"Serafim Rostiw": For A Name Angelic Is A Name To Trust!

Bloat Flab

This writing advertisement - note the links - appeared in the comment space of a prior blogpost, but I so appreciated its inadvertent irony that I just had to re-post it as a blogpost itself:

Serafim Rostiw said . . .

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Due to a number of factors, the mental medicine is nowadays one of extremely popular scientific directions as long as scientists from all over the world explore the reasons for psychological problems, mental health argumentative essay, and the ways to overcome and treat them. People’s psychological peculiarities, behavior, and reactions to various factors and circumstances are under discussion and are carefully examined.

Look carefully at the first part of the first paragraph's first sentence. Basically, it says "We are an essay." Look even more closely at the latter part of the second paragraph's first sentence, and you will find that it presents an essay as the equivalent of a psychological problem to be treated and overcome.

If you remove the linked phrases (the underlined ones), the absurdity is removed, but what remain are two flabby paragraphs.

Big Jerks as Great Visionaries? Or Vice-Versa?

Elon Musk
NYT

As I was reading Tony Schwartz's recent article, "The Bad Behavior of Visionary Leaders" (NYT, June 26, 2015), I finally understood why visionaries like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk can be so "unnecessarily cruel and demeaning . . . to the people who helped make their dreams come true." Schwartz helped me see why:

I would argue that most of the bad behavior of these men is fear-based, impulsive and reactive rather than consciously hurtful. It grows not out of a sense of superiority but rather of insecurity.

Still, why the insecurity? They're geniuses. The insecurity comes from the fact that those around them are not all geniuses. Schwartz tells us:

I know well the anxious feeling that can arise when a deal is coming undone, a project isn't gelling or an employee seems to be falling short. I know how frightening it can be to feel out of control . . . . Each of [these three visionaries] . . . was far more likely to act out suddenly and behave poorly when he wasn't getting exactly what he wanted - when he felt that others were failing to live up to his standards.

I finally understood. Great visionaries make great demands. Insanely great demands. They do so for their visions, and if they see their vision fading because of some employee failing to perform in an insanely great fashion, they lose control in trying to maintain control.

I can see how that happens. I understand . . . and I learn something new every day.

Samsung Didn't Steal Apple's Design, Just Borrowed It for a Bit

Lee Kun-hee and Steve Jobs in a Friendly Spat
Vanity Fair - June 2014

In the June 2014 issue of Vanity Fair, Kurt Eichenwald reports on "The Great Smartphone War," Apple's legal battles with Samsung, which began after Apple's designers had studied, in mid-2010, Samsung's Galaxy S, which they concluded was outright piracy, a copy of Apple's iPhone:

The overall appearance of the phone, the screen, the icons, even the box looked the same as the iPhone's. Patented features such as "rubber-banding," in which a screen image bounces slightly when a user tries to scroll past the bottom, were identical. Same with "pinch to zoom," which allows users to manipulate image size by pinching the thumb and forefinger together on the screen. And on and on.

Could be coincidence. Apple didn't think so, and took action on August 4, 2010:

Jobs decided to take the gloves off. Hence the meeting in Seoul. The Apple executives were escorted to a conference room high in the Samsung Electronics Building, where they were greeted by about half a dozen Korean engineers and lawyers. Dr. Seungho Ahn, a Samsung vice president, was in charge, according to court records and people who attended the meeting. After some pleasantries, Chip Lutton, then Apple's associate general counsel for intellectual property, took the floor and put up a PowerPoint slide with the title "Samsung's Use of Apple Patents in Smartphones." Then he went into some of the similarities he considered especially outrageous, but the Samsung executives showed no reaction. So Lutton decided to be blunt.

"Galaxy copied the iPhone," he said.

"What do you mean, copied?" Ahn replied.

"Exactly what I said," Lutton insisted. "You copied the iPhone. The similarities are completely beyond the possibility of coincidence."

