I was in one of the world’s top MBA programs 30 years ago this year. It is really striking to think about how much has changed in business education. At first I misunderstood the program I was attending. I thought it was about business. I thought my classes would teach me about business, we would discuss business cases and business news, and by the time I hit finals I would know something about business that would impress and astound potential employers. Something like the F=ma of business. I was not expecting Einstein, just a little Newtonian mechanics.

One of my first courses was with a world famous economist who won the Nobel Prize in economics about 15 years later. Knew his economics, no doubt. I kept asking annoying questions like, “So how do I use this to price my product?” Finally, a more experienced second-year student approached me after class and set me straight. “Quit asking questions. It is a math class. Just do the math.” He was right; as soon as I just started doing the math, all was good, an A was earned, and I was in the game for another semester.

This pretty much summarized my MBA training. Figure out what the professor wants, produce it, and take your grade without any questions. Of course, this was also how corporate jobs were structured. Most of the people I graduated with joined “management training” programs at large corporations — it is hard to believe these used to exist, but they were the jobs of choice. In the management training program, everyone learned to figure out what the boss wants, produce it, and take the next rung on the ladder that is offered with pride and commitment to earn the next rung. Organization man was not a critique; it was a career objective.

At some point in the last 30 years, the world changed. IBM abandoned lifetime employment — remember lifetime employment? — bosses got too busy to spend time bossing and started looking for entrepreneurial employees, and careers started belonging to individuals instead of companies. Whether you want to be empowered or not, career success depends on it today. Companies cannot remember ever having a training program, employees are expected to “invent your job and find a way to add value,” and careers are created by preparing for your next job on the current job.

It is great. For individuals who are entrepreneurial and willing to take initiative, there are no more ladders to climb and bosses to please. Success is there to grab, and there is no greater success than becoming an entrepreneur and running your own company.

So, what does this mean for business education? In some schools, it means figuring out what the professor wants by taking good notes and giving it back on the final. This is a real mismatch given employer expectations, but universities have a lot of inertia and it can be hard to make changes. It is clear empowered employees require an empowering education. This is a challenge business schools need to meet if business degrees are going to maintain their value with employers.

In my experience at the David Eccles School of Business, empowered education requires student engagement and it requires faculty create an educational space for discovery-based learning. Like modern employers, the best business educations engage students as strategic partners. The reality is faculty cannot teach what students do not want to learn. The best teaching motivates students to grab the learning and make it their own. It involves cases and classroom discussion, study groups, and field experiences in which the student integrates what is learned to create professional expertise that prepares the individual to succeed on his/her own terms in the business world.

Empowered learning also gives students the latitude to create their own learning experiences through opportunities that embrace discovery learning. This might be by creating a new student organization, traveling to a national convention to learn about programming, and then building the organization on campus, which is how our Net Impact program started. It might be developing a program like our Board Fellows program, which places students as advisors to non-profit boards in our community, a program created by David Eccles School students and open to other students on campus (i.e., innovative business schools are engaged with the university, too). Or it might involve creating an entirely new statewide program in partnership with the School. This was how we created the original Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, which is now one of the largest entrepreneurship programs in the world. It was started by a group of 8 students. This is how we are creating the Utah Tech Titans program, a statewide innovation and design competition for students with a background in product design, engineering, computer science, and web design. Students are creating the program, they are raising the money for it, and they are running it for the first time this year. The School is the venture backer and the students are the entrepreneurs.

It is tough to create an empowered educational environment that has opportunities for every student in a large program, but it is possible. Our students run the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic for Utah, we have a stock fund managed by students, we have a non-profit consulting practice run by students, we have the world’s largest student venture fund with $18.3 million managed by students, and we have students in our real estate program looking at development opportunities for the University’s married student housing. If students are empowered and engaged, these programs require leadership, not management.

We still have classes in statistics and economics, although I think the professors know why they are important and the cases and exercises deal with business situations and develop business skills. But like all the very best business programs in the world, our program demands student engagement and empowers students to lead while in school. Expect no less from your business education, from the business school where you hire employees, and from the business education your company reimburses.

Later.

With final implementation of Sarbanes Oxley scheduled to occur this year, many small public companies should be thinking seriously about how to get private. For some, simply "going dark" is the right strategy.  For those with too many shareholders to go dark, a traditional going private transaction is required. In virtually every transaction to go private, there is a risk of a lawsuit from shareholders who don't like the outcome.  There are several keys that management must apply when executing the strategy both to fundamentally assure that shareholders get treated fairly and to reduce the risk of a lawsuit. By seeking third-party help from legal and financial advisors, a company can fairly determine and establish a fair price for a transaction.  The process includes more hurdles than I can cover here, but includes a third party valuation and fairness opinion. 

