Chief financial officers from the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Cardinals and Phoenix Suns all work for organizations that don’t want to make a profit, they told Thunderbird students Feb. 4 at the Arizona Sports Business Panel on campus.

“You take in money to put the best team on the field or the court,” said Jim Pitman, executive vice president of finance and administration for the Phoenix Suns, a National Basketball Association franchise. “Our goal is to break even, win championships and create sustained success.”

A global economic downturn has made it harder for sports teams to break even, especially in markets such as Phoenix that have multiple franchises competing for the disposable income of cash-strapped fans.

“Fans have to decide if they are a football fan or a baseball fan,” said Greg Lee, chief financial officer for the Arizona Cardinals in the National Football League. “Maybe they can’t afford to be both.”

The recession also has limited the ability of corporations to reserve stadium suites or negotiate sponsorship deals.

Craig Bradley, vice president of finance for Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, said the key to filling athletic arenas and attracting sponsors is putting a winning product on the field or court. “At the end of the day, winning cures everything,” he said.

Thunderbird Professor Michael Moffett, Ph.D., moderated the discussion, which attracted about 100 students interested in sports business careers. Thunderbird’s Career Management Center organized the event.

Although sports franchises often struggle to break even, the panelists said the sports industry tends to attract employees full of passion for their teams. “If we were a widget company, I don’t know if the ownership would be as passionate about the business as they are,” Bradley said.

Although most sports seasons last only a few months each year, the panelists said the front office staff all work year-round managing player contracts, stadium deals and marketing campaigns.

“We don’t have an off season,” Pitman said. “The off season is our busiest time.”

Beyond those similarities, each panelist also described challenges unique to each league. Major League Baseball franchises host more than 80 games each season, for example, while NFL teams play only 10 to 12 home games each season.

Sports venues also vary in size. The Suns can host about 18,000 fans at one game, the Diamondback can host about 48,000 fans, and the Cardinals can host about 64,000 fans. All of this affects ticket prices and marketing strategies.

Bradley said the number of games in a Major League Baseball season makes it difficult in a market such as Phoenix to keep luxury suites filled at each event. He said the Diamondbacks have had to find other uses for some of their luxury suites, such as converting some of the space into a shared lounge for all suite owners.

Despite the various challenges, each of the panelists said he is having fun working behind the scenes in professional sports. “A sports team is something that can unify an entire community,” Pitman said.

Arizona-based First Solar grew rapidly into the world’s largest manufacturer of thin film solar modules by finding balance in six key areas, Executive Chairman Michael Ahearn told an audience of about 100 faculty, staff and students Feb. 4 at Thunderbird School of Global Management.

First Solar, which formed in 1999 and launched production of commercial products in 2002, operates today with more than 5,000 employees in 10 countries. Ahearn said the company will continue to expand as it pursues its mission to enable a world powered by clean, affordable solar electricity. “We’re not there yet,” he said.

Ahearn said finding balance in these six areas has driven the company’s hypergrowth:

1. Purpose driven versus returns oriented

Ahearn said companies need to decide if their top priority is to make money or to accomplish their mission. In the end, he said, companies need to consider both objectives as they grow. “You can’t solve the mission program and have bad financials,” Ahearn said. “That is not sustainable.”

2. Flexible versus planned

Companies also need to find the right balance between a loose, flexible culture and a rigid, results-oriented culture. Ahearn said companies such as First Solar that deal with new technology need accept a certain amount of uncertainty. Sometimes, research and development teams fail to produce results even when they work hard. Ahearn said First Solar recognized this and stopped asking, “How quickly can we get results?” Instead, the company started asking, “How quickly can we get answers?” He said the shift has given researchers freedom to pursue new technology without worrying about hitting dead ends when the answer to a technology question turns out to be ”no.”

3. Focused versus growth-oriented

Ahearn said companies also need to decide if they will focus on their core strategies – even if this means passing up potentially lucrative side ventures that could accelerate growth. “You need to decide what opportunities you are going to chase,” he said.

