurship. I said to my students in late January, ’Good morning and welcome to Public Entrepreneurship.’ It was the first time that those words were uttered in any business school in this country. I think that we're hopefully making a difference in that way, educating them to invent a difference in the world as public leaders and as people who collaborate with them.
“I would love it if, a decade from now and maybe sooner, people thought about becoming public entrepreneurs, about leading in that fashion, either in the public sector or from the private sector, in the same way that [today] they envision being social entrepreneurs.”
(Published September 2015)
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