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Learning
to Think Outside
the Box
As a businessman, Roger was the consummate entrepreneur—a thinker, a doer, a risk-taker, an adapter. Among his many enduring achievements, Babson College is arguably his most lasting and most successful. If he had lived to see just how much the college, which he founded in 1919 as a practical business school (originally called the Babson Institute and renamed Babson College in 1969—two years after his death), would come to embrace his exemplary life of innovation, he would be proud of the entrepreneurial paths it has forged for many. During Roger’s lifetime, entrepreneurs were seen as self-taught, self-made individualists who possessed elusive skills. That entrepreneurship couldn’t be taught was the prevailing mindset of his day. It wasn’t until the 1970s, a time when the nation’s growth became dependent on new ventures in emerging industries, that the concept of teaching entrepreneurship was given credence within academe. Babson College was one of the first schools to stake its claim in this up-and-coming discipline, a move that has certainly paid off. Today, the college, which grants BS degrees through its undergraduate program, MBA and custom MS and MBA degrees through the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College, and conducts executive education programs through Babson Executive Education, is considered by many to be one of the finest institutions in the world for entrepreneurship education. One of the college’s most enduring foundations to the study of entrepreneurship is the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, a 6,000-square-foot building with teaching, research, and office space. Completed in 1998, the center, named after its generous endower, Arthur M. Blank (one of the co-founders of The Home Depot), cuts across all three schools—undergraduate, graduate, and executive education—and offers curricula and programming at all of the three levels. Academic centers for entrepreneurial studies are not necessarily a new idea (their beginnings date back to the mid-1980s), but as Janet Strimaitis, Associate Director of the Blank Center and a 1981 graduate from Babson’s evening MBA program, explains, “we strongly believe this was the first-ever center for entrepreneurship in the world that had its own building.” The
center also engages
in groundbreaking,
world-class research,
and boasts the largest
entrepreneurship faculty
in the world: 11 full-time
faculty, 31 part-time,
and ten shared with
other academic divisions
of the college. “To
have a 50-plus entrepreneurship
faculty for an institution
of Babson’s
size is remarkable,” says
Strimaitis, who also
touts the entrepreneurship/management
department’s
(as well as the entire
school’s)
commitment to blended
faculty—a
sort of melting pot
of academics “One thing that distinguishes Babson is its focus on the connections between practice and what happens in the classroom. I think that’s attributable to Roger Babson. That was his vision, that this was a specialty business school, a practical place, but it’s also a place where people are trying to stretch their minds and learning how to think creatively about decision-making and problem-solving,” says Langowitz. The
center’s
undergraduate academic
program runs the gamut,
from unique experiential
opportunities to more
typical classroom-based
learning. While most
of the entrepreneurship
courses kick in as
electives during junior
and senior years,
all freshmen are required
to take Foundations
of Management and
Entrepreneurship (FME),
a year-long course
(considered to be
one of the college’s
flagship programs)
in which students
simulate a real business
environment by creating
and managing their
own business. “Similar
freshman courses
at other schools do
exist, but we really
have some unique features,
including the year-long
nature, the entrepreneurial
focus, and the requirement
for everyone,” says
Strimaitis. In the graduate school, entrepreneurship is also integrated into the curriculum as well as woven into various co-curricular programs. One of the center’s most distinctive offerings is the Entrepreneurship Intensity Track (EIT), a set of elective courses for MBA students whose goal is to launch their business ideas by the time they graduate. Many of the students selected to participate in EIT are eventually awarded Hatchery space, a rent-free workspace conducive to sharing ideas and information among student teams, faculty, executives-in-residence, and visiting entrepreneurs, and a place where students can run their businesses between classes. While
Babson’s
distinguished Arthur
M. Blank Center provides
unparalleled entrepreneurship
programming and experiences,
students are also
heavily involved in
creating their own
opportunities to engage
in entrepreneurial
activity. There are
many student-run clubs
both in the undergraduate
and graduate schools
dedicated to the field
of entrepreneurship.