After many invites, I finally made it to the Fight Club Dinner.  In it’s simplest form, the fight club dinner is essentially an entrepreneurial networking dinner here in Utah founded by Jeff Barson.  It was good to see some other entrepreneurs that I haven’t seen for a while including:

• Ryan Money
• Geoff Osmond
• Nathan Nelson
• Jordy Gunderson
• The Seatability Dudes (Derek and Jason)
• Phil Burns
• Daniel Holsinger

There wasn’t any arm-wrestling or fight stories… just some great discussion about some of the up and coming start-ups.  Money had a great suggestion for us at FundingUniverse:  he suggested that we start to sponsor/organize more entrepreneurial events — and I think that he makes a great point.  It doesn’t have to be anything big or formal, just an opportunity to have like-minded entrepreneurs get together.

A while back, we used to get together for a weekly entrepreneurial breakfast and I think that I’ll get that started again.  Anyone interested?  I’ll be talking to my partners and we’ll come up with a schedule.  Again, nothing formal… just opportunity to get together.

Stay tuned…

It’s been a while since I started the 10 Signs of an Angel-Fundable Company, so I figured that it would be good to finish the last couple of tips.  Tip #7 will focus on the size of the market that you are trying to penetrate.  While this topic is similar to the “idea that is scalable” entry that I posted, there is a difference.

An entrepreneur could possibly enter a very large market, yet be limited by a company that does not scale.  Similarly, you could possibly have a scalable business but be limited by a small market.

Let me share an example of how a potentially small market can hurt your chances to raise angel or venture capital:

My oldest brother, Brett, has recently started an innovative online community called OnCampusSports.com.  Over the past few weeks, he has had the opportunity to pitch to quite a few angels & VCs in Utah and in the Bay Area.  During his first couple of pitches, the feedback that he received from the investors was that the market (college intramural participants) was too small.  The company’s vision has always been to target a much larger participant sports community (recreation sports, high school sports, college intramural sports, etc.), but decided to initially penetrate the college intramural community because of the low-hanging fruit.  Because the investors were having a hard time seeing beyond the college intramural community (mostly because the company’s name was OnCampusSports), Brett decided to change the name of the company to Rhaster.com so that he could effectively communicate the larger vision and larger market opportunity.

As you can see, no matter how strong your concept may be, if you are limited by a small market opportunity you will have a very hard time raising angel or venture capital.

Utah Business, which is generally a pretty poopsky magazine with very trite articles, has a nice little read on the key benefits of blogging. They dub keeping tabs on what's going on in your space by reading blogs as the first benefit of blogs and the marketing power via publishing a blog. Here's a nice blogging for dummies description from the article: “A corporate blog can enhance a company’s brand, build thought leadership, deepen customer relationships by promoting conversations and put forth a human face to a large organization. A blog also provides fresh web content, which gives you more online visibility, attracts search engines and drives more traffic.”

My only beef; if you decide to publish a company blog, don't call it a "corporate blog." Just call it a blog. Personable. Authentic. Sans spin. No direct selling. Blogging: taking the corporate out of companies since 1999. I should trademark that.

Business 2.0 has published their 101 dumbest business moments of 2006. Here's one of my favorites: "In August, RadioShack fires 400 staffers via e-mail. Affected employees receive a message that reads, "The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated." I think I'm going to start apologizing to my wife via email now. Less confrontational.

And who can forget the AOL "retention consultant" from Utah who wouldn't let some guy cancel his account. Madness. Click onward for the full list of mediocrity.

This Sunday, this blessed Sunday, is my favorite day of the year. This blog entry might be atypical for a woman, but I was raised on the Washington Redskins and Baltimore Orioles as much as I was politics and history (I’m a DC native). Sports are in my blood. I served as the sports editor at BYU’s newspaper for several years, shocking most of the men reporters under me as I rattled them with statistics, facts and figures that most women roll their eyes at. I can’t throw a football to save my life, but when playoffs and the Super Bowl rolls around… Let’s just say that my life revolves around that magical day. 

The Super Bowl has taken on a life of its own during its unique history. I personally find it appalling that the majority of the watchers now tune in exclusively for the ads, which have a track record of being more uneventful than the game itself. Seldom do you see one ad, or a series of ads, that is worthy of the hype associated with the price point of that :30 spot. 