Samsung didn't agree, and apparently had nothing to hide. Nothing in particular:

One day in March 2011, cars carrying investigators from Korea's anti-trust regulator pulled up outside a Samsung facility in Suwon, about 25 miles south of Seoul. They were there ready to raid the building, looking for evidence of possible collusion between the company and wireless operators to fix the prices of mobile phones.

Before the investigators could get inside, security guards approached and refused to let them through the door. A standoff ensued, and the investigators called the police, who finally got them inside after a 30-minute delay. Curious about what had been happening in the plant as they cooled their heels outside, the officials seized video from internal security cameras. What they saw was almost beyond belief.

Upon getting word that investigators were outside, employees at the plant began destroying documents and switching computers, replacing the ones that were being used -- and might have damaging material on them -- with others.

Pure coincidence. The activity was just in line with Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee's long-standing advice that Samsung employees change everything except for their wives and children. Obviously, they were changing with the times.

As for stealing Apple's design, that is better described as "borrowing," for as Eichenwald points out, Samsung's corporate strategy was to "countersue [Apple], . . . [t]hen, as the litigation dragged on, snap up a greater share of the market and settle" out of court after "develop[ing] new and better phones throughout the litigation to the point where . . . the Korean company is . . . a strong competitor on the technology and not just a copycat anymore."

See? Not stealing. Just borrowing.

Just as I was starting to respect business school . . .

Hard Slog to Learning Management
Photo by Lisa Mintzberg
New York Times

In the past few years, I had begun to re-evaluate my long-ago undergraduate disdain for university business schools, but a business school professor himself now tells me I'm wrong to think I was wrong, or so reports D. D. Guttenplan in "The Anti-MBA" (NYT, May 20, 2012):

A professor of management studies at McGill University in Montreal, Dr. [Henry] Mintzberg holds two graduate degrees in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But since at least 2004, when he published his book "Managers Not M.B.A.s," he has acquired a hard-earned reputation as the scourge of conventional management education. The rise of the business-school-trained M.B.A., he says, is "a menace to society."

"The philosophy of the case study method is that you simulate management practice on the basis of reading a 20 page study. George W. Bush went to Harvard Business School and I don't think he even read 20 pages. But he's a good example of how disastrous that approach can be," Dr. Mintzberg said.

Professor Mintzberg may be right about the case-study method, for all I know, but he's wrong to use President Bush as an example if he doubts that Bush read even twenty pages. Assuming he's even right about Bush's laziness, then our ex-president didn't do the homework and can't be used as an example of what's wrong with the MBA system. Perhaps the good professor suffers from B.D.S., a condition that blocks rational thinking about George W. Bush, else he'd realize that only an assiduous student can be used as an example for what's wrong with the case-study method of management training. But I have to admit that Professor Mintzberg's course in management training seems to belong to a small category of special management courses that offer a lot of fun in the learning process:

Of all the management courses in all the world, there are probably a few others that tell students they will need hiking boots and waterproof jackets.

There may be a few that put "The Prelude," the 19th-century poet William Wordsworth's autobiographical masterpiece, on their reading lists, or that drag high-flying executives to a Quaker meeting for a period of silent reflection . . . . [Professor Mintzberg's International Masters Program in Practical Management, for its part,] is a 16-month course whose most recent session began last week with a module here in the Lake District of England . . . . [T]he program's five modules take place in Brazil, Britain, Canada, China and India. Each lasts 10 days, is delivered by a different academic partner and is devoted to a different management mind-set. The most recent [British] module, run by Lancaster University Management School, was intended to foster the "reflective mind-set."

The participants will meet next in Montreal, where the focus will be on the "analytic mind-set," followed by a stint at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, where they will develop their "worldly mind-set" . . . . After India, the next session is at the Renmin University School of Business in Beijing, where the students explore ideas of collaboration and cooperation from a Chinese perspective. Finally the students meet at the Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janiero to look at how to manage continuity and change and other aspects of the "action mind-set."

