Archive for the ‘Stralser, Steven’ Category

 By Steven Stralser, Ph.D.

I’m writing this on the way home to Arizona after a week teaching in Thunderbird’s Executive MBA program in Geneva and Luzern.  It was a rewarding experience working with global executives in a truly international setting.  I was teaching a highly-condensed version of the course I usually teach in a traditional 14 week semester that’s focused on taking an idea from it’s conceptual beginnings into a well-formed “innovation/commercialization plan”, where an entrepreneur or innovator takes a new business concept and expresses it in a form that can be communicated to others, and serves as an action plan to advance the idea into the marketplace.

The short burst course was instructive and demonstrated a few perspectives about innovation and entrepreneurship:

1. Innovation today is about speed.  The students were able to take, what previously existed as simply an idea and shape it into an executable plan in about of week of collaboration.  In today’s fast-changing, dynamic environment, organizations must quickly adapt, and exploit, market conditions and opportunities.
2. Innovation is best practiced in teams.  The students, with a diverse background of skills and experience, brought individual perspectives and talents to together to form a well-balanced approach to take an idea and form it into an actionable execution plan.  While there is a big “I” in Innovation, it takes the all of the other letters to communicate the meaning of the word.
3. Innovation is an iterative process.  The innovation ideas presented on the first day of class were tossed around, reformatted, modified, debated, challenged, and came out of the process as different, and likely better, than originally presented.  It is likely that, once launched, these innovations will continue to morph, adapt and change to reflect market conditions and opportunities. 

Another takeaway from this EMBA teaching experience was the reminder about how innovation today is truly global—opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators today are best leveraged by looking across borders and boundaries to find productive collaboration of global talent, skills and opportunities.

Steven Stralser Ph.D. is a clinical professor with the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management.  He teaches courses in Innovation, Business Planning and Global Entrepreneurship.  Dr. Stralser is President of TiE Arizona and the author of MBA in a Day. Follow him on twitter @stralser

Health care professionals work in a fast-growing sector full of opportunity for innovation, but many industry leaders lack the business skills necessary to harness and commercialize their entrepreneurial spirit. To help close the gap between the emergency room and boardroom, Thunderbird School of Global Management will launch a 10-week open enrollment course for health care practitioners, administrators, researchers and students starting May 11, 2011.

The evening courses at the Arizona Heart Foundation in Phoenix will feature faculty from the world’s No. 1 school in international business — as well as notable health care practitioners with entrepreneurial experience.

“As a health care professional, it is often difficult for you to move into the world of business and the world of commercializing your innovation,” said Thunderbird Professor Steven Stralser, Ph.D., academic director of the program and a faculty member at the school’s Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship. “Those talents are very different than what made you a good physician.”
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By Steven Stralser, Thunderbird Professor

I’m in Geneva teaching Thunderbird Executive MBAs…we just spent an afternoon at WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) for a briefing and presentation by Tamara Nanayakkara (SME Director) and Cathy Jewell, (Senior Information Officer)

One of the interesting—and concerning—research findings our WIPO hosts shared is the fact that the US is falling behind as the innovation leader among well-developed global economies.

In a similar study conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), and The Manufacturing Institute (MI) concluded among 110 countries, the U.S ranked eighth in innovation leadership. Singapore topped the list, followed by South Korea and Switzerland.

This deflates the conventional wisdom that, while manufacturing may be moving to China, the US can maintain its global economic competitiveness simply via its innovation engine, in fact, the Asia region is revving up their innovation engines, while the US is downshifting and losing its innovation momentum.

To regain its “innovation mojo” here are some things that U.S. companies may want to think about:

1)        Seek innovation at the margins of the organization—rarely is “real” innovation uncovered at the Home Office…the reality is, innovation is more likely to be found at the branch offices or service centers of an organization…for instance, not much innovation will occur in the 43^rd story corner office at 63^rd and Lexington in Manhattan and more likely to take place at the branch office at Main Street and Oak, in Fargo North Dakota.

2)        Take a page from Anthropologists — who are trained to respect, and learn, from studying culture, behavior, and importantly, observation in situ, vs. robo-call surveys and quantitative methodology. Watch, and listen to your customers for valuable insight into how they use your products, and to better understand innovation they are seeking.