4. Insistence on “A” players versus creating a supportive environment

Ahearn said successful companies need employees from the top 10 percent of the talent pool. “You’ve got to be surrounded by A players,” he said. But this is hard to do when a company is in its startup phase. Finding talent is also an inexact science. A third challenge is that A players sometimes outgrow their jobs — or the other way around — as the startup evolves. Ahearn said First Solar works hard to keep A players in key positions. But the company also has room for B players and even C players with great attitudes.

5. Serving the company’s interest versus serving the customers’ interests

Companies sometimes have different interests than their customers and other stakeholders. Ahearn said First Solar has learned to focus on those areas where the interests overlap. When no overlap exists, he said, the company has to move on.

6. Results versus people

Ambition, focus and dedication are generally good things. But companies with a culture of continuous improvement sometimes attract unbalanced people who sacrifice too much of their personal lives for their jobs. Such people eventually burn out. Ahearn said First Solar encourages its workers to put their families first, and then fit everything else into their schedules. “Work hard, play hard” is the motto.

Panic spread through Baghdad University on Nov. 2, 2006, when news spread that a college dean and his family had been gunned down near campus.

Firdos Jawad, Ph.D., a professor in the Administration and Economics College where the dean worked, ended her class abruptly and rushed outside with others to check on the status of the family. She did not see the gunman waiting in the shadows until it was too late.

Bullets from an automatic rifle filled the air, and six rounds hit Jawad in the side of her belly. As she fell to the ground, her thoughts went to her two young daughters and her mother, who was still grieving the death of a son.

“I told myself, ‘I don’t want to die,’” Jawad said in a recent interview at Thunderbird. “A lot of thinking happened in the next few minutes.”

Jawad’s family feared additional violence in Baghdad, so they put Jawad in an ambulance and took her to a northern Iraqi hospital in the Kurdish region. After a slow recovery that included several surgeries, Jawad and her family began looking for a new home away from the violence, persecution and discrimination that came with the regime of Saddam Hussein.

“Saddam let the people suffer for 35 years, so I did not feel any peace in my country,” Jawad said. “That’s why I decided to leave — to breathe peace and let my children breathe peace.”

She and her family eventually settled in Arizona, where Jawad met Thunderbird Professor Karen Walch, Ph.D., and other friends who helped the family build a new life. Today Jawad works as a language instructor at Thunderbird, where she is helping the school revive its Arabic program.

Fighting for a Ph.D.

Jawad’s journey to Thunderbird started in Baghdad, where she grew up in a large family of influence. Her father, who died when Jawad was about 10, valued education and insisted that all his children earn college degrees.

Jawad studied hard and earned high marks in school. But she also encountered gender barriers. “Iraq has a culture that favors men,” Jawad said. “Men are encouraged to progress, while women stay home and wait for marriage.”

Jawad dreamed of becoming an engineer. But the system blocked her from pursuing this option after high school because she was a woman. She enrolled instead in a business management program and graduated seventh in her class at Baghdad University.

Her high marks qualified her for a graduate program in a foreign country such as the United Kingdom, but again the system blocked her progress because of her gender.

“They told me a woman has no right to go out of the country,” Jawad said. “I will not hide that I cried from the Ministry of Education all the way to my house, but I knew that crying would not solve the problem.”

Jawad stayed in Iraq, where she found jobs at Baghdad University and then Saddam University. She also ran a sewing business on the side.

Political and religious persecution hindered her progress, but Jawad eventually finished an MBA at Baghdad University and found a spot in a Ph.D. program. One month after she started work on her dissertation, coalition forces entered Iraq and removed Saddam from power.

Breathing peace

Jawad finished her Ph.D. in 2006 and joined the faculty at Baghdad University. After the shooting, Jawad and her family worked to rebuild their lives in Iraqi Kurdistan.

She joined the faculty at the University of Duhok and learned Kurdish in three months. After two years, the family moved again to Turkey and then registered with the United Nations for placement in an immigration program.

With the help of Catholic Charities, the family arrived in Phoenix on May 13, 2009.

