Spring 2013: Strategic Management and Leadership

Many questions can form as we observe how corporations are led and managed in today’s business world. How do we become ethical, transformational leaders and leave a positive legacy? What role does planning and strategy play in sustaining and advancing an organization? In this issue of the Baylor Business Review, we explore management, leadership and business strategy in the 21^st century.

At the Hankamer School of Business, we have examined our work as an institution and are pleased to present our new strategic plan narrative within this magazine issue. Not surprisingly, leadership is central to our mission statement:

We cultivate principled leaders and serve the global marketplace through transformational learning and impactful scholarship in a culture of innovation guided by Christian values.

You will read about several alumni whose dedication and character, combined with their experiences, have shaped them into successful business leaders. In our Leadership Perspective section, alumnus David Hill discusses his higher calling and how Christian business leaders can activate their faith in their daily lives.

Our students are gaining experience in business leadership roles as they create and manage start-ups, launch products and services, and generate sales in our Accelerated Ventures Program. You will learn about the Executive MBA program’s Global Strategic Management course, a unique offering where students travel to two international destinations and become immersed in the culture, business practices and polices of the country.

In accordance with our mission, associate professor Mitchell Neubert fulfills a significant role by teaching students about business ethics in his Principled Leadership course. Faculty members Christopher Meyer, Blaine McCormick and Chuck Fifield share insightful business strategy research, which they gleaned from a timeless game: rock-paper-scissors.

This issue also marks the 30^th anniversary of the Baylor Business Review. We thank you for your support and hope you continue to enjoy the magazine for years to come.

Terry S. Maness
Dean, Hankamer School of Business

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2013

Continuous Strategic Planning and Other Leadership Competencies

by Eric Krell

A valuable role model for 21^st century business leaders demonstrated his strategic prowess 100 years ago, after a series of tactical errors left him and 27 of his direct reports stranded on an ice floe near Antarctica.

Once the British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship The Endurance was swallowed by sea ice, he quickly revamped the expedition’s mission and strategy, kept his people focused on their mission in an extremely volatile environment, maintained a sense of purpose throughout ranks despite brutal conditions and constantly improvised. His leadership ultimately (after nearly five months) enabled him to get all of his men home safely.

Similar leadership capabilities remain valuable in a 21^st century business environment defined by extreme volatility, brutal (and global) competition and a growing need for innovation, improvisation and perhaps above all, purpose.

“Beyond operating as a profitable business, many companies confront an enormous challenge defining what success means,” notes Kirk Coleman (BA ‘93), an Irving-based Accenture partner who advises the global consulting firm’s banking clients and serves as a member of the Baylor Angel Network and the Hankamer School of Business Advisory Board. This definition, Coleman says, requires the identification of a shared purpose, an “articulation of what the company provides to its customers that they cannot obtain anywhere else.” Leadership success “all comes back to fostering that shared purpose,” Coleman continues. “How does a leader ensure that everybody in the company reflects that same sense of purpose in everything they do on a daily basis?”

Today, leading corporate captains understand that their organization’s people, process, technologies and even strategies change frequently and dramatically. What needs to remain constant and animated, if their strategic plans are to succeed, is the company’s sense of purpose and the values on which it is based.

It’s no wonder that Shackleton’s people-centered approach as well as his ability to derive order from chaos and manage extreme volatility remain relevant grist for 21^st century leaders and strategic planners. The type of survival improvisation skill Shackleton demonstrated parallels the product, service and relationship innovation leaders must foster today if they are to prevent their companies from perishing.

“Companies that don’t innovate quickly find themselves in a lot of trouble,” notes Kendall Artz, chair of the Management and Entrepreneurship department and director of the Baylor Entrepreneurship Program. “If they fall too far behind, they can never catch up.”

The notion that leadership capabilities displayed in 1915 still resonate today does not surprise Ed Fiske (BBA ’74, MBA ‘75), a retired Accenture managing partner and a former Hankamer Advisory Board member who now works as an independent investor.