The article doesn't specify the Beijing module's "mind-set," though I'm guessing it isn't "guanxi mind-set" or "maiguan mind-set," unless "collaboration" and "cooperation" are code words, respectively, but if there's hiking and drinking involved in all of these modules, then the experience is perhaps rather like what the Koreans call "Membership Training," which might clarify why "LG and the Korean steel manufacturer POSCO each sent a group of executives to the most recent program in Britain."

I can't imagine they were sent to learn about guanxi or maiguan . . .

Geoffrey James on "Extraordinary" Bosses

Logo

Ever since I signed up to LinkedIn, I've received regular emails with links to interesting articles on business, prompting me to re-evaluate a lot of the old views on business that I used to hold, and I've since come to see business as a very creative, impressive human endeavor, not merely a practical necessity that I hoped to personally avoid by getting into academia. Just a few days ago, I clicked a link to an article by Geoffrey James for a publication called Inc. The article was titled "8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses" (April 23, 2012), and I found these eight beliefs fascinating:

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
2. A company is a community, not a machine.
3. Management is service, not control.
4. My employees are my peers, not my children.
5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.
6. Change equals growth, not pain.
7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.
8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.

Those eight as an abstract list perhaps don't look so impressive, but if you read the article, they get filled in, and so do you. Take number three:

Average bosses want employees to do exactly what they're told. They're hyper-aware of anything that smacks of insubordination and create environments where individual initiative is squelched by the "wait and see what the boss says" mentality.

Extraordinary bosses set a general direction and then commit themselves to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. They push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies.

I know, I know. My readers in business are thinking, "Where have you been?" Well . . . elsewhere. But I'm hanging around now, eavesdropping, and I'm finding the insights both fascinating and useful. In this instance -- number 3, I mean -- such average bosses, or more accurately, bad bosses, are found everywhere, even in the academic world. We've all had the professor, the chairperson, the dean, or the university president who fits the profile of the 'average' boss, but we've also had those who turned out to be extraordinary bosses.

Some of the characteristics of extraordinary bosses remind me of what Jim Whitehurst, "president and chief executive of Red Hat," said about leaders. Consider the fifth core belief of extraordinary bosses listed by James:

Extraordinary bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they'll be a part of it.  As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization's goals, truly enjoy what they're doing and (of course) know they'll share in the rewards.

Recall from an earlier blog entry a quote lifted out of Whitehurst's remarks on good leadership:

[F]or any business there are three levels of leadership. One is getting somebody to do what you want them to do. The second is getting people to think what you want them to think; then you don't have to tell them what to do because they will figure it out . . . . [The third and] best is getting people to believe what you want them to believe, and if people really fundamentally believe what you want them to believe, they will walk through walls. They will do anything.

All of us good employees -- including those of us employed in the academic world of teaching -- prefer the extraordinary boss who can inspire in the way that Whitehurst describes.

But how would an extraordinary boss deal with a bad employee?

"Red Hat" and its "Culture of Discussion"

Jim Whitehurst
President of Red Hat
Photo by Librado Romero
The New York Times

I read some great advice yesterday, relayed to me in the New York Times via Adam Bryant from the "president and chief executive of Red Hat" (provider of Linux and other open-source technology), Jim Whitehurst, who learned it God knows where, so I don't know the originator, but the advice is:

[F]or any business there are three levels of leadership. One is getting somebody to do what you want them to do. The second is getting people to think what you want them to think; then you don't have to tell them what to do because they will figure it out . . . . [The third and] best is getting people to believe what you want them to believe, and if people really fundamentally believe what you want them to believe, they will walk through walls. They will do anything.