Babson Global Outreach
through Entrepreneurship
(BGOE) is one such
organization. BGOE
offers an annual opportunity
for current graduate
and undergraduate
students to travel
to a developing country
and work directly
with the local entrepreneurs
in order to create
sustainable business
models that will contribute
to the economic health
of the region. This year’s two-week expedition to Uganda was considered a great success. In addition to counseling local townspeople about basic business concepts, Babson students worked with owners of small-scale entrepreneurial ventures. “We taught them how to develop ideas and made recommendations on how to improve and grow their businesses,” says junior Matt Boynton. “It was the most rewarding experience of my life.” Entrepreneurship really is a way of life for Babson students and faculty. But the truth is that many students don’t come to Babson to launch a business. Peter Rovick, an MBA student and long-time Wellesley resident who worked for both small technology startups and large financial firms before coming to Babson, has no foreseeable plans to start his own business after graduating; he does, however, believe strongly in the transcendent and limitless power of entrepreneurship education.
“To me, entrepreneurship is about creativity, innovation, and a drive to make improvements to existing conditions,” Rovick remarks. “Entrepreneurship is a mindset in which one is driven to ask questions: Why are things the way they are? What if we did this instead? How can this be improved? These questions lead to innovation and improvement.” The
entrepreneurial mindset
Rovick extols is one
that the entire entrepreneurship
faculty preaches in
their classrooms.
Dennis Ceru, a self-proclaimed “dyed-in-the-wool
entrepreneur,” full-time
adjunct lecturer,
and Wellesley resident
since 1992, believes
that entrepreneurship
is “a
way of looking at
the world.” Many
of Ceru’s
Evening MBA students
are already employed
and not looking to
launch startups, and
he’s
certainly okay with
that. “I
encourage them to
not quit their day
jobs and start new
businesses, because
we need them to continue
to manage and run
these already established
businesses. But I
also tell them they
need to develop new
ways of thinking,
acting and implementing
in their businesses—and
those skills are the
same skills that entrepreneurs
need to start a new
venture,” Ceru
says. This sort of thinking outside the box within organizations is seen as a necessity in today’s competitive and continually evolving business world. Companies want to know how to infuse the spirit of entrepreneurial inventiveness into their short- and long-term projects, and it’s why they often turn to Babson Executive Education (BEE), an integral division of the college that is consistently ranked among the top executive education providers in the world. Siemens AG, one of the world’s largest and most respected companies in the field of electrical engineering and electronics, recently sought out BEE’s expertise. In an environment that was being driven by one disruptive technology after another, the global high tech company decided its managers and senior engineers needed to be more entrepreneurial and identify and execute on real opportunities. To aid that objective, BEE created a “Corporate Entrepreneurship” program that helped Siemens’ leaders identify, shape, and implement new business opportunities. The results were astounding. “The program has paid for itself many times over through the commercialization of business opportunities that participants successfully developed during the program, and afterward,” said Elaine Eisenman, Dean of BEE. “In fact, there is a 60 percent success rate for new products and services launched as a result of this program.” Roger Babson may not have envisioned his small-town institute burgeoning into the internationally-renowned school that it is today. But then again, he was a futurist and an optimist, always looking ahead to a horizon full of possibilities, never satisfied with the status quo. He wrote in his autobiography that “America needs that spiritual creative power which causes men to want to pull the cart instead of ride in the cart—to work, think, promote, and build… .” Educating students and company clients to be the entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow—to be the ones pulling that proverbial cart—has been and always will be one of Babson College’s main priorities. Considering the breadth of first-rate resources, world-class faculty, and distinctive academic programming, Babson seems well poised to launch the next generation of individuals with the academic grounding and entrepreneurial spirit to launch and guide new ideas. Who would have thought that an “off horse” farm boy from Gloucester would become the inspiration behind such a powerful place of learning?
|
Roger
Ward Babson was a
precocious child.
He was described by
his parents as an “off
horse” because
he did things differently
than other children.
As a young boy, he
worked tirelessly
on his family’s
farm in Gloucester,
Massachusetts, finding
extraordinary inspiration
in mundane duties
like plowing the soil,
milking cows, and
laboring in the hay-fields.
In his 1950 autobiography
Actions and Reactions,
Babson looks back
fondly on these formative
years working the
land; they fertilized
an unfailing work
ethic and a strong
sense of entrepreneurial
purpose. He eventually
left farming life
behind for a career
in finance, but he
credits those early
days as a motivating
force—even
more so than his education
at MIT—behind
his numerous business
successes later.
and real-world
practitioners. Nan
Langowitz, a resident
of Wellesley since
1986 and a full-time
management and entrepreneurship
professor who worked
on Wall Street prior
to her academic career,
seconds this blended-faculty
approach. 