![\"Dean](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/i\/EJohnsonF13_600x499.jpg\" "\\"EJohnsonF13_600x499\\"")
<\/a>\u201cAt Steinway, they\u2019ll bring the very best lumber from all over the world. They\u2019ll go through this very long process\u2014it takes them two years actually, kind of like getting an MBA,\u201d Johnson told a group of incoming students in June. \u201cBut their whole thing is this personal scale; they\u2019re going to take that wood and they\u2019re going to make the very best piano that they can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson, who serves as the Ralph Owen Dean and the Bruce D. Henderson Professor of Strategy, left Dartmouth College\u2019s Tuck School of Business to succeed Jim Bradford in July. He has written two case studies about Steinway in his research and points to the company\u2019s \u201cintense focus on detail and personalization\u201d as the key to its longevity. He sees those traits as the key to Owen\u2019s success as well.<\/p>\n
Johnson taught at Owen from 1991 to 1999. \u201cI chose to come back to Owen for some really specific reasons,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cYes, I love Nashville. It\u2019s a great city and a great place to live. But it\u2019s really the excitement of being at a school like Owen, at this place and time, that brought me back. Part of that has to do with the size of Owen.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Owen, we still have the luxury of working at this personal scale, and it\u2019s that scale where I think real transformation occurs\u2014a breakthrough kind of scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
In short, Johnson expects big things from Owen\u2019s small community. He believes the school\u2019s close-knit culture can help students live up to their potential by encouraging more collaboration not only with each other but with alumni, faculty and staff as well.<\/p>\n
Johnson says an Owen education should reflect each of these groups\u2019 hard work and attention to detail, and in this regard the learning process at the school is a lot like what goes into making a Steinway. There\u00a0are no shortcuts, and neither one can be mass-produced.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAt Owen, we still have the luxury of working at this personal scale, and it\u2019s that scale where I think real transformation occurs\u2014a breakthrough kind of scale.\u201d\u2014Dean Eric Johnson<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n And like a Steinway, an Owen education is attuned to something greater than the sum of its parts. A calling in business may not conjure the same feelings as a piano concerto, but it can be heady and inspiring in its own way\u2014especially in the hands of someone like Eric Johnson.<\/p>\n Early on in his career, Johnson was an unlikely candidate to teach at a business school, much less be the dean of one. In fact, working in academia was the furthest thing from his mind when he was earning his Ph.D. in industrial engineering and engineering management at Stanford University in the late \u201980s and early \u201990s.<\/p>\n \u201cI had no plans at all to go into academia,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd if I had, it probably would have been in engineering rather than business. If you look at my C.V., you\u2019ll see I don\u2019t have any degrees in business. Well, not quite\u2014I have an undergraduate degree in economics\u2014but all the others are in engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n While finishing his Ph.D., Johnson worked for Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, Calif. He was part of a team developing an automated vehicle for health care that was designed to deliver drugs to patient rooms and navigate hospital hallways. \u201cIt used an HP calculator as its brain, if you can believe it,\u201d Johnson says with a grin.<\/p>\n Johnson\u2019s interests and abilities made him a natural for Silicon Valley, but his career took an abrupt turn in 1991. That was when he received an unexpected phone call from Gary Scudder, an operations professor at Owen.<\/p>\n \u201cI had been introduced to Gary through a friend of a friend, and one day he called me out of the blue,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cHe said, \u2018Eric, have you ever thought about teaching at a business school? And would you consider coming to Nashville?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson and his wife, Nancy, had thought about settling down in a more affordable part of the country, and Nashville presented an intriguing possibility. If anything, it was the unfamiliarity of the situation\u2014with Nashville, with Vanderbilt, even with just being in a business school itself\u2014that convinced him to consider the job.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole thing was curious and interesting. So I decided to come for an interview,\u201d he says. \u201cAfter I spent a day here, I fell in love with the place. I thought it was a neat opportunity. At the time Owen felt a lot like a startup company to me. It was really young and vibrant.