“It’s normal to have peace here,” Jawad said. “But for me, I appreciate having that, and I feel it every day when I wake up.”

A global recession has not quenched China’s appetite for fine men’s clothing. Michael Cheung, a business development manager for upscale Italian clothier Ermenegildo Zegna, says the company is performing well across China — especially in second-tier cities such as Wuhan, Chongqing and Ningbo.

“Chinese retailers and customers are emerging fast,” says Cheung, a 2000 Thunderbird graduate who lives and works in Shanghai. “They are hungry to learn.”

Part of Cheung’s job at Zegna is to help the retailer find new store locations in mainland China. At the end of 2009 the company had 61 outlets in 31 Chinese cities.

Cheung says opportunities for growth will continue to emerge as China’s second-, third- and fourth-tier cities develop. Already the country has about 250 cities with more than 1.5 million residents. By comparison, the United States has six cities of this size, and the European Union has 11.

Even if consumers at the top of the pyramid remain a small percentage in China, the sheer size of these cities translates into a vibrant luxury goods market that has matured quickly. Cheung says one Zegna executive told him that Chinese retailers have accomplished in five years what it took them 10 years to accomplish in Korea and 20 years in Japan.

“China has done it in an extremely short time,” Cheung says.

The Hong Kong native, who grew up in Costa Rica and Canada, also has accomplished much in a short time.

He earned a chemistry degree at the University of British Columbia in 1996 and then enrolled at Thunderbird. After finishing his MBA in 2000, Cheung used the Thunderbird network to find a job at Shanghai Omni Gear in China.

Promotions came quickly, and he found himself as chief financial officer within four years.

The position brought prestige, but Cheung decided to try something new in 2006. He printed his resume on deluxe paper, scented the document with Zegna cologne and headed to Zegna’s offices in Shanghai dressed in his finest business attire.

The initiative and attention to detail earned Cheung an interview the same day, and the company quickly hired him.

“It was a drop in pay,” Cheung says. “But I liked the company, so I decided to take the jump.”

Since arriving at Zegna, he has started learning Italian to go with his fluent Spanish, English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

Cheung says he learned to value education and keep an open mind as a child, when his family moved from country to country. “It trained me to adapt,” Cheung says. “There was no choice.”

Talk to most any group of up-the-corporate-ladder types and mention the word “failure,” and you will detect an almost-audible gasp, because a mistake or setback is often a career-stopper or, at least, a blot on the record. For these cube-dwellers, an aversion to risk and “don’t take a chance” and “play it safe” attitudes are seen as an antidote to a mistake that can knock the corner office train off its tracks. Yet, talk to an entrepreneur or an enlightened CEO of a company who sees innovation and creativity as the path to profitability and long-term sustainability, and this person will talk openly about failure, mistakes and setbacks as things that are just a part of that journey, process or path along the way to success. Click here to read the rest of this post on the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship Blog.

Most economists and finance professionals believe that people are “rational.” Perfectly rational! This simple assumption leads to serious misunderstandings on the part of all of the various actors in the economy. Two recent examples show the folly of overlooking the mania and panic that so easily beset investors and policymakers. The first example comes from the legislative push to control pollution through Cap and Trade, and the second example comes from the subprime mortgage crisis. Read my full commentary on the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship Blog.

Admit it. You sometimes text or check e-mails during meetings. You know it’s impolite. You hate it when other people do it to you. But you can’t help yourself. Thunderbird Professor Christine Pearson, Ph.D., has heard all your excuses. “The majority of people, whenever I ask, will say yes, they think it is uncivil — they think it is disrespectful to text or check e-mail while they are in the middle of a meeting,” says Pearson, author of The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It. “But many of these same individuals will raise their hands and say, yes, they know it’s disrespectful but they do it anyway.” Pearson, who put more than 10 years of research into her book, says the cost of such seemingly inconsequential acts can be staggering to an organization. She discusses the toll of texting during meetings and other acts of workplace incivility in a recent alumni webcast.