“Many of the capabilities that effective leaders possess today are similar to the skills they needed 10 or more years ago,” he notes. “However, while these leadership competencies were important a decade ago, their importance to the organization has increased exponentially today, given the challenges companies face.”

These competencies (seven of which are discussed later in this article) include a mix of leadership qualities (e.g., integrity and organizational stewardship) and management capabilities (effecting change and managing an increasingly mobile and far-flung workforce). Together, these capabilities help executives develop and continuously adapt strategies for achieving growth, resiliency and comprehensive sustainability in a global business environment pockmarked with iceberg-sized challenges.

Drivers of Change

Last year, Forbes.com blogger Larry Downes, an industry analyst and consultant, wrote a captivating entry detailing exactly why electronics retail giant Best Buy “is headed for the exits.”

Downes’ argument combined astute business analysis of Best Buy’s strategic and tactical missteps with his own disappointing experience shopping with a friend in a California Best Buy store. Downes’ description of the impersonal service he and his friend received, as well as the culture that allowed this behavior to occur, gave voice to thousands of similar disappointing in-person experiences millions of readers have endured. To date, more than 3.3 million people have viewed his post. The blog entry was careful not to blame Best Buy’s demise entirely on Amazon’s disruptive pricing, selection, service and logistics offerings. However, the fact that a single negative shopping experience could attract 3 million readers and inspire 19,000 Facebook shares and 6,600 Tweets illustrates the disruptive power of social media as well as the need for companies to manage their cultures and the daily behaviors they generate in a more mindful manner.

The drivers of change influencing Best Buy and every other company as well as their leadership teams should be relatively well-known by now; they most notably include:

• Globalization: The number of multinational companies more than doubled from 1990 (35,000) to 2008 (80,000), when these global organizations operated an average of 10 foreign affiliates, according to Accenture research. The largest 100 multinational companies collectively employ more employees outside their home countries than within them, according to United Nations research. This trend intensifies the competition companies face while raising new challenges related to managing increasingly diverse, mobile and virtual workforces.
• Volatility: “Regardless of what industry you’re in,” Coleman asserts, “the pace of change is much faster than it was 20 years ago, 10 years ago or even five years ago.” The accelerating pace of change has dramatically reshaped strategic planning activities, notes Gail Auerbach, senior vice president of human resources for Masonite, a global door manufacturer based in Tampa, Fla. Auerbach spent the first half of her career, in the late 1970s through late 1980s, with General Electric, a company renowned for its long-term planning and decision-making. “We had 10-year strategic plans,” she recalls. “Of course, back then the organization charts seldom changed unless there was a retirement. Now, many organization charts change weekly. Global companies are constantly moving people around the world to leverage new opportunities.”
• Technological Change:  A formidable challenge corporate information technology (IT) functions face stems in part from tablet- and app-equipped children. “Top executives of companies walk into work and say, ‘My kids can learn anything they want to learn about any topic instantaneously via the technology they use; why can’t I get a financial report in less than a month?’” explains Gary Curtis, Accenture chief technology strategist and global managing director of the firm’s Technology Consulting. These types of questions, categorized as the “consumerization” of organizational IT, “are absolutely changing the nature of the CIO role,” Curtis adds.

Each of these forces qualify as risks in that they pose challenges and threats to be mitigated or avoided as well as opportunities that can be leveraged—with the right strategy. Developing the most profitable and sustainable strategy requires a new form of business leadership, one that exhibits many traditional competencies as well as newer capabilities.

Seven Must-Have Competencies

Talk to leading professors, management and search consultants, and corporate executives about leadership priorities in the past 18 months or so, and you’ll often hear terms such as “values,” “purpose-driven,” “stewardship” and “shared mission.” One of the top three findings from IBM’s 2012 survey of 1,709 global CEOs was that leaders are intent on “empowering employees through values.”

Coleman believes that successful leaders focus on values. And he points to Accenture’s implementation of “stewardship” as the core organizational value and one of the main reasons he has remained with the company for 20 years.

