Spreadsheet Two

Selling Solutions

FORGET SHRINK WRAP AND supply chains. “Service wrap” and “value nets” are the updated buzzwords in a new management book coauthored by David Bovet, MBA ’75, vice president of Mercer Management Consulting, and colleague Joseph Martha. “Customers today do not seek things as much as they seek solutions,” the two write in Value Nets: Breaking the Supply Chain to Unlock Hidden Profits (John Wiley & Sons, 2000).

Peppered with examples, the book provides diagnostics for managers to analyze their own company’s situation. The “service wrap” for one may be fast, reliable delivery. Another firm may be better off letting its most profitable customers design their own products and services, while eliminating offerings that appeal only to an expensive few.

To do either successfully, a business needs a digital “value net,” the authors say, that allows the right customers to share the steering wheel.

Repotting School Managers

FORMER BUSINESS SCHOOL DEAN Ernie Arbuckle spoke frequently of the benefits of “repotting” oneself every decade or so, and a number of Business School administrators seem to agree. After 10 years as admissions director, Marie Mookini will fill the Class of 2003 and then join the School’s development team as associate director of major gifts. Respected by many alumni/ae, she will build on existing relationships and assist in developing international giving programs, School Dean Robert Joss recently announced.

Mookini will work with David Kennedy, who returned to the School in January as associate dean for development. After working as a recruiting coordinator for the Stanford Athletics Department, Kennedy was a development officer for the Business School from 1993 to 1997. He returns after holding positions at three for-profit companies, the latest being Cruel World, an Internet executive search firm.

George Parker also will change roles, returning to a full-time faculty position in September, after eight years as senior associate dean for academic affairs and director of the MBA Program. Sharon Hoffman, MBA ’91, formerly associate admissions director and acting director of the MBA Program this academic year, will become associate dean and director of the MBA Program this summer. She also will be responsible for the admissions, financial aid, and registrar’s offices, as well as the Public Management and Global Management programs.

Students Initiate HR Course

WHILE STOCK OPTIONS ARE essential in attracting employees to a startup, they are not sufficient as a recruiting mechanism and do not encourage employees to work harder or more collaboratively. This was the finding in a survey of GSB students and recent graduates, conducted by students in a new HR independent study course initiated by second-years Sarah Gragg and Andrew Kawaja.

Working with professors who helped them shape in-depth projects, Kawaja and Gragg rallied first-year classmates last spring and summer to submit project proposals. By fall, a new course was born.

The class includes industry panel presentations, independent student research, and written reports to the companies examined.

The 35 students formed nine groups that covered a wide variety of topics. Gragg’s group devised the survey as part of their examination of the effectiveness of varying levels of employee perks and benefits at each of four stages of a company from startup to IPO. Other groups examined ways to motivate creative personnel at media startups, investment banking recruiting, and human resource strategies at a local charter elementary school and at venture capital–funded startups.

Faculty who conducted the seminar were James Baron, Charles O’Reilly, and Paul Oyer.

Illustration by Carl Wiens

Bye-Bye, Bonus

WHAT HAVE RECENT GSB graduates done with their signing bonuses?

Kendra Harris, Class of 2002, polled her female friends by email and found one took three friends to the Surf Divas camp in San Diego. Another went to cooking school in Spain and golf schools in Vermont and Florida. One took her mother to the Philippines, where both had been born but neither had visited in 25 years, and another bought clothes. At least one bought “a lot of dot-com stocks that are now worthless.” Otherwise, Harris says, “it was spending money for school, credit card/debt reduction, travels with classmates, furniture, and savings.”

Stanford engineering professor David Beach took a close look at a snowshoe, manufactured by Atlas, on display at the Cool Products Expo. Photograph by Stuart Brinin.

“Stuff” Is Still Cool

STUDENTS EXAMINED A vehicle that runs on hydrogen and emits only water into the atmosphere, a CD-ROM scratch remover, and wearable computers. But when it came time to assess the “stuff” at the Cool Products Expo, organizers agreed that the coolest was a device they could hold in their hands to shave their heads as if they were combing their hair, said one of the Expo’s organizers, Greg Lamps, a second-year MS/MBA student.

The brainchild of business and engineering students in the Manufacturing Club, the Expo was designed to show students that there is more to life than the Internet. The February event drew some 700 participants and 20 companies towing goodies.

The Wall Street Journal viewed the Expo as part of a trend to encourage interest in physical products in an era of virtual companies. “Creating physical products—especially cool ones—is a very satisfying endeavor that is not easily replicated in the creation of software or Web sites,” said the Journal, quoting a memo from Career Management Center director Sherrie Gong Taguchi.

First-year student Nathan Brown said the Expo gave him “lots of ideas,” and second-year Liz O’Donnell added, “Product design is a way to tap into your creativity as a business person. I’m definitely considering it for my future.”