How to accomplish this, of course, is the hard part. Perhaps the other advice from Mr. Whitehurst -- given in Mr. Bryant's interview, "The Memo List: Where Everyone Has an Opinion" (March 10, 2012) -- can offer insight. Here's a possibility:

Our employees have always expected this: tell me why we're doing what we're doing, and allow me at least a voice in the decision process. Now a voice doesn't mean decision rights. It doesn't mean you have any say in the answer. But at least you have a vehicle for an opinion to be heard.

This discussion procedure will likely get employees as far as doing what you want them to do, and perhaps as far as thinking what you want them to think, but maybe not as far as believing what you want them to believe. But it's still a good idea to have an internal forum for discussion of issues, and Red Hat does this through its Memo List, which Mr. Whitehurst explains:

We have about 4,000 employees, but on average you'll see a couple hundred posts a day . . . . Memo List is about the business. And I go through it every single day. I would say probably three-quarters of the people are on it every day, either reading or posting.

Such an online, internal forum might not be applicable to every organization, but some compromise will always need to be found between hierarchical decision-making and democratic discussion, especially these days, as Mr. Whitehurst explains:

[W]e're on the bleeding edge of what so many companies are going to face because of this whole millennial generation coming up. It just does not like this idea of hierarchy.

There you have it. The world is changing as technology flattens out various processes. People expect to express themselves and be lisitened to. Organizations must adapt . . . or fail.

Steve Jobs: End of an "Insanely Great" Era?

Exit Stage Right?

Paul Sakuma, Associated Press

(Image from NYT)

My first computer was a Mac, but I got it rather late, and second-hand. Even though I had done some word processing on a friend's computer in 1985, I didn't yet know how to open a new document when I took that Mac with me to Germany in 1989, and I had to write to a friend back in Berkeley for long-distance assistance because Germans were unfamiliar with Apple products at that time and could offer no advice.

Despite my own grave ignorance, I knew very well who Steve Jobs was, and why he was important. I knew because I had arrived in the Bay Area in January 1980 to start a graduate degree later that year in history of science at Berkeley, and most of my cohort were enamored of computers and soon could talk only of Steve Jobs. I therefore knew that he was a genius long before I understood why he was a genius.

I only began to understand when I bought my first Powerbook, around 1993. In fact, I purchased two -- one for me, and one for Sun-Ae, my girlfriend at the time and now my wife (of course). On that laptop, I wrote my doctoral thesis. That same computer accompanied me to Australia and Jerusalem, then on to Boston for a conference in 1999, when I purchased a new version of the Powerbook, sleek and seductive. I took that one to Korea, only to find that Korea was not a good country to own an Apple computer.

I eventually switched to Korean computers for convenience and have even missed the iPod, iPhone, iPad revolution despite their 'conquest' of Korea . . . but I still think of myself as a MacMan, or rather an Apple-Man.

So, I discover myself saddened by the departure of Jobs and find myself wondering if this is the end of an "insanely great" era, and I'm not alone in reflecting on Jobs the cultural-technical-business phenomenon and what his absence might mean. In "What Makes Steve Jobs Great," Joe Nocera, writing for the New York Times (August 26, 2011), tells us:

The businessman I met 25 years ago violated every rule of management. He was not a consensus-builder but a dictator who listened mainly to his own intuition. He was a maniacal micromanager. He had an astonishing aesthetic sense, which businesspeople almost always lack. He could be absolutely brutal in meetings: I watched him eviscerate staff members for their "bozo ideas."

The Steve Jobs I watched that week was arrogant, sarcastic, thoughtful, learned, paranoid and "insanely" (to use one of his favorite words) charismatic.

The Steve Jobs the rest of the world has gotten to know in the nearly 15 years since he returned to Apple is no different. He never mellowed, never let up on Apple employees, never stopped relying on his singular instincts in making decisions about how Apple products should look and how they should work.

As Nocera remarks in closing, Jobs is stepping down "at the too-young age of 56," presumably because of cancer.