What is especially noteworthy to me as a PR practitioner — besides the fact that Peyton Manning is getting his well-earned and much deserved chance to wear the ring — is how everyone seems to jump on the Super Bowl bandwagon in order to get some extra publicity. My grocery store and even my bank are offering football related specials. Does it work? Only for the select few who are doing something incredibly different.  After practicing PR for the past five years, I’ve learned that one of the best ways to get PR is to be where the cameras are. Election Day, the post office on Tax Day, the Super Bowl, 4^th of July Events …

The local media consistently covers these stories, and I am shocked that more companies don’t take advantage of these opportunities. For example, we had a spa client and wanted to generate publicity for them around Valentine’s Day, another PRable event. Rather than simply creating a Valentine’s Day package, we partnered with a women’s shelter and provided pampering services and chocolates to the residents leading into the holiday. We were covered by three of the local TV stations and garnered a major newspaper feature. 

The key element to all of this is to be creative and tell a compelling story. If the news is going to be covering it any way, give them a unique angle that no one else will have. Take advantage of big stories – make them work for you. If the media is going to be there, you should be there too. Just be there with something VALUABLE and NEWSWORTHY to say. And if you’re not sure what that is, call and ask a professional who does. 

But don’t call this Sunday. I have a game to watch. 

Lindsey and I had a bit of a run in with our old health insurance company, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, this month. Behold their deceptive customer service:

We started this new policy in September of last year. We then set our online bill pay to start sending scheduled payments at the end of each month. Note: we wrongfully and unknowingly assumed payments were due every 30 days, when in fact, our first premium acted as backpay for part of September and Blue Cross -- like everyone -- requires prepayment of premiums on the first of each month, thus our second payment was technically due in 15 days from our first payment. But that is neither here nor there, because we didn't find this out until our return from Christmas break, and that's not the issue I take with the company.

Once home in early January, we received a letter from Blue Cross stating that our policy had been terminated on November 1, 2006 citing "delinquent payments" and/or "failure to pay" as the reason. Oh really??!!! Lindsey quickly logged on to our bank account to see we had been sending payments and caught our fifteen day discrepancy. It appeared the company was "backpaying" for previous months and ultimately decided to terminate our policy because of it. Fair enough, our mistake. A notice would have been nice before cancellation, but it was our responsibility. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that Blue Cross was faithfully cashing our checks without hesitation even after they terminated our policy. They cashed checks in October, November, December, with a new check likely to be cashed at any moment before we stopped payment. "But Blake, didn't they cancel your policy on November 1?" you ask. Right your are, they did, but I guess they figured we owed them another check.

First Lindsey called to explain the situation. Blue Cross acknowledged the mix-up and said they would reinstate our policy. But after the incompetence, we didn't want them as a provider anymore. We just wanted our money back. They said they would send us a letter. They then sent a very cryptic "Welcome Back letter" totally disregarding our prior request for a refund. Lindsey called again, and they told her the policy holder would now have to call. That was me.

I called and said they owed us one month's premium because they cashed a check on December 1 even though they cancelled our coverage on November 1. The lady on the line was obviously perturbed by my probing and first asked, "Didn't you get a letter?" I replied that I had but it didn't solve the issue of a refund. She then denied my claim and said everything was correct and that I was mistaken. Having the check sitting in front of me with its number and the date it was cashed by them, I called her on it. She got really quite for a moment. And then playing dumb said, "Oh... now I see it. Sorry. We'll send you a refund." Had we not initiated and documented the error, I can only imagine the company would have tried to stiff us as I'm sure they do thousands of other customers when the opportunity arises. And you know the attempt to avoid refunds comes from the top. How couldn't it? Regardless, we now have a new policy with a new provider. Still, health insurance companies are a scam. Until you get really sick that is. :)

A few months back I posted about Jim Cramer.  I thought it was a bit interesting that no one came to his defense when I suggested that he was not a credible financial advisor.

Today, Henry Blodget takes on Cramer in his column on Slate.

One gem from the column entitled "Why you should never take Jim Cramer seriously" reads:

My initial belief was that the former hedge-fund manager, host of CNBC's hit show Mad Money, and author of several books about speculating was perhaps the worst thing to happen to the financial security of average Americans since the crumbling of the Social Security system.

 

An article in the New York Times about a new ad campaign quite literally caught my attention today.

The ad, below, which is part of the rebranding effort of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.  The Foundation is changing its name to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Frankly, I don't doubt that this ad campaign will successfully attract attention, especially among "my" half of the population.  As entrepreneurs think about leveraging their marketing dollars, the temptation to build a campaign around a tease is real.  GoDaddy.com would suggest that it works, but I wonder if it works when it offends and how often people, especially women, are offended by these campaigns. 

I don't have strong views.  What do you think?  Should I?