Isenberg Professorship for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst has received approval for a search for the Eugene M. Isenberg Professorship for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The closing date for this chaired professorship is April 1, 2011 or until the position is filled. The Search Committee consists of Faculty from the Operations Management, Management, and Marketing disciplines since it is expected that the holder of this professorship will be in one of these areas, and the VCRE at UMass Amherst, Professor Michael Malone.

A link to the position description on the Isenberg School site is here. Ads for this position are expected to be placed in The Chronicle of Higher Education, ORMS Today (online), ASEE Prism, among other venues.

The previous holder of this chaired professorship was Dr. Soren Bisgaard, who passed away on December 14, 2009. Other holders of Isenberg chaired professorships are Dr. Michael "Mike" Malone, who is the Isenberg Distinguished Professor of Engineering, in addition to serving as the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, and Dr. Lawrence M. Schwartz, who is the Isenberg Professor in Integrative Science, and who was named this past year. These professorships are endowed by Ronnie and Eugene M. Isenberg, after whom the Isenberg School of Management is named.

Meet the Executive Event a Big Success -- What a Day!

Today, we hosted Mr. Marc Schneider, the Group President of Dress Furnishings at Phillips Van Heusen (PVH), as part of our "Meet the Executive" initiative. The announcement even made the UMass Amherst homepage.

Mr. Schneider, who is an alum of our School of Management, was simply fantastic.

Some tips from Mr. Schneider's lecture and a fabulous Q&A that followed are below:

You should go for a career and not for a "job." He spoke about how he began his career at Macy's and benefited from its outstanding training program.

What creates success? -- preparation, clarity of objectives, and putting the work in! Do not be outworked!

Those who succeed aren't necessarily smarter -- whatever profession you select, you must be good at it. The successful ones are the ones who have worked the hardest. Make sure that you do your homework.

In business, you must know finance, marketing, logistics, and organizational behavior.

You need a toolbox of capabilities. I create value, he said -- I set the strategy and create the roadmap. I set the structure and populate it with great people. I give them the space to succeed and encourage them to execute with distinction.

One needs to focus on the end results and to build a good team and to collaborate.

I want my employees to be charged up and to love coming to work. Employees must be engaged. (Now, wouldn't the world be a better place if all bosses were like this?!)

Mr. Schneider also emphasized the importance of mentoring and looking at the longer view.

He regaled us with his travels as part of his work and he always combines work and pleasure when he travels.

He was asked about the greatest obstacles that he has faced, about the relative importance of face time vs. electronic communication (he is on 24/7 and loves it that way), and about whether he is always learning (indeed, he is, and sometimes will go to the library for a couple of hours to just reflect and think).

And, yes, he was even at the Super Bowl game last weekend in Dallas (PVH works with the NFL) and was also there at various festivities since his company had corporate seats. He highlighted how football players have to work really hard to make it to the NFL and those who make it to the Hall of Fame are those who have worked the hardest.

His near-term travels will take him to LA, where he regularly checks out a manufacturing plant, to Reno, to Milan, and then to China. He was in Istanbul last summer.

It was fascinating to hear him speak on the global supply chain of his fashion products and to hear about the role of information technology (he even reworked this aspect of the business). His decisions as to where to outsource and the associated risk in the world that we live in today he analyzes very thoroughly because they will affect many. He even mentioned how the events in Egypt are affecting the delivery of some of his company's products! And we all know what happened in Egypt today!

What came through is his energy, his love of his career, his curiosity about the world around him, and his willingness to advise and mentor our students.

The lunch at the University Club at UMass Amherst was not only delicious but the conversations continued and were so warm and entertaining.

Thank you, Mr. Marc Schneider, for a visit we will all remember and, think, he could have just stayed in Manhattan with this being Fashion Week!

Thank you also for noting the great education that you received in our school -- and he is now responsible for a business valued at an amount with a 1 followed by a lot of zeros!

You can find more photos from this and our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter activities on the chapter homepage, which also has links to Facebook and Twitter.

Isenberg Students and Faculty with the Magna Cum Laude Award

Last Tuesday morning the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter received the magna cum laude award at the INFORMS conference in Austin, Texas.

Joining me at the awards breakfast: Min Yu, a doctoral student at the Isenberg School of Management, who served as last year's chapter president, and two former chapter presidents, Drs. Patrick Qiang and Zugang "Leo" Liu, who are now faculty members at Pennsylvania State University campuses.

The above photos were taken at the awards breakfast on November 9, 2010. We were presented with the award by Dr. Burcu Keskin of the University of Alabama and Dr. John Fowler of Arizona State University.

It was a terrific event.

A Brilliant Lecture by George W. Siguler on a Gorgeous Day

Yesterday, the Isenberg School of Management had the privilege of hosting Mr. George W. Siguler, the founding partner of the investment firm, Siguler - Guff, in its Finance Seminar Series. Mr. Siguler is a graduate of Amherst College and has an MBA from Harvard University. I had the pleasure of meeting him when he was speaking with Dr. Tom O'Brien, our former Dean of the Isenberg School, who served as Dean for 19 years. I then heard the story, as they related it to me, that Mr. Siguler, while on a flight with Ms. Jaymie Chernoff, suggested to her that the next Dean of the School of Management should be Dr. O'Brien, and since she was on the search committee, the contact and history were made.

Mr. Siguler shared with me that, among a spectrum of fascinating initiatives, he was responsible for the introduction of MTV to Russia in 1998!

The timing of his lecture on distressed debt markets was perfect. As I mentioned in a blog post yesterday, I was hosting Italian academics who work in finance, so I was able not only to introduce them to Mr. Siguler and Dr. O'Brien, but they also joined, after lunch, the large group at the Isenberg School for his seminar.

In his lecture, Mr. Siguler provided us with a historical perspective of the subject of distressed debt from his unique vantage point as a true expert and extremely successful practitioner. He discussed arbitrage, bankruptcies in the US over several decades, and even interwove automotive suppliers, oligopolies, and the impacts of the lack of regulations. In discussions, he noted the importance of fiduciary responsibilities and that there was no institute or organization that was tracking the pending financial crisis. (He also mentioned names of so-called leaders in economics and finance who were unaware of the crisis until it came barreling down.)

I asked him the question as to what kinds of skills should we, as educators, be imparting to our students, so that they may be a fraction as successful as he is. I loved his answer. He said that to be successful, one needs to know the theory and also to take advantage of one's intuition. One without the other is not sufficient.

Next Friday, we will be hosting Professor Andrew Lo of MIT, whose seminar is co-listed in the UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series and the Finance Seminar Series. His talk is sure to also attract a large audience. Hosting speakers takes time and effort, plus appropriate attention to logistics and details, but the education that takes place and the knowledge gained are invaluable.

The intellectual void that would be left without seminars and speakers at the Isenberg School would leave a huge black hole.