From Nocera's article, one would be justified in imagining Jobs as disliked, but nothing could be further from the truth, as Claire Cain Miller tells us in "Where Some Earn Enmity, Jobs Won Affection" (New York Times, August 25, 2011):

Steven P. Jobs -- domineering, short-tempered and anything but warm and fuzzy -- has done something few business people in history have ever accomplished: engender genuine affection . . . .

That Mr. Jobs is seriously ill gave the tributes [of affection] a poignancy and sense of foreboding. But the aloof man in a black turtleneck -- who spent the last month on a yacht with his family, according to people with knowledge of his whereabouts -- also managed to foster familial emotions among those who work in technology and business and ordinary people who use Apple products . . . .

On Twitter, many of the posts expressed love for Mr. Jobs, an emotion that rarely surfaces in business chatter.

Even his critics love him:

One sometimes critic of Mr. Jobs, Glenn Kelman, the chief executive of Redfin, an online real estate agency, wrote on the company's blog: "I still remember exactly where I was, standing in a Dolores Street apartment with a cereal bowl in my hand, when he came on TV to say a competitor had no poetry. It made me think poetry had a place in business and that in turn made me think I had a place in business, too."

Well, maybe that's not quite love, but I also remember that statement by Jobs, and it endeared him to me as well . . . though I didn't go into business. Jobs wasn't insanely great on his own, he wasn't alone. Never forget that he started Apple with a friend of genius, Steve Wozniac, and pulled in a great businessman, John Sculley. Every great man has creative, hardworking people behind him, and the journalist Rachel Metz reminds us that "Behind Apple's products is longtime designer Ive" (Boston.com, August 26, 2011), drawing attention to the role of Jonathan Ive:

Ive, known to his friends as "Jony," has led Apple's design team since the mid-'90s. Working closely with Jobs, Ive has built a strong legacy at Apple, ushering in products that are sleek and stylish, with rounded corners, few buttons, brushed aluminum surfaces and plenty of slick glass.

Apple's pride in this work is evident even in the packaging: Open up any iPhone box, for example, and see Apple proudly proclaim, "Designed by Apple in California." Six of Ive's works, including the original iPod, are even part of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

People who have worked with Ive describe him as humble and sweet, quiet and shy, but also confident, hard-working and brilliant. Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design for MoMA, said she knows "hardly anybody that is so universally loved and admired" as Ive.

"Products have to be designed better now for people to buy them because of Jony Ive and Steve Jobs and Apple," Antonelli said. "All of a sudden people have gotten used to elegance and beauty, and there's no going back."

I've read that Ive himself looks back to the German design expert who worked for Braun, Dieter Rams, but others will have to confirm this point. I learned a bit about Rams when my wife recently translated an article reviewing his career at Braun, and a point was made in that article -- to which I unfortunately have no link -- about Ive's debt to Rams in designing the iPod, possibly modeled on the Braun radio designed by Rams. This isn't meant to detract from the originality or either Ive or Jobs, for there are always predecessors.

Anyway, my point is that Jobs didn't make Apple great on his own. His success built on the work of predecessors and associates. Jobs is a technical genius, an innovative businessman, and even a great artist, but others at Apple share these talents -- as a group, at least, if perhaps not individually to the same degree as Jobs. So, with Ive and other brilliant individuals still at Apple even as Jobs steps down, perhaps the era of insanely great products there won't draw to a close for a while . . .

Free Speech 'Killer App': Jason Nemec's View

Free Speech Movement, 1964

(Image from UC Berkeley)

Jason Nemec, one of my old friends from back home in the Ozarks, whom I've always called "Jay," emailed to express agreement, albeit nuanced, with my post on free speech:

[I read] this particular blog with a bit more interest than some others, and I wholeheartedly agree free speech should be included. In my opinion it could even be #1 on the list. One could argue all of the other six have a direct connection to success by having free speech and open dialogue without fear of reprisal. Look at how the Russian and Chinese societies have taken off in all categories when the restrictions on free speech and free thought have been reduced.

