By Theo Anderson Success in the emerging global economy requires the ability to adapt, and your power to do so depends on the vitality of your network, says Ellen Levy, managing director of Silicon Valley Connect. “There’s a capability that very rarely gets mentioned or recognized, but is becoming more and more powerful, and more… Continue reading
EMBA students fund full-time student scholarship
When many students imagine their legacy as a class, typically their thoughts are straightforward: Give to the class fund, work hard, improve the program, be remembered in a positive light. But EMP 100, the centennial cohort of the Executive MBA Program, wanted to ensure its legacy is much more impactful and long lasting. The EMP… Continue reading
Growing 7-Eleven through ‘servant leadership’
Serving others has a business benefit: growth.
Just ask Joe DePinto ’99, who has spent the last 10 years practicing the principles of “servant leadership” while sitting at the helm of 7-Eleven. During DePinto’s tenure as president and CEO, the convenience-store chain has grown from 27,000 to 57,000 stores, with sales doubling to $8 billion worldwide.
Today, the company is expanding so quickly that it opens a new store every three hours.
Kellogg hosts inaugural growth forum
The Kellogg School of Management convened its inaugural Kellogg on Growth forum on Nov. 10, bringing together some of the world’s most influential thought leaders to discuss their approach to driving and studying growth at the enterprise, macroeconomic and personal level.
Women’s Business Assoc. hosts career networking event
Armed with a name tag and a small notebook, I recently made my way to the Woman’s Club of Evanston, a house near campus with more than 100 years of history. This was the venue for Careers Uncorked, one of the Women’s Business Association’s (WBA) biggest events of the year.
Held every year in October before the advent of recruiting season, WBA’s Careers Uncorked gives first-year women at Kellogg a taste of recruiting in an intimate setting.
Offers, acceptances and salaries rise for Full-Time students
Ninety-five percent of the Full-Time Class of 2015 received an offer by three months post-graduation, as reported today by Kellogg’s Career Management Center(CMC). Kellogg also saw an increase in acceptances this year — 92 percent of students accepted a full-time offer by three months post-graduation.
The changing scene of social impact
Net Impact Week is a series of events organized by the Net Impact Club at Kellogg to expose members of the Kellogg community to the world of social impact. The focus of this year’s Net Impact Week was “Inspiring Growth and Impact.”
My main learning from Net Impact Week was that social impact can’t happen in a vacuum. Partnerships with for-profit companies and access to stable sources of financial capital are key to making a sustained impact. Transferring expertise or skills isn’t simply a matter of flying from one country to the next; it takes time to immerse yourself in the culture of the destination country and to start adding value that is tailored to what people actually need. In order to have the time to actually make an effective impact, social entrepreneurs require access to capital and resources.
The world is changing to accommodate these two needs.
Why Amazon’s first physical bookstore was smart, and inevitable | MBA Learnings
Amazon opened its first bookstore in Seattle earlier this week. This led to a many interesting questions in the media: Has Amazon taken a step backward by jumping back into traditional retail? Didn’t Amazon start an online store to improve on the traditional bookstore model?
To understand this, let’s begin by taking a walk down memory lane and look at Jeff Bezos’ initial rationale for starting an online bookstore.
Kellogg welcomes new associate dean
We are pleased to welcome Matt Merrick as Kellogg’s new Associate Dean – MBA Operations. In this role, Matt partners with Kellogg’s Senior Associate Dean – Curriculum and Teaching, while overseeing day-to-day operations across all of Kellogg’s full-time, part-time, MSMS, joint degree and certificate programs. His scope includes admissions, academic experience (registrar, advising, experiential learning), student life and career outcomes.
Notes from my Big Data and Analytics course | MBA Learnings
This past summer, technology analyst Benedict Evans shared an interesting image from a classic 1960 film “The Apartment.” The scene is set in the office of a large insurance company in New York – drones laid out at desks almost as far at the eye can see. Each desk has a telephone, rolodex, typewriter and a large electro-mechanical calculating machine.
It is clear that the capabilities of analysis tools in 1960 were far below our ability to analyze them today. So Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet programs offered huge benefits simply because they helped bridge the gap between the average manager’s ability to analyze data and the tools available to do so. This, in turn, spurred businesses to collect more data in the hope of extracting insights. So, over the late 1990s and the 2000s, every junior consultant and investment banker became an Excel ninja. Being able to use the tool to the best extent possible added real value.
All was well. Until “big data” entered the picture.
What we learned co-chairing Kellogg’s BMA Conference
As co-chairs of Kellogg’s Black Management Association Conference, our vision was to perpetuate the long-standing tradition and strength of the longest-running conference at Kellogg. It was our distinct goal to create a worthwhile conference that was forward thinking, would attract a diverse audience and would leave them inspired to be better leaders.
Understanding the importance of peer leadership, we set out to select a committed, highly motivated team that would help us fulfill this vision. From the planning phase to the day of the conference, we learned a tremendous amount through co-chairing such a significant event.
How I’m revolutionizing the Kenyan coffee industry
Do you have special memories from when you were a child? Maybe of spending time with a special person and the small, but important rituals you shared together? For me that memory was spending time with my Grandmother Esther on her small coffee farm at the slopes of Mount Kenya.
On a recent trip back to Kenya I made my way to the farm. The years had not been kind to Grandma or her neighbors. Many had abandoned growing coffee altogether and had diversified into other crops. Grandma was herself thinking about the future of her farm.
This is the story of my Grandmother, but it is also the challenge faced by many small scale farmers in Kenya who toil hard on their coffee farms yet fail to benefit from their effort.