Author: Eric Johnson

With another Commencement in the books and summer winding down, changes once again surround the Owen community. Graduates have become alumni, first-year students are trying out new careers in their summer internships, and incoming students are in the throes of moving to Nashville.

Adena Friedman, MBA’93, spoke to the challenge of change in her Commencement address, calling it “constant and relentless.” In this issue, we take a look at how she charts the course of Nasdaq and her career.

This year, unique changes are taking place on campus. Our building is going through its most significant renovation to date, with the complete transformation of the Walker Management Library. The courtyard received an overhaul this spring, with an expansive patio, new seating and landscaping. Students arriving and returning in the fall will have a multitude of spaces in which to study, connect and collaborate, thanks to the generosity and support of our alumni. Read on for a look at the courtyard.

Students, always in constant pursuit of victory, brought a few changes to our trophy case this spring. Owen teams scored some big wins in a string of national case competitions: first in the Wharton People Analytics Competition, first in the Purdue Global Supply Chain Competition, first in the South by Southwest “Pitch Texas,” first in the Iowa MBA Business Analytics Competition, and third in the Denver Race and Case Competition.

Speaking of case competitions, we introduced some new ones at Management Hall this year. The Latin Business Association hosted a competition during the inaugural Latin Business Week in which two Owen teams placed. With some help from Sean Poe (MBA’17), I held the first Dean’s Case Competition, where Owen students utilize the case method to address matters of strategy for the school.

Off campus, alumni are changing Minneapolis into a new hub for the Owen community, as Twin Cities corporations in the consumer goods, manufacturing and health care industries draw from our talent pool. We spotlight a few of our alumi living and working in Minneapolis in this issue. Professor Tae-Youn Park also has a connection to Minneapolis — he earned his Ph.D. in organization studies there. His research on HR practices is profiled in this edition’s Intellectual Capital.

Of course, some things never change. In this issue, we also examine the deep roots that our finance and business economics faculty have in the world of international policy, from the late J. Dewey Daane to Luke Froeb and Craig Lewis.

Through all of these changes, I’m grateful for the support that every member of the Owen community shows to the school and to one another. Have a fantastic summer!

All the best,

M. Eric Johnson

Ralph Owen Dean
Bruce D. Henderson Professor of Strategy

Last year had its share of challenges. The Owen family suffered the loss of several beloved members in 2016, three of whom died as the result of horrific terrorist attacks. And no matter what you thought of the presidential election, many people have been left with rattled nerves and a sense of uncertainty for what comes next.

Even so, the Owen community has much to be thankful for as we embark on a new year. Our MBA graduates finished another record employment season, with salaries reaching new heights and students across all programs finding dream careers in a wide range of organizations. This success is being fueled in part by our growing network of corporate recruiting partners and the tireless support of alumni around the world.

Last fall, Owen announced a formal partnership program with 16 highly respected recruiting organizations with which we have had long and fruitful relationships. Designed to bolster the hiring pipeline for both students and companies alike, the corporate partnership program also augments the two-way learning that takes place among Owen students, faculty, staff and private industry. In the months to come, we’ll engage in more activities with these corporate partners like executive speakers, leaders in residence, student case competitions, and joint research. In this issue, we take a closer look into the new program by tracing how Owen has deepened ties with inaugural member Cardinal Health over just a few years.

The key link in that partnership program, of course, is our alumni who continue to soar to new career accomplishments. For instance, Adena Friedman, MBA’93, was named CEO of Nasdaq in November, making her the first woman from Owen to lead a publicly traded company and one of the financial world’s highest ranking women executives. You can also read about how Kim Newton, MBA’96, is helping Hallmark diversify operations far beyond the greeting card company we all know so well.

Our alumni are giving back, both financially and with their time. The past year represented our best fundraising in seven years. I am incredibly grateful to be part of such a dedicated community. The outside world is taking note of our success. In October, Vanderbilt’s full-time MBA program jumped 10 spots in the Economist’s annual “Which MBA?” ranking to land at No. 17 among U.S. schools and No. 26 globally—the highest levels ever achieved in this survey. Our Executive MBA program rose to No. 14 among U.S.-based programs in this year’s Financial Times ranking. And the Vanderbilt Master of Accountancy and Master of Science in Finance programs have received top honors from publications that cover specific one-year master’s degrees.