I am not quite as sure about the highlighted part below though.

Freedom of speech means the right to express oneself freely without censorship, but for the "app" to become a "killer," it needs to be embedded in a culture of discussion where reason and evidence, rather than the positional status, guide listeners in their evaluation of what the speaker says.

I have yet to find a developed culture, real or imagined, where status did not, or should not, play a role in how an individual will evaluate what is being said to them. Personal biases are too strong to totally disregard them when listening to the ideas or opinions of others. It could be something as small as not liking how the speaker wears their clothes or combs their hair. Conversely, if a well dressed, well groomed person tells us something, I can pretty much guarantee we would be more willing to accept it as "fact", reason or evidence aside, than if a rumpled disheveled person told us the exact same thing. This is kind of a funky example, but even in the "totally" logic and reason based Vulcan society of Star Trek, Spock and others put more value in the words of their leaders/parents than of their peers or lower ranking Vulcans, and certainly ahead of any non-Vulcan.

I think the word discussion is key to what you wrote, because it is through the discussion part of free speech where we can get past the initial biases and first impressions all of us form. Discussion cannot happen by just listening to a speaker and finding reason or evidence. Discussion is communication between two or more individuals, so I would respectively suggest changing the comment above to something like:

Freedom of speech means the right to express oneself freely without censorship, but for the "app" to become a "killer," it needs to be embedded in a culture of discussion where reason and evidence, rather than the positional status of the speaker, guide listeners in their evaluation of what they have heard or witnessed.

Maybe I am rambling too much here as it was a long weekend for me where I was at work more than I was at home. I did want to comment on the blog and felt this would be too much to include in the comments section itself. If you want to put it in there and respond or not, feel free to do so.

I replied to Jay, rather inadequately:

You make good points, and we basically agree. I was interested to see that you focused on my reference to "the positional status." I had originally included "of the speaker" but then considered that "and of the listener" also applied, so I left both out to include both but neglected to remove the "the" in "the positional status." I had just deleted it before reading your email. Fascinating . . . as Spock might say.

But that reply doesn't do justice to Jay's observation. I haven't altered what I posted on positional status, but Jay is right about the role of discussion, and he makes two good points that show why discussion is necessary. One point concerns our deplorable, if inevitable, tendency to stereotype others based on their appearance. The other point concerns our justifiable tendency to defer to authority, justifiable because it is authority. But we can be wrong about our stereotypes and deference, hence the need not only for free speech but also for discussion in which the appeal to reason and evidence can help us to "get past the initial biases and first impressions all of us form."

Jay's opinion is interesting to me because he has had a long, successful career in business, yet expresses views consonant with my own, and our agreement despite different experiences in life suggests to me that free speech really is a "killer app." I should perhaps note, however, that Jay is also an actor and thus might have more personal interest in the issue of free expression than the average businessman . . . and he has expressed himself rather well.

By the way, I looked up "killer application" in Wikipedia:

A killer application (commonly shortened to killer app), in the jargon of technologists, has been used to refer to any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system. A killer app can substantially increase sales of the platform on which it runs.

I now know more precisely what Niall Ferguson meant, and it's not just about smart phones . . .

Newsweek on "Corporate Learning"

Image from GCCU

Mac Margolis has written an article on "Corporate Learning" for Newsweek (September 13, 2010) and thereby clued me in to a trend of which I'd been totally unaware despite my many years in academia:

Today, corporate colleges are considered the fastest-growing sector in higher education. Their numbers have more than doubled in the last decade and now top 4,000, according to Annick Renaud-Coulon, who chairs the Global Council of Corporate Universities. More than 4 million individuals are studying at a company university, where by some estimates enrollments may soon outnumber those of traditional universities. Once a luxury for the Fortune 500 brands, the corporate academy is now standard practice, with every self-respecting business boasting a campus or sharing one with other companies. Unlike traditional universities, corporate campuses generally do not grant degrees (though many partner with traditional colleges that do), concentrating instead on short-term immersion courses tailored to enhancing particular careers and business disciplines. Renaud-Coulon calls them "spaces of applied education to put business strategies into motion."