“Regardless of whether I work with banking clients, operate as an IT outsourcing guy or work as a back-office finance support person [at Accenture], I can translate stewardship into my job every day,” Coleman explains. “Am I being a good steward of the company in terms of the decision I’m making in that meeting? Am I being a good steward of my customer by looking out for their best interests? Am I being a good steward for the people who work for me by giving them the right opportunities and enough of my time? Am I being a good steward of my peers, especially when they request my help or time?”

This sort of core organizational value helps foster and sustain a sturdy cultural foundation amidst rapid and dramatic change, Coleman and others note. That’s why 21^st century leaders devote sufficient time and effort to managing their cultures. Successful leaders also devote attention to becoming:

Continuous Strategic Planners: The decades-old approach of conducting a strategic planning exercise once a year “has gone out the window,” Artz asserts, “because no one can predict what the future’s going to look like anymore given the pace of technological change and globalization.” Not that 20^th century strategic planners were 100 percent accurate, Artz adds, but the gist of their projections usually were relatively on the mark. That’s no longer the case, and leaders should recognize the importance of keeping strategy and strategic planning activities as current as possible. “You have to have a relevant plan, you communicate the plan to everyone in your organization, and you have to get them on board,” says Fiske, who acknowledges that strategic planning is becoming a more agile and almost continuous process. “This requires business leaders to have a clear vision, sharp communications skills and a strong ability to persuade.” Leaders need to flex these capabilities in the service of strategic shifts far more frequently than they did even five years ago.

Virtuous Leaders: Professor of Management and Chavanne Chair of Christian Ethics in Business Mitchell Neubert’s recent research on ethical and servant leadership indicates that leaders who clearly express and behave according to agreed-upon organizational values engender more trust throughout the entire workforce. “High-trust” organizations tend to employ workers who report higher levels of satisfaction, collaborate more effectively with colleagues, express a greater willingness to flex their creativity when solving problems and say they are more committed to the company, according to Neubert.  “We want integrity in our business leaders for obvious reasons,” Neubert says, “but leaders who act with integrity help generate benefits throughout the workforce.” This has long been the case, but the importance of engendering trust among workers has intensified. “The pace of change elevates the role of the leader in terms of providing structure and direction and meaning,” Neubert says. “When everything else is changing so dramatically, employees want to know what and whom they can trust.”

Cultural Caretakers: Ever since the term was coined, “organizational culture” largely has been viewed as a “soft” asset and more of a nice-to-have than a bottom-line-boosting competitive advantage. Today, mounting evidence suggests that organizational culture that is built on the right set of shared values and that fosters the right sort of behaviors can deliver quantifiable advantages. In a 2012 report, LRN, a company that helps corporations foster ethical, winning cultures and inspire principled performance in their operations, found that companies built on purpose, guided by values and permeated with trust employ workers who are 22 times more likely to take a beneficial risk—decisions and actions that ultimately enable eight times the levels of innovation—compared to companies with lower-performing (and less trusting, lower integrity) organizational cultures. Business leaders who want to develop cultures that generate these and related business benefits “have to create an environment that attracts and fully engages employees,” Neubert notes. “This requires creating meaningful work. In some but not all cases, this means inviting people to talk about their faith and to express different parts of their diverse backgrounds.” Employees typically feel more accepted and engaged in the workplace when they can discuss their unique backgrounds and beliefs; however, these activities must be managed carefully and intentionally. “Diversity has great potential to stimulate new ideas and innovation, but it does not automatically equate to more collaboration or better relationships,” Neubert adds. “Leaders need to become more skilled in building relationships among diverse people and thinking as opposed to simply inviting diversity into the workplace.”

Active Listeners: The “my way or the highway” leadership style many 20^th century leaders displayed no longer works in a business environment defined in large part by the unfettered flow of information. “Access to information works both ways,” Neubert explains. “Companies have more information about their employees, customers and stakeholders. And all of the stakeholders have more information about the company.” The leveling of the information playing field requires leaders to more frequently listen to and respond to stakeholder concerns in meaningful ways.

