| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : OCTOBER 18, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| SPECIAL REPORT -- EXECUTIVE EDUCATION
Where Big Shots Learn to Think Like Hotshots Can entrepreneurial skills be taught? Babson is taking a crack at it What with increased competition from nimble e-commerce startups and the escalating flight of key talent to dot.coms, it's a trying time for Big Business. With even such corporate heavyweights as Andersen Consulting Chief Executive George T. Shaheen leaving for the likes of online grocer Webvan Group, many in Corporate America question whether bigger still means better. For big company execs who have not yet abandoned ship, however, today's fast-moving new economy has intensified the search for ways to make their giant, often bureaucratic, corporations more entrepreneurial. And to get the help they need, many are turning to executive education. According to New York-based consultant Corporate University Xchange Inc., company-run universities are spending an average of $3.4 million annually on leadership and innovation programs, some $750,000 of which is going toward entrepreneurial training. But can classroom learning actually teach an old-school exec more entrepreneurial tricks? Business schools such as the Wellesley (Mass.)-based Babson School of Executive Education think so. Rated top provider of entrepreneurship-related skills in BUSINESS WEEK's 1999 executive education survey, Babson has been teaching undergrads and MBA students how to start a business for 25 years. Five years ago, it began teaching courses on corporate ''intrapreneurship'' aimed specifically at execs from large companies. The goal: to inculcate a ''startup'' mentality by teaching divisional managers how to spot the ways their companies may stifle risk-taking or discourage them from tackling problems from a broader, companywide perspective. Eliminate those roadblocks, Babson figures, and its graduates will be able to develop new businesses far more efficiently. That's the key message behind Babson's four-week Consortium for Executive Development. This year, managers from six companies, including Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) and Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), participated. Each sent three to six people to Babson for two weeks in June and two in September. They evaluated case studies of product launches by other large corporations, compared how each participant company would tackle a given problem, then applied the lessons to their own companies. It may seem strange to draw entrepreneurial examples largely from other corporate giants, but Stephen A. Allen III, professor of management and international business at Babson, argues that the success of a company's entrepreneurial effort depends not on its size but on its culture. Babson has made a believer out of Consortium graduate Darrell J. Zavitz, a 13-year Dow veteran. Recently promoted to run information systems operations for Dow's polystyrene and engineering plastics divisions, Zavitz came hoping to learn how to better exploit the possibilities of the Internet. His exposure to the way Ford (F), Thermo Electron (TMO), and Polysar Rubber launched new products helped him spot potential problems at Dow that could torpedo his efforts to develop e-commerce initiatives. He figures the decentralized process used by Thermo to develop new ideas, for example, is worth testing against the more bureaucratic procedures Dow now has in place. So is Zavitz really a Web-savvy ''intrapreneur'' after four short weeks at school? Many of today's Internet folks are skeptical. ''You learn it by doing it,'' says Seth Tapper, president of customized Web design startup LiveUniverse.com. To succeed as an entrepreneur ''there has to be a creative spirit, and that's something that cannot be classroom-taught.'' But for Marianne G. Cooper, president of EDS' food and consumer packaged goods division, the benefits of the Consortium are tangible. A graduate of last year's Babson program, she now understands more clearly how her company's 30 or so divisions interrelate. That made it easier for her to work with several units within EDS to develop UCCnet, an Internet trading network for the Uniform Code Council, which makes the UPC codes found on all packaged goods. ''Historically, we would have tried to create an offering for one division,'' she says. ''The class helped me look at offerings across the company.'' With their futures on the line, large companies are likely to keep trying whatever can help spark a more entrepreneurial culture--despite the doubters. For Corporate America, the challenge is to beat the new kids on the block at their own game--and they're willing to pay big for anyone who can help them learn how to think small. By Nadav Enbar in New York _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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