Spreadsheet One
*Classrooms Get High-Tech Upgrade
*E-Tail Optimist
*Back So Soon? You Bet They Are!
*Take That, You Sloans
*Europeans Honor Øvlisen
*New Ventures

Spreadsheet Two

Pilot Program for Nonprofit Leaders

NEARLY 50 NONPROFIT executives became pioneers in June, when the Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders was offered by the Business School for the first time.

Selected for their leadership as well as for the impact of the organizations they represent, the participants were sponsored by the GSB’s new Center for Social Innovation (CSI), which awarded each of them $10,000 of the $11,000 total tuition and fees.

For two weeks, the CSI fellows took courses designed especially for them by Business School faculty. They learned how to integrate private-sector strategies with their public- sector missions and to negotiate and form alliances across the sectors. They discussed the latest innovations in social entrepreneurship, social capital markets, and marketing in the nonprofit sector. And they brushed up on corporate techniques in financial management, organizational behavior, and governance.

“The program’s primary objective is to develop and nurture nonprofit leadership capability, which we believe is reflected in the impact on the individual leaders and, through them, on their organizations, communities, and sector,” says James A. Phills, the program’s faculty director.

The pilot program was offered to managers in social services areas such as health care, education, and community development. Beginning in 2002, a second session will be added for nonprofit executives in the arts.

Second-Year Head Start

Illustration by Harry Campbell

THERE'S PLENTY OF FOOD for thought in this fall’s new, one-week, pre-quarter seminars. Each class is limited to 12 second-year MBA students and offers two academic credits. Each centers around a faculty member’s particular area of research interest, and there’s something to tempt everyone in the smorgasbord of topics.

The participants in Joanne Martin’s seminar will consider small- and large-scale efforts at establishing gender equity in organizations. Tim Groseclose’s students will read political biographies in an effort to identify the games politicians play to push their own interests. And John McMillan’s students will examine the “gigantic natural experiment in economics” in Russia and China as those nations undergo wrenching transitions from planned economies to markets.

Meanwhile, Joel Podolny and his students will consider the role of status and identity in a variety of competitive markets and in the market for corporate control. Jennifer Aaker will lead an investigation of the cross-cultural consumer.

Dean Robert Joss will draw on his experience as well as his research in discussing the qualities of leadership and the differences between leading and managing. Darrell Duffie will present an investment strategy a day, including value investing, shorting, and hedging. And Chip Heath and his students will examine why some ideas stick and some don’t, and how to take advantage of both.

Finally, there’s some liquid refreshment on the menu. Noting that the United States now surpasses Germany in number of operating breweries, Glenn Carroll will offer a seminar, All About Beer, that traces the evolution of the U.S. beer industry from the rise of gigantic mass producers to the recent microbrewery revolution. No extra credit will be given for field trips.

Longtime Supporter Peterson Dies

THE SCHOOL LOST an alumnus, friend, and longtime supporter in Gregor Peterson, MBA ’59, who died of cancer in April at the age of 68.

“Greg came to know Stanford as very few people do— as an undergraduate, graduate student, teacher, volunteer, financial supporter, and trustee. In all of these roles, he was motivated by a great affection for and loyalty to Stanford,” said President John Hennessy.

Peterson joined the university’s Board of Trustees in 1992 and was serving his second five-year term at the time of his death. He also served two terms as a director of the Stanford Management Company and as chairman from 1996 to 2000. He endowed a professorship at the Business School, which is currently held by Michael Harrison, the Gregor G. Peterson Professor of Operations Management.

Customizing the Core

SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS MAY not benefit from it, but they’re applauding the newly revised core nonetheless. Thanks to Senior Associate Dean David Kreps, in consultation with the student academic committee and faculty core coordinators, the new core curriculum is more flexible, cohesive, and customized to the individual student, say student academic cochairs Greg Miliotes and Horacio Trujillo, both MBA Class of 2002. The Class of 2003 will be first to test it.

Most of the changes involve existing courses: Both organizational behavior classes, micro and macro, now will be taken the same quarter. Also, students can choose either two or four units in Human Resources Management, depending on their interest. And Managerial Economics will shrink by two credit hours, while Modeling and Analysis will grow by two weeks and include half-classroom, half-lab instruction.

But the biggest change is to offer “turbo” classes in economics and data and decisions. Students who qualify will skip over the basics and concentrate on applications. The turbo class in economics will fill the core economics requirement, and the accelerated course in data and decisions will satisfy both the regular Data and Decisions and the modeling requirements.