U.S. companies need to think more globally about innovation of their products and services…when US companies are crossing borders with their competencies and innovation, US companies will regain leadership and competitiveness in an increasingly global economy.

Steven Stralser Ph.D. is a clinical professor with the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management.  He teaches courses in Innovation, Business Planning and Global Entrepreneurship.  Dr. Stralser is the author of MBA in a Day.

By Steven Stralser, Ph.D.

When most of us think of entrepreneurial challenges one of the things that usually pops up is the notion of risk… The founder is assessing the risk of whether “the dogs will eat the dog food”…the investor is assessing the financial risk/ return calculus to determine whether to take the entrepreneurial bet…the employee of the startup is assessing the risk that the venture will succeed and so the employee will get their paycheck and possibly some upside stock option gain if the venture succeeds.

But all of these risk scenarios pale compared to the risk of being a woman entrepreneur in Afghanistan, where being a woman with an independent means of economic destiny bears another level of risk, a risk of personal safety and security.

For the past two weeks, 19 courageous Afghan women have spent time in Thunderbird classrooms, learning from Thunderbird faculty and sharing their entrepreneurial vision with Thunderbird student volunteers and with a matched-up mentor who will stay connected to Thunderbird Project Artemis “Fellows” after they return to their businesses and entrepreneurial futures in Afghanistan.

When they return to their country, they will certainly tackle “traditional” entrepreneurial risks, and more, and inspire us with their determination to forge their own economic destiny.

Photo:  An Woman entrepreneur, from Afghanistan at the White House speaking to Ginger Lew, Senior Advisor to the White House National Economic Council at the White House and the SBA Administrator  and Tina Tchen, Executive Director of the White House Council on Women.

Steven Stralser Ph.D. is a clinical professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management.  He teaches courses in Innovation, Business Planning and Global Entrepreneurship.  Dr. Stralser has been the Academic Director of Project Artemis since its inception.

By Steven Stralser, Thunderbird Professor

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.
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By Ian Jenkins ’10, Thunderbird MBA candidate

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson.

As the winterim comes to a close, I reflect on the decision that I believe is running through all the heads in the class. Do I join the corporate world, or do I start out on my own? There is much experience to be gained in the corporate form, but then it oftentimes leads to a life that is too comfortable to leave. When you have a spouse, kids, mortgage and car payments, it is hard to leave the security of a salary and start off on your own. Thus it was fitting that the last speaker of the winterim was David Dodge. Mr. Dodge is a former T-bird who wrote his business plan during class and started a business while attending Thunderbird full-time.
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By Nada Farah ’10, Thunderbird MBA candidate

Diagnosing the pain is the key to a successful entrepreneurial journey according to our final speaker Mr. David Dodge. I have realized lately that some journeys start and end with pure irrational passion that doesnt include this step. Not to say that just deciding on a cure without analyzing the pain never works, but this strategys success is unlikely. Understanding the markets ins and outs and then scaling the potential market share with the new cure are very important steps.
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By Daniel Hunter ’10, Thunderbird MBA candidate

Our final speaker, David Dodge, was interesting simply because he is such a recent graduate from Thunderbird and has been on his entrepreneurial journey for a relatively short amount of time.  The lessons which I learned from David revolved around marketing and strategy. David’s company, Sure Prep Learning, has put forth a great deal of effort toward figuring out what unique value they add to their marketplace, what market need they are meeting, and what makes their organization so special and distinctive. Some of these questions have clear answers, but some of these questions are being answered in taking the journey.
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By Eric Basting ’10, Thunderbird MBA candidate

David Dodge, T-bird ’06, and his T-bird business partner and wife (yes, it was Thunderlove) created a grade K-12 tutoring service while David was still a student. After teaching English in Argentina, David returned to the Phoenix area and wound up enrolling at Thunderbird. While in Professor Stralser’s Global Business Plan class, David submitted a plan for SurePrep.
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By Gavin Tempero ’10, Thunderbird MBA candidate

Today’s presenter had a great point when she talked about the retail location she made and what was the over arching goal of that location. Michelle Kort started As You Wish, a paint-your-own pottery business. At first people looked at the actual pottery others were making and thought that was the end goal. To Mrs. Kort the whole point of people coming into her store was for the experience. It was more about the people you were with and the memories created there than the actual object you left with.
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