Rankings have many ups and downs and they don’t always represent reality. But they do provide useful comparative data that we can learn from in our goal of providing a business education valued by students, alumni, faculty, employers and the wider Vanderbilt community.

I am thankful and proud to be part of Owen, focused on executing our strategy to be a world-class business school operating on a personal scale. May you enjoy a happy and productive 2017!

It is hard to comprehend that since I last wrote this column, the Owen community twice has been tragically touched by terrorism. In March, Taylor Force, a first-year MBA student, was killed while on an immersion trip to Israel to learn about global entrepreneurship. Taylor was exactly the kind of quietly confident and highly accomplished student that exemplified the Owen School’s ideal of leaders without egos. He was a West Point grad who served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inside and outside of the classroom, people valued his insight, his service and his friendship. The Owen community is a better place because Taylor chose to be a student here.

Later that month, while our community was still in mourning, we suffered another loss. Justin and Stephanie Shults, 2009 graduates of our Master of Accountancy program, were killed during the terrorist attack on the Brussels airport. The couple met at Owen, developed many lasting friendships here, and chose to become global citizens by moving to Belgium for their careers.

These were dark times at our school, but I was so inspired by the outpouring of support from the Owen community. Emails and calls poured in from around the world, with alumni asking how to send condolences to the families and if there was any way to help out during these trying times. Because of your support, Owen staff and students were able to travel to the memorial service for Taylor Force in Texas. Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos announced the creation of the Taylor Force Memorial Scholarship, which will provide financial support for military academy graduates to attend Owen, with first preference given to graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Taylor’s alma mater. We are grateful for the many contributions that poured in from the Owen community for both the Taylor Force Scholarship and the MAcc Program Fund in memory of Justin and Stephanie Shults. (See scholarship information below.)

The Owen community has only begun the healing process. Mending will take time, but we received a much-needed dose of good news this spring. Owen earned its highest-ever ranking by U.S. News and World Report, jumping five spots to No. 22 in their ranking of full-time MBA programs.

As you have often heard me say, no ranking reflects the true value of the Owen School experience and our unique personal approach to business education. However, any time I see the hard work of our students, faculty and staff acknowledged, I can’t help but be pleased. The ranking simply reaffirms what I know to be true—we are doing amazing things at the Owen School, and our strategy of doubling-down on personal scale education is producing positive results. This year, the Center of Social Ventures launched with many new and expanded programs, including the inaugural Social Ventures Summit. The Financial Markets Research Center led an Omaha trip to visit Warren Buffet.  And just this week, we announced the Center for Health Care Market Innovation that we are launching this summer (more on that in the next issue of Vanderbilt Business).

Beyond any individual ranking or accomplishment, I am most excited about improving our fundamentals—Owen is enrolling higher-quality students than ever and placing them in high-paying, fulfilling careers at increasingly higher rates. That has never been more evident than in the class of 2016 that recently bid farewell to dear Owen. The class’s placement success was one of Owen’s best by nearly every metric.

I am proud of what we are accomplishing at the Owen School and look forward to future success as we sharpen our strategy.

All the best,

M. Eric Johnson
Ralph Owen Dean
Bruce D. Henderson Professor of Strategy

Contributions to the scholarship funds I mentioned may be sent to:

Vanderbilt Gift Processing Office
PMB 407727
2301 Vanderbilt Place
Nashville, TN 37240-7727
Attn: Taylor Force Memorial Scholarship or MAcc Program Fund

This year, I have been reflecting on the legacy of Bruce Henderson. A Vanderbilt alumnus (Class of 1937) and Owen School professor, Bruce was a pioneer in the business world, founding the Boston Consulting Group and participating in the creation of the management consulting industry. Bruce contributed much to the study of strategy: Management books are chock-full of his insights and famous quotes. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, BCG launched an institute in his honor and published a new book on strategy. It is a fitting way to remember such a great management thinker.

Holding the Bruce D. Henderson Chair at Vanderbilt, I feel very fortunate to have met Bruce during the last year of his life. Bruce had an office inside the faculty lounge here at Owen. When I was a new assistant professor, I would often look to see if there was a light on in his office when I stopped by the lounge for a cup of coffee. Bruce’s health was failing then, but his intellectual presence never wavered. After he passed, I stopped by one day to comfort his wife, Bess, as she cleaned out his books. We all felt the tremendous loss.