\u201d<\/p>\n Once Johnson accepted the job as assistant professor of operations management, he never gave a second thought to his decision to enter academia. \u201cI found that I actually loved teaching. Being in business school was nothing that I\u2019d really expected,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In particular, teaching operations to\u00a0MBA students provided him with an exciting challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cMost MBA students come to business school having no idea what operations is. They don\u2019t have a lot of feelings about the subject, either good or bad,\u201d he says. \u201cBut by the end of that core class, many are considering a career in an operating role. They see that operations is really the guts of executing business. It isn\u2019t marketing it or accounting for it or financing it. It\u2019s actually running a business.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson quickly became a widely admired professor, winning the Dean\u2019s Teaching Excellence Award twice in eight years and becoming one of the youngest faculty members ever to receive tenure at Owen. \u201cEric was an excellent teacher and had a great rapport with the students. He is still in contact with many of the alums from that time period,\u201d says Scudder, the James A. Speyer Professor of Production Management. \u201cHe also has one of the best laughs of anyone I know and enjoys life to its fullest.\u201d<\/p>\n Anyone who has spent time with the dean knows the distinctive laugh Scudder is referring to. It is as infectious and genuine as Johnson\u2019s own passion for learning.<\/p>\n \u201cOther than his laugh, which I\u2019m sure is well documented by everyone who knows him even a little bit, what I remember most about Eric is his passion for his subject,\u201d says Paul Stanley, MBA\u201994, vice president for marketing at Mercury Intermedia. \u201cFor his simulation course, I would see him in the computer lab (where I worked) at odd hours testing new ways of simulation and ways to teach it. His examples, often gleaned from personal experience, always hit home and made the theoretical a practical tool for students.\u201d<\/p>\n Former students also recall the importance that Johnson placed on experiential learning. For example, Emily Anderson, MBA\u201999, remembers a field trip to FedEx Corp. headquarters in Memphis, Tenn., that former FedEx vice president Mike Janes, MBA\u201984, helped coordinate.<\/p>\n \u201cEric wanted us to really experience operations,\u201d says Anderson, who now serves as director of internal operations and coaching for Owen\u2019s Career Management Center. \u201cAt FedEx in Memphis, we saw how the planes came in around midnight and how all the packages were sorted, moved and transferred in like a 3- or 4-hour window. It was amazing to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n Janes, who today serves as CEO of FanSnap, adds, \u201cI hosted Eric and his student groups several times at FedEx, and I was always impressed by his passion and ability to aggressively bridge the classroom and the outside world.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1999, then Associate Professor Johnson departed Owen for the Tuck School of Business in Hanover, N.H. It was by no means an easy decision. His two oldest children\u2014Wesley, 20, and Hannah, 18\u2014were born and raised in Nashville (his youngest, Nathan, is 13), and he had grown attached to the city, and Vanderbilt in particular.<\/p>\n “Eric was a trailblazer … He brought to campus the latest in technology through the center\u2019s Tech@Tuck days, where the latest innovations were highlighted.\u201d\u2014Paul Danos, dean of the Tuck School<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n However, the opportunity at Tuck was too great to turn down, especially since the school was similar to Owen in many ways. \u201cWhen I first went to Tuck, it was the same size as Owen is today,\u201d he says, \u201cand that was one of the things that attracted me there.\u201d<\/p>\n During the 14 years that followed, Johnson continued to win respect not only as a teacher and researcher but as an administrator, too. In addition to being the Benjamin Ames Kimball Professor of the Sciences of Administration, he served as associate dean for Tuck\u2019s MBA program and faculty director of the Glassmeyer\/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies.<\/p>\n \u201cEric was a comprehensive contributor to the Tuck School in his superb teaching, his departmental leadership, his research and the many contributions his Center for Digital Strategies provided students, alumni and the corporate world,\u201d says Paul Danos, dean of the Tuck School.<\/p>\n \u201cEric was a trailblazer,\u201d Danos adds, \u201cwith activities such as the center\u2019s roundtables for corporate leaders where chief information officers, their staffs and academics gathered around the world and engaged in dialogue about the challenges they all confront in today\u2019s digital environment. He brought to campus the latest in technology through the center\u2019s Tech@Tuck days, where the latest innovations were highlighted.