Change Managers: Change management represents a more tactical component of the 21^st century leader skill set, and a capability they must summon constantly. “If you don’t make changes quickly, your company can be out of the market before you know it,” Fiske emphasizes. “Your products can become outdated so quickly. When that happens, it takes a tremendous effort to retool to make the company relevant again. An effective leader has to be very good at enabling change or agility as organizational competency.”

Virtual Leaders: The globalization of business and technological breakthroughs (e.g., ubiquitous cellular connectivity, smart devices, cloud computing, mobile commerce, video conferencing and more) have transformed the traditional workplace into a highly virtual, constantly mobile workplace. This transformation affords companies access to new global opportunities, but it also poses threats. Managing organizational cultures is much more difficult with language and time barriers and without as much in-person contact, notes Fiske.  Leaders should strengthen their ability to wield influence virtually as a result. Leaders also should recognize that the management of virtual teams requires more attention. Forthcoming research (which will be published in the Journal of Management) conducted by Emily Hunter, Hankamer School of Business assistant professor of Management, shows virtual and telecommuting arrangements are not “a panacea solution for every project or every employee.” Virtual teams often contain members who slack off—often due to family challenges at home or insufficient work/life boundaries—and create more work for their virtual colleagues. “Managers should assign virtual work and telecommunications privileges wisely,” notes Hunter.

Open Innovators: Artz indicates that successful business leaders recognize that there are different innovation management models. Some companies, like Apple, invest significant time and energy engaging their customers in the product design process, for example. This approach requires technology that can support the collection and analysis of customer preferences, usage patterns and related data. Some companies favor iterative innovation approaches designed to achieve smaller improvements while others invest more money and accept more risk in pursuit of radical innovation breakthroughs. A new approach, open innovation, requires an open leadership mind. This model involves companies collaborating with competitors to share the risk of innovation investments; if the innovation proves appealing, each company then devises a unique execution plan for harvesting the advancement in the marketplace.

There is one more area that requires innovation and attention from current business leaders, according to Coleman: leadership development and succession planning. These internal processes need to be robust enough to ensure that a company, if its profits and purpose are to be sustainable, has access to a sufficient number of future Shackletons.

 

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2013

by Kristin Todd Stires

1983 marked the introduction of the first mobile phones to the public, the release of the Apple Lisa personal computer, and the debut of “Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.” Ronald Reagan was president, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was the best-selling album. The year also marked the launch of the Baylor Business Review (BBR) as the flagship communication of Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, and we are proud to celebrate 30 years of the magazine this year!

The Baylor Business Review (BBR) communicates stories about how the university’s mission and values manifest in the lives of our alumni, faculty and students, as well as other business leaders around the world. The magazine also serves as a forum to discuss current business issues from the perspectives of academics as well as practitioners.

The publication was launched under the leadership of Judith Corwin, who dedicated 20 years to serving as the magazine’s first managing editor. Beth Barbee Hubbert served as managing editor from 2003 through 2007. The magazine’s current editor, Kristin Todd Stires, has managed the magazine since fall 2007.

Published twice each year, the magazine averages 60 pages per issue and reaches more than 40,000 subscribers, alumni and friends of the business school. Each issue of the magazine has a designated theme. Past themes include The Workforce; Customer Service; Small Business; Hankamer’s Faculty, Graduate Programs and Undergraduate Programs; Innovation; Sustainability and Social Responsibility; Real Estate; Energy; Entrepreneurship; Sports Marketing; and Technology.

As the business world has evolved, the BBR has evolved with it. The magazine was first published as an 8.5” x 11” glossy, two-color magazine. Under the direction of C.J Jackson, director of Communications and Marketing, extensive research was conducted in 2002 and 2003, which resulted in the introduction of the Baylor Business market position and brand. In conjunction with the school’s re-branding, the magazine underwent a major redesign with the fall 2003 issue. The magazine is now a colorful 9.5” x 11.75” publication with creative photos and graphics, and it is easily distinguished from other collateral mailed to our readership.