Hmmm . . . if these corporate universities don't offer degrees, in what sense are they "universities"? But I see why I'm caught unawares by this phenomenon -- the growth has come recently and occurred quickly. I'll try to pay more attention from now on since continued growth of this new model for education is certain to have an impact on my future in academia, for better or for worse. But why is this happening?

Today, with new technologies and management methods constantly tested and toppled in the crucible of the workplace, businesses have developed learning needs of their own. And some skills simply cannot be bought or outsourced. Every year campuses disgorge engineers, economists, and managers, but few are schooled in the fine points of producing biofuels, assembling aircraft, or moving millions of tons of ore across oceans . . . . The challenge is even more daunting in developing nations, where failing traditional education forces companies to teach the basics . . . . In Brazil, the skills void is even more dramatic. Often blue-collar laborers at even the biggest corporations lack rudimentary education . . . . In response, some companies are taking their education down the learning chain . . . . [The Infosys Global Education Center in Delhi, India] picks bright but often poorly trained recruits and turns them into world-class techies on its own campus.

From this thumbnail summary, I gather that this new model for learning comes as much from the failure of traditional education as anything else. Students aren't learning the old skills well enough, nor the new skills fast enough. I can't blame businesses for wanting well-skilled recruits, but I do wonder why these corporations feel the necessity to borrow on the prestige of the term "university," and I'm not alone:

Not everyone is happy about this arrangement. Many traditional academics won't hear of putting "university" and "corporate" in the same sentence and claim that business is enslaving universities to the profit motive. Academics in Australia complained so bitterly that corporate universities there had to rebrand with names like "leadership centers," says Renaud-Coulon. There is certainly a case to be made for disinterested scholarship. But in an economy increasingly driven by knowledge, where talent is scarce and corporate universities are outpacing traditional ones, the protests sound increasingly academic.

As my online friend and fellow 'academic' Carter Kaplan remarked in a recent email to me, "I suppose the author thinks he's being clever in the last line." I agree, though I've also occasionally stooped to that academic pun. But humor aside, I think that I'd agree with my distant Australian colleagues. Corporate 'universities' ought to drop the term "university" and turn to something along the lines of "leadership center" until such time as they offer accredited degrees and guarantee academic freedom.

Incidentally, there's something that puzzles me. Margolis cites Annick Renaud-Coulon as an expert in corporate education, but who is she, actually, and what are her credentials? Her biography at the Global Council of Corporate Universities says nothing particularly specific of her own educational background or academic standing. I'm suspicious, I admit, but consider the wording of this excerpt from that biography:

[Renaud-Coulon] organised the first truly global event on Corporate Universities in France in April 2008. Participants from 24 countries and five continents met for three days at Campus Veolia Environnement, in Jouy-le-Moutier near Paris and Sorbonne University in Paris.

If I read this right -- and I am reading it closely -- Campus Veolia Environnement is not even in Paris proper, let alone at Sorbonne University. In fact, it's in Jouy-le-Moutier, nearly 30 kilometers northwest of the city center and has no official connection to the Sorbonne. Or is the English merely obscure? A French version has this:

Annick Renaud-Coulon a organisé en 2008 au campus Véolia Environnement et à la Sorbonne, le premier forum mondial des Universités d'entreprise.

