Clark University - Clark News fall 2003
The art of Business
A conversation with George Gendron, former editor of Inc. magazine and Clark's first Kauffman Entrepreneur-in-Residence
Creative. Beautiful. Magic. Spellbinding.
Perfect adjectives to describe a new movie, the latest best-selling novel, a work of art and· business?
That's right. These are the words George Gendron uses when discussing business and entrepreneurship. Gendron, the former editor-in-chief of Inc. magazine, recently joined Clark as the Graduate School of Management's (GSOM) first Kauffman Entrepreneur-in-Residence. The position is funded in part by a $35,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo.
A journalist by trade, Gendron describes himself as a "self-designed, self-administered M.B.A." After serving as an editor for New York Magazine and Boston Magazine, Gendron decided to start his own chain of city magazines. He remembers drafting a five year business plan and watching the plan change as different business factors changed.
"For the first time, I became enthralled by the beauty of a magazine economically," he says. "My knowledge of the magazine business as a business changed, and I began to develop an incredible appreciation, and eventually a passion for business."
Business as an art
That passion only grew when Gendron joined Inc. in 1981. The magazine was still a start-up itself, he says, and the personal computer industry was just emerging. Gendron spent time with companies such as Microsoft and Sun Microsystems÷ companies started by people with little or no business education. In Silicon Valley, and in businesses like Ben and Jerry's and Patagonia, Gendron saw his background as an arts and entertainment editor converge with his new interest in business.
"What I watched and documented at Inc. was the process of people transforming ideas into something tangible. In this case it wasn't a novel, a painting or a play. It was a business."
For Gendron, this experience also dispels one of today's big myths about business. There's no such thing as a born entrepreneur, he says.
"I don't think anybody, especially in this culture, grows up with any interest in or curiosity about business. The great cultural and educational opportunity today is to expose people to business in a way that lets them have that quiet moment of epiphany, where you suddenly think, ÎThis is important. Business is an activity that can take you any place you want to go.'"
The decade of the entrepreneur
According to Gendron, an increasing number of people are having this epiphany. He points to the very experienced, highly skilled business people who have not been downsized at large corporations but are unhappy, and leaving their jobs to become entrepreneurs. More women and minorities are pursuing entrepreneurial activities now than in the 1980s, he says, and they are starting businesses faster than their white, male counterparts. Gendron adds that young people also have grown up with the notion that entrepreneurship is a legitimate career endeavor.
"The cumulative effect of all of this is that across the board you have more people wanting to enter the world of entrepreneurship than ever before."
These factors, combined with the Internet and advances in computer technology, will fuel entrepreneurship in this decade and beyond, Gendron says. He also expects fewer large companies to be formed and more small-scale local activity, which will make entrepreneurship much more culturally pervasive. In addition, Gendron finds more entrepreneurs infiltrating the nonprofit sector, creating well-managed, innovative organizations.
Educating entrepreneurs
All of these developments have implications for business education. Programs like Clark's Graduate School of Management will continue to educate those pursuing business as a career. But the current trend in entrepreneurship also requires another, complementary approach to business education, Gendron says.
"One of the next big waves on college campuses will be to try to figure out clever, imaginative, effective ways to integrate various forms of business education throughout the campus."
To that end, Gendron will teach an undergraduate course for nonbusiness majors in the spring. Gendron's goal for the course, titled "The Art of the New," is to demystify business fundamentals. He also plans to examine the similarities and differences between starting for-profit and nonprofit ventures and would like to focus on what it means to be personally innovative.
Choosing Clark
His interest in interdisciplinary business education is part of what attracted Gendron to Clark. After announcing his departure from Inc., Gendron received offers from just about every college and university in the Boston area. All of those schools, he says, were focused on the past÷often the distant past. But not Clark.
"Ed was just relentlessly focused on the future," Gendron says of GSOM Dean Edward Ottensmeyer. And instead of being handed a pre-planned curriculum, Clark gave Gendron the freedom to design his own courses.
In addition to teaching, Gendron will serve as an informal resource for GSOM students and hopes to assist GSOM faculty who are developing new courses and curricula focused on entrepreneurship. He also plans to work with the Small Business Development Center, a state-funded center based at Clark. Most importantly, Gendron hopes to help inspire and educate the next wave of entrepreneurs.
"At this point in my career, I want to have the most impact on the world as possible," he says. "And when you want to have the most impact, you go to college campuses and talk to the next generation of leaders."
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