In 2005, the BBR was offered online for the first time. As for the printed publication, the magazine went green with the fall 2007 issue. The magazine is currently printed on FSC-certified 100 percent postconsumer waste entirely with non-polluting, wind-generated energy and contains 100 percent postconsumer recycled fiber. In 2011, the magazine’s website was redesigned for more readership engagement and moved to the domain bbr.baylor.edu. We became digital trailblazers in 2012, as we launched the BBR iPad app, which serves as an additional content platform and a way to further connect with our audiences while expanding our readership. The free BBR app offers readers an enhanced experience through videos, audio podcasts, interactive features such as hot spots and flip pages, and additional photos not published in the magazine.

httpv://youtu.be/mQFKC3pP3Ww

The BBR has proven itself as a reputable publication on a national and international level, earning more than 40 awards over the last 10 years. In 2005, the redesigned publication won the Gold Circle of Excellence Award for magazine improvement from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Most recently, the magazine earned an Award of Excellence from the 2012 Communicator Awards sponsored by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA). The publication earned a 2012 Award of Commendation from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) as well as two 2013 ADDY awards in a local competition sponsored by the American Advertising Federation-Waco chapter (AAF).

Additionally, the magazine’s website and the BBR app both earned a 2012 Silver W3 Award from the IAVA. The app has garnered over 1,400 downloads from more than 43 different countries. The BBR app was ranked #65 out of all free business iPad apps in the U.S. on the iTunes App Store shortly after its release and holds a near-perfect 4.5-star rating on iTunes. The app was also featured in the November/December issue of BizEd, the magazine of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. All awards were shared with Pollei DesignWorks and Baylor University’s Photography Department, and the app awards were also shared with App Studio (formerly PressRun).

We thank you, our readers, for your support. While we won’t be covering “front room” versus “back room” computers in our next issue (as discussed in our fall 1983 issue), we hope you look forward to reading the Baylor Business Review and that it continues to prove insightful and stimulate discussion.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2013

by Kristin Todd Stires

The Hankamer School of Business strives to produce graduates who will become ethical leaders with integrity. We caught up with several alumni to gain insight about leadership and management within corporations and start-ups. Their stories revealed that dedication and character, combined with experience, have shaped them in to business leaders making an impact in their respective industries.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2013

by Dorie Clark

Juniper Networks, the networking giant, doesn’t have it easy. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, they’re locked in a ferocious battle for talent against big-brand neighbors like Google, Facebook and Apple. That’s why, says Juniper executive vice president of human resources Steven Rice, they have to offer something different. But it’s not an arms race over who has the best free cafeteria food or pet-sitting services. Instead, it comes down to one question Juniper asks at the beginning of the recruitment process: “Where will you do your best work?”

Says Rice, “We’re able to attract and retain talent because of our belief in how work should be done, and how we interact and collaborate. While there’s a shortage of talent, we can still find the right people for Juniper, even though we’re competing with companies that are in the press a lot, because talent selects itself based on how companies organize and structure work.”

So what’s Juniper’s secret sauce? Rice says it’s a willingness to radically re-examine assumptions about the workplace. “I feel we’re on the cusp of what I call the next generation of work design,” he says. Working with professor Robert Cross of the University of Virginia, Juniper has created “network maps” of its relationship with two major customers, and has plans in the works for several more. The process is intricate—and revealing. “We’ve mapped 900 individuals that surround a particular customer and then we evaluate who the connectors are in terms of how information flows, why people go to them, and if the organizational structure is an inhibitor or an enhancer in getting the work done,” says Rice. “What is the structure and hierarchy we need in place for the next generation of work? What are the implications for how many layers of management you need, and do you organize around your products, or around a customer, or maybe a combination?”

Adopting a “network” outlook—appropriate, given Juniper’s business—can lead to new efficiencies and better ways of serving customers. “A network looks for the easiest path to move information and context at a very fast rate,” says Rice. “You’re not concerned with hierarchy, and there’s an assumption that information should flow freely and frequently, and go to the source of who needs that information in order to solve customer problems. What differentiates us in terms of where you can do your best work is looking at how to organize around the free flow of information that allows you to do your best, unencumbered by hierarchy.”