\u201d<\/p>\n In return, one of the things Johnson learned from working with Danos is the importance of having not only a long-term vision for a school but also the time and resources to implement it. Johnson attributes much of Tuck\u2019s success to the fact that Danos has had 18 years at the helm to execute his strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cContinuity in this kind of environment is particularly valuable,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cMany times people will look at business schools and think of them as a business\u2014and they are in a way\u2014but there are some very big differences. With business schools you\u2019re really talking about a community, and communities and cultures don\u2019t change quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n As Johnson embarks on his own tenure as dean, he is mindful of keeping Owen\u2019s community central to the school\u2019s mission. One example where he says it is already in effect is the young professional programs, like the master of accountancy and master of finance, which Jim Bradford and others helped build.<\/p>\n \u201cMany times business schools can get distracted by creating so many different peripheral programs where the students don\u2019t really interact at all,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe the same faculty is servicing them, but the students themselves are not really enriched by each other\u2019s presence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Owen has done so well with these young professional programs is that they\u2019ve found a way to ensure not only that they\u2019re successful for those groups but that those groups themselves add to the overall MBA experience by bringing really bright, talented folks into the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Likewise, Johnson sees a similar role for the school\u2019s research centers. \u201cThe thing we found successful at Tuck is this notion of a center that has a research core but is also a key part of the life of the school,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s about creating activity that\u2019s not separate or independent but that really builds on the synergies of the school itself and brings ideas, innovation, curriculum and speakers back into the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the Owen building itself plays a role in that sense of community. \u201cOne of the things I\u2019ve always viewed as a huge asset is the very unusual architecture of the building that we\u2019re in,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cI travel to other top business schools that have built large new buildings, but many of them are soulless\u2014just long hallways and offices with doors that are shut. The openness of Owen\u2019s building, on the other hand, focuses all of the activity into the lobby or the courtyard outside when the weather\u2019s nice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs we think about anything, whether it be growth in our physical structure or growth in faculty, staff and students, it\u2019s something we will constantly be attentive to\u2014how do we maintain that feeling of community?\u201d<\/p>\n One answer to that question, Johnson says, is technology. Given his background, it should come as no surprise that digital learning is a key interest for him. It also happens to be one of the university-wide initiatives being promoted by Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos as Vanderbilt plans its future.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s exciting about digital education for a school like Owen is not so much trying to change whom we target or how we interact with the world, though we can do that,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cIt\u2019s really more about enhancing the education that we offer right here in Nashville. Technology can enable us to transform the educational experience from something that\u2019s historically static to one that\u2019s much more dynamic, interactive and experiential.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson also sees digital technology as a tool for engaging the school\u2019s most important audience\u2014its alumni. \u201cOwen students don\u2019t often think about this when they come on the first day, but they become part of the Owen family at that moment, and it\u2019s something they will carry the rest of their lives,\u201d he says. \u201cTechnology enables us to take a lot of the neat things we\u2019re thinking about and doing here and share them with alumni in ways we never could have before.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThose are areas we\u2019re experimenting in\u2014real breakthroughs.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked how it feels to return to Owen after all these years, Johnson lets his daughter, Hannah, do the talking\u2014or texting, as it were. After packing up their belongings this summer, he and the rest of the family piled into two cars and made the 1,200-mile trip from New Hampshire to Tennessee. As they neared Nashville\u2019s city limits, he says Hannah texted an old family friend:<\/p>\n \u201cTwo words: We\u2019re home.\u201d<\/p>\nCurious and interesting<\/h2>\n
Passion for teaching and learning<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>![\"Dean](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/i\/DeanJohnson1_500x351-255x179.jpg\" "\\"DeanJohnson1_500x351\\"")
<\/a>Importance of vision and time<\/h2>\n
That feeling of community<\/h2>\n
![\"Dean](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/i\/JohnsonConversF13_500x326.jpg\" "\\"JohnsonConversF13_500x326\\"")
<\/a>On our toes but looking forward<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>