Frontier Exclusive Visionary Interview for hardware, software, system related business and and academia
Frontier Journal (FJ)
According to your observation, how much impact could education make on a person's fortune?
Prof. Thomas F. Cooley (TC):
An enormous impact. Success is about
luck and education. You can't control luck, but education, and
especially, the right kind of education, is an investment that always
pays dividends.
FJ:
Are you a supporter of Keynes or Friedman?
TC:
Keynes and Friedman are the two greatest economists of the
20th century, but neither really describes the economy of the 21st
century.
FJ:
Among the following best sellers on business: Build to Last/From
Good to Great, Competitive Strategy/Competitive Advantage, Inside the
Tornado/Across the the Chasm/Dealing with Darwin, Blue Ocean Strategy,
The Long Tail, what is your most favorite book, and why?
TC:
I found The Long Tail creative and thoughtful. One of my recent
favorite bestsellers on business is Ron Chernow magnificent biography of
Alexander Hamilton. Here is a man who had the vision, the energy, the
enterprise and the immense erudition to lay the groundwork of the most
powerful economy in the world.
FJ:
What is the essence of management?
TC:
In a sentence, I would describe the essence of management as
understanding what it means to motivate people.
FJ:
One one hand, there are quite a few highly successful businessmen
who never went to business schools or received related education, such
as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Jack Welch, Jerry Yang, Larry
Page among others; on the other hand, there are equally quite a few
highly successful businessmen who were trained at business schools or
received related education, such as Sam Walton, Warren Buffet, Lou
Gerstner among others. What is your perspective on the role of business
education such as MBA training on shaping the future of our next
generation business leaders?
TC:
The first group you describe are innovators and entrepreneurs.
The second group are masters at building, managing and changing
organizations. Any great innovator will need a Sam Walton
organizational genius to develop his idea to his maximum potential.
FJ:
In the summer of 2000, I bought a book titled The Ten Day MBA,
and I am still keeping the book at my office as a constant reference.
What is the essence of MBA education?
TC:
The essence of MBA education is to teach students to think about
business broadly--as a social, ethical, historical set of institutions,
and to ensure that students have the analytical and intellectual
training to articulate problems arising from new circumstances and find
ways of preparing their organizations to meet and triumph over those
challenges.
FJ:
For most businessmen, who are very tight on bandwidths, even
short-term based Executive MBA program is considered a luxury to them.
How business schools can help those busy businessmen to fulfill their
dreams of receiving formal (or semi-formal) business education without
significantly interrupting their current business practice?
TC:
The Stern School of Business has a broad portfolio of part-time
and full-time programs that are designed to meet the needs of working
professionals at different stages of their careers. But the education
and the quality of the education is the same rigorous and demanding
intellectual experience.
FJ:
A typical MBA curriculum may consists of the following subjects,
incluing but not limited to: Finance, Accounting, Operations
(Execution), Micro/Macro Economics, Strategy, Organization Behavior,
Quantitative Analysis, Leadership, Marketing, Ethics and Communication.
Among them, Strategy, Organization, Leadership, and Execution belong to
the essence of business, what is your perspective on how the above four
components shall interact with each other to build a successful business?
TC:
People have different interests and strengths and they bring
them to bear on their business ventures. A successful business will
require all of the elements you mention above. A good leader will have
the ability to manage the organization so that it is successful.
FJ:
As a leading business school, what is Stern's branding strategy,
and how does it execute to implement the strategy?
TC:
The Stern School believes strongly in the importance of a strong
faculty and a research based institution. We train our students, not
for their first job, but for a career lasting three or four decades,
during which the social, political, and business environment may well
change in ways that we cannot imagine today. What equips today's
student to be a leader in the future is the ability to think broadly and
effectively, to articulate the problems, to motivate employees, to
develop smart and effective strategies, and to implement them. We also
believe that business does not occur in a vacuum. Indeed, business is
perhaps the great universal social institution of our time. Because of
the importance of the role of business as a whole, we train our students
to think about the social and ethical impact of their business decisions.
FJ:
As a leading business school, what is the SWOT of Stern?
TC:
Like every business school we are subject to the vagaries of the
business cycle. Our strength is our faculty and the knowledge creation
that takes place at the Stern School every day.
FJ:
From an leading economist's perspective, what are the biggest
challenges ahead for Macroeconomics and Microeconomics respectively?
TC:
The major economic challenge of the 21st century will be to
continue on the path of wealth creation that characterized the latter
part of the 20th Century, but to ensure taht all members of the global
society benefit from that growth. Lifting poor nations out of poverty
will require opening markets, enlightened public policy, and leadership
by the wealthy nations of the world.
FJ:
What is your business advice for those who are running their
bootstrapping startups?
TC:
Don't be afraid to fail. Successful entrepreneurs understand
what it means to take risks and that's one of the reasons that they
succeed.
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