This implies that the conference took place in two places, one of which was the Sorbonne, but even if this was the case, Campus Veolia Environnement has no official connection to the Sorbonne that I can see. Moreover, since Renaud-Coulon mentions no educational background of her own in her bio, yet proudly extols the honor of her National Order of Merit, I have to wonder if she even has a degree. In The Corporate University Handbook (2002), edited by Mark Allen, the bios to an article authored by her and a certain Mike Morrison note that he has a doctorate, but say only this about Renaud-Coulon:

In addition to studying law, Annick Renaud-Coulon has been a teacher, head of human resources in an industrial organization, a consultant, and head of an enterprise. She currently works as an independent consultant and conference speaker with a network of partners in France and abroad. (page 278)

In The Next Generation of Corporate Universities (2007), also edited by Mark Allen, her bio says much the same thing. Neither bio is specific about her study of law and her work as a teacher. Both merely associate her with law and with teaching. On this point, note some advice offered by Renaud-Coulon in her article on "Branding Your Corporate University":

Be ambitious for your corporate university. Make a myth and a legend of it. (Next Generation, page 106)

She seems to be following her own advice in branding herself, but also -- and of more significance -- in branding corporate education as corporate university education and in associating Campus Veolia Environnement with Sorbonne University.

So again, what are her academic credentials? Anyone know? And why does Margolis rely so heavily on her as an expert. Is she truly that knowledgeable?

The Right Moment

Professor C. William Thomas

Department of Accounting and Business Law

Baylor University

(Image from Dr. Thomas' Home Page)

In my Baylor days, I never took a course in business and rather disdained business courses as unworthy of academic study, which should better focus on literature, history, philosophy, religion, and other courses in the humanities -- or at least on courses in the sciences.

That was sheer ignorance on my part, and over the years, I've come to realize just how important an understanding of business is for understanding our world, so I've read an economics textbook on my own and try to read a bit from the business pages in newspapers.

But in my days at Baylor, I steered clear of the Hankamer School of Business, thereby never taking a course under Professor Thomas, but he does look familiar, so I may have passed him on campus many times. I call attention to him today because an article written by him, "Standing on Tall Shoulders," appears in the current issue of Baylor Magazine (Winter 08-09, Volume 7, Number 2). I noticed it while checking to see if the promised article by Lane Murphy on Baylor's Honors Program has yet appeared presenting my words of wisdom. It hasn't, but I found some other interesting words that turned my thoughts to reflection on the vagaries of life. Professor Thomas, like me, came from a poor family, but he arrived at Baylor one decade before I did, embarking on his academic study as a freshman there in 1965 and using his facility with numbers to pursue a degree in accounting, which led to something rather unexpected:

After graduating with a bachelor's degree, I embarked on a career with a large accounting firm in Dallas. Although technically competent, I lacked passion for the job. I returned to Baylor after only 13 months to enroll in the MBA program, a decision that proved life-changing. When I graduated a year later, undergraduate enrollments in my field were exploding and qualified faculty were in short supply. Baylor came through with the opportunity of a lifetime, an offer to join the faculty of the accounting department. When I stepped into the classroom, I knew I had found my calling. The classroom was the perfect blend for my natural abilities -- the technical skills I had learned in the Baylor classroom, and the ability to communicate.

Thirty-two years later, he looks back on a career of teaching at Baylor that has brought him special honors and seen him declared a Master Teacher, but what strikes me is the fact that he found himself at Baylor University and in possession of an MBA at the precise moment when "undergraduate enrollments in . . . [his] field were exploding and qualified faculty were in short supply."

By contrast, coming along near the end of the baby-boomer generation as a freshman a decade later, in 1975, when circumstances were soon to be changing, I was to find myself by 1980 entering graduate school in history at a time of declining enrollment among students for history courses and an expanding search for diversity among faculty, which together combined to limit the openings for positions and to increase the competition for those positions. I therefore took my time in graduate school, delaying as I read widely and took my circuitous intellectual path. The job market didn't get much better, and while my life has been very interesting, and personally fulfilling, I haven't yet found myself where I'd wish to be in my career.

Whether the 'right moment' will come or not, I cannot know, but I'll go on making the most of the moments that do come.

Congratulations to Professor C. William Thomas for making the most of his.