Juniper is also embracing other cutting-edge research, including insights into the neuroscience of leadership by David Rock, which has informed their perspective on employee professional development. “A lot of leadership development training prescribes that you need to behave in a certain way,” says Rice, “and we want to break that paradigm. There are thought patterns all of us have that are entrenched, and forcing people to comply with a set of principles is an unnatural way to think about it.”

Just as two people will configure their laptops differently—one preferring a million files on their desktop, and the other organizing them within folders—we all have natural habits of thought we fall back on, says Rice. “We’re trying to understand how that translates to how they coach, mentor, and define work for the people who report to them, or how people like to work together in teams. Neuroscience and leadership helps us appreciate those differences and how to use them as a positive, rather than getting people to perform in a certain way.”

As Rice sees it, the future of work is flexible and customized—responsive both to individual learning styles, and the unique needs of customers. A factory-era, hierarchical mentality is rapidly becoming obsolete. “Organizations that are able to be very clear and deliberate about how culture, talent, and structure come together are the ones that will continue to thrive and out-innovate their competitors,” he says. “My own mission is to figure that out better than our competitors—and that’s how Juniper’s going to win.”

Is your company breaking down traditional hierarchy? How are you organizing now, and what results are you seeing? *

 

Dorie Clark is CEO of Clark Strategic Communications and the author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future (Harvard Business Review Press) available at http://amzn.to/VzNRkZ. She is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University and the Ford Foundation. Listen to her podcasts at http://dorieclark.podmatic.com or follow her on Twitter @dorieclark. Contact at dorie@dorieclark.com.

*This article first appeared on Forbes website (August 8, 2012)

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2013

by Franci Rogers

At age 14, Aaron Fitzgerald began looking for ways to earn money. He started doing odd jobs for neighbors and family friends. Less than five years later, he had 15 employees and more than 500 clients. And he had yet to graduate from high school.

So when the senior Finance and Entrepreneurship major from Conifer, Colo., heard about Baylor’s Accelerated Ventures program, it seemed like a natural fit.

Accelerated Ventures is a two-semester course that supplies students with the information, resources and funding to start their own companies. Each semester, 12 students are selected for the program and are expected to, with $5,000 in start-up money, create real companies, launch products and services and generate sales. And they do this while taking a full course load of other classes.

httpv://youtu.be/Ig1QN4pD3TA

“It’s easily the most stressful, most fun experience I’ve ever had. I love it,” said Fitzgerald, whose start-up company is Oliver Hair Growth. “It encompasses everything you’ve even remotely learned in every other class and brings it together: accounting, marketing, finance. Every skill you’ve learned in business school comes into play and you use it again, in the real world.”

The program began in 2011 when Les Palich, the W.A. Mays Professor of Entrepreneurship, and Kendall Artz, director of Baylor’s Entrepreneurship program and chair of the department of Management and Entrepreneurship, began discussing how social media was being used in entrepreneurship. They began thinking about a course that could teach the use of social media and other emerging technologies that would be timely and relevant.

“At the same time, Dr. Artz was having similar conversations with an alumnus, David Grubbs,” Palich said. “I asked them to come up with an idea for a course. When I heard what they had in mind, it was all I’d imagined and more. It’s more than just a course, it’s a program.”

Their choice to facilitate the program was Grubbs, who graduated from Baylor in 2007 with a BBA in Finance. Grubbs is a serial entrepreneur who has founded seven Internet service and marketing companies, and is currently the CEO of Campus Cellect, a business he founded while a sophomore at Baylor. He is also a partner in several companies and serves as a consultant.

“In the past several years, I have built and launched companies in 30 days and was making a profit in 45 days, with very little start-up money,” Grubbs said. “Others have started companies with as little as $7,000 that were launched in 30 days and had $400,000 in profit in 90 days. I started thinking, we really should be teaching this in school. And so Baylor did.”

For Grubbs, the practical experience of entrepreneurship is an essential part of the education.