Working on the Owen School’s strategy this year, I returned to Bruce’s teaching on competitive advantage. Bruce argued that competitive advantage was multifaceted and that every firm needed to understand what made it different from its competitors. At a lecture delivered at Owen in the early 1980s, he argued that organizations must have a particular mix of characteristics that provide a unique advantage in the marketplace.

Over the past year, we have spent a lot of time thinking about Owen’s unique advantages. Both our Alumni Board and Board of Visitors dissected the school, thinking deeply about its attributes. Students joined the discussion at town halls, and faculty and staff formed working groups to debate the school’s competitive advantage. Alumni and recruiting firms provided their ideas through surveys and interviews conducted by Huron Consulting.

We concluded that Owen’s personal scale, collaborative culture, diverse community and location in a vibrant, creative city are standout areas of significant competitive advantage. Based on this shared understanding of Owen, we developed a new mission statement for the school, centered on delivering world-class business education on a personal scale. In October, we launched a new website (owen.vanderbilt.edu/strategy) that showcases our strategic plan, as well as highlights and progress made toward our goals (read more about the plan).

Over the next few months, we will be talking a lot about Owen’s unique features and our strategic initiatives to strengthen our competitive advantage. Certainly personal scale will be at the heart of many of them. I think Bruce would be proud of Owen’s progress as we focus on his one defining question: “What makes me different than my competitor?”

All the best,

M. Eric Johnson
Ralph Owen Dean
Bruce D. Henderson Professor of Strategy

P.S. For a wonderful video of Bruce in action at Vanderbilt, visit vu.edu/brucehenderson

vu.edu/owendean-blog

@DeanEricJohnson

In my time at Vanderbilt—as dean and when I taught here as a professor in the 1990s—I’ve always considered the Owen School’s personal scale as one of its foundational strengths. To a prospective or current student, that benefit is immediately obvious. From the moment they step on campus, they’ll never spend a moment as some nameless, faceless being. Our corporate partners also grasp the importance of us operating on a personal scale—from aligning our curriculum with the most pressing issues facing business today to honing the leadership and team-building skills of each class of graduates.

For alumni of some business programs, the advantages of operating on a personal scale may not always seem as pressingly relevant. But let me assure you, the talented individuals that have graduated from Owen understand the personal scale advantage at Owen. Nowhere has that been more obvious to me than in my work over the past year with alumni on developing our strategic plan. For example, many graduates with whom I’ve talked want to ensure that we preserve Owen’s collaborative culture, but at the same time, work hard to maintain and expand our role as a core school among globally influential employers.

Similarly, hiring managers and alumni (many times, they’re one and the same) feel strongly that we should continue to instill and strengthen the ability of students to make a compelling, data-rich business case. The people I spoke to compare this trait to a kind of athletic conditioning. That’s a notion I’d thought about, perhaps in vague terms before, but it was certainly sharpened through my conversations with members of the Owen community. Along the same lines, many people I talk to go out of their way to tell me that, “the character of our students is, hands down, the best.” I couldn’t agree more.

Over the coming weeks and months, you’ll hear more about our strategic plan as we communicate and implement key elements. (For starters, check out this infographic. It features great alumni and employer input to a survey the Huron Group conducted as part of our planning process.) One alumni feedback-based strategic initiative that we are already implementing is broadening our immersion curriculum. As you’ll read in the feature stories, “Being There,” giving students the opportunity to put their classroom skills to the test in a real-world environment (albeit one geared toward learning) helps foster that business athleticism they’ll need in their careers. Another finding that dovetails with our immersion curriculum is our alumni’s fondness for Nashville and the growing business strength of the city. While there’s been no shortage of publications heaping their flavor of the It City label upon us, that cachet has brought with it a spike in the number of business opportunities flourishing in this community, as Rob Simbeck’s “Inside the It City” describes.

As we spend the summer gearing up for another great school year, I want to remind you that you’re a vital part of the Owen community and each class that enters benefits from those who have come before them. The reason I talk so much about the power of the personal scale is because that’s where transformational breakthrough happens—and I’m counting on alumni to play a role in helping set and ultimately achieve our goals.

All the best,

M. Eric Johnson
Ralph Owen Dean
Bruce D. Henderson Professor of Strategy

vu.edu/owendean-blog
@DeanEricJohnson