“If you had my favorite violinist Itzhak Perlman in class, would you teach music theory all day, or would you hand him a violin?” Grubbs asked. “Entrepreneurs are also artists, just in a different form, and they have to be able to practice their art.”

Upperclassmen from any discipline can apply to the program. The month-long selection process begins with written applications, and finalists are interviewed.

After the 12 students are selected, they meet to learn about their classmates and begin to choose team members. They are immediately expected to begin studying the books and curriculum. They are also given the parameters for the businesses they will run.

“We don’t accept family business or out-of-home businesses,” Grubbs said. “We also don’t want anything you can’t scale from $5,000 to seven figures. In other words, no T-shirt companies or lemonade stands.”

On the first day of class, students are given their final exam for the course, and present their teams of three students and their initial business idea. They also receive their $5,000 per team in funding.

“Choosing the right people for our team was really important to me,” said Rachel Sload, a senior Entrepreneurship major from Montgomery, Texas. “I felt strongly that we should have diverse perspectives, so I am working with an Engineering major who has a strong computer and technical background because that’s not my strength. I also wanted a guy’s perspective, so our other team member is male.”

Sload’s team created Avundas Skin Solutions, a line of skin care products.

“We each have our roles and we’ve each grown in them,” she said. “I feel like I’ve gotten to sharpen my communication skills, and I’ve really enjoyed that. I’ve learned so much more than I thought I could. I never thought I could negotiate with a large company in another country as a senior in college, but I have.”

The Baylor Angel Network provides start-up funding for the ventures. The investing group retains 10 percent of the companies; the students on the team each retain 30 percent of the company. From the second day forward, the students are building their companies, which are required to launch in 45 days. By the end of the first semester, companies are expected to be generating revenue. By the end of the second semester, they should be profitable.

“It’s a huge workload; they assign it to themselves. I assign none of it,” Grubbs said. “They are extremely motivated.”

Allison Kusenberger, a senior Entrepreneurship and Marketing major from Little Rock, Ark., said the program is teaching her to prioritize her work.

“It’s a tough balance,” she said. “You can’t think of this class as just a class. It’s a job and it never ends. But you set goals and work on a timeline. It’s very time consuming, but your partners are counting on you. You can’t slack off without affecting them, too.”

Kusenberger and her teammates are selling a high-end men’s shaving kit, called Shavespeare.

Once the class is over, teammates must decide whether to continue as a group, sell their share of the start-up to the others, or sell the company outright. Many of the details are worked out ahead of time, when the companies are legally formed, but much depends on the outcome of the course.

“Our plan is to move to Addison [Texas] and continue to try to get into as many retail locations as possible,” said Sam O’Brien of his team’s company, Whol-E Water, which sells an alkaline-enhanced bottled water that is touted as a healthy way to balance the body’s pH levels.

The senior Public Relations and Journalism major from Austin, Texas, hopes his company continues to grow.

“We want to generate enough profit to start our own distribution center,” he said.  “Our goal is to be self-sustaining and in 50 retail locations by the end of the year.”

O’Brien’s desire to move to Addison is not just because of the town’s growing economy.  The town has offered the students some amazing incentives.

The town will provide the student-run businesses the opportunity to move to the community where they will receive free office space and support for 12 months after graduation. Additionally, the Greater Waco Chamber has partnered with Baylor to launch ThInc Space, a business incubator for creative start-ups that also will be the headquarters for the Accelerated Ventures Program. While enrolled in the program, students will receive free office space from the Greater Waco Chamber. Upon completion of the course, students can continue to use the free space for one year while they expand their businesses.

“This will be a tremendous opportunity for these students, and another example of the business community helping this program to be successful,” Palich said. “Like the Baylor Angel Network, we’re getting help from so many places.”

And Palich hopes the program can help other universities as well.

“Our goal is to create a national model that other schools can adopt,” he said. “Next year, we expect to have three other schools starting up their own programs using our model. This is another situation where Baylor Entrepreneurship is a leader among schools, and that’s exactly where we want to be.”

www.acceleratedventures.com

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2013