How Harvard's Bill Sahlman Turns Leaders into Entrepreneurs - battery operated electric toothbrush

Harvard Business School (HBS)
One of the nine applications was accepted.
Its admissions office picks people who show leadership.
How does it know someone is a leader?
How can Harvard Business School turn these leaders into entrepreneurs?
William Salman, Dimitri V. D'Arbeloff -
In 1955, the professor of business administration provided the answer in an interview in June 15.
Sahlman told me that in addition to high scores and exam results, the admissions department of Harvard Business School is still looking for evidence of leadership.
For example, be selected to lead scout teams or sports teams, or develop new courses to train newly hired employees to do their jobs.
Of course, anyone admitted to Harvard Business School may become an entrepreneur.
One of the foundations of Harvard Business School's approach to turning these leaders into entrepreneurs is to create an educational program based on Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson's definition of entrepreneur spirit: pursuing opportunities outside of the resources currently under control.
This definition puts forward two important principles for teaching entrepreneur spirit.
For example, Harvard Business School believes that it should improve the ability of students to identify good opportunities, and the resources currently under control should not limit their ability to imagine them.
These principles have an important impact on small companies and big companies. Start-
Ups with few resources should assume that if they can find the right opportunities, they will be able to convince others to give them the resources they need to seize them.
Established companies should consider abandoning loyalty to existing resources to seize new opportunities.
Sahlman provides an example of Barnes & Noble (BKS)vs. Amazon (AMZN).
He praised Barnes & Noble for the opportunity to lock in the best retail locations and offer them 125,000 books.
Sahlman pointed out that when Amazon decided to enter the bookstore business, it decided not to try to compete for a position, but to use real estate in a different way ---
Store millions of books in the warehouse and it will ship to customers after they order online.
Unlike Barnes & Noble, Amazon has no retail space or other assets to protect.
Amazon redefined the opportunity and seized it with a very different financial model in which its suppliers helped finance its business.
Sahlman, who started teaching startup finance at Harvard Business School in early 1980, stressed that Amazon is running $34 billion in business, minus $3 billion.
Called operating capital (
Inventory minus Accounts payable plus net plant and equipment).
By contrast, Barnes and Noble used $1.
Operating capital is 3 billion.
Harvard Business School generally believes that business management is good management.
The best companies are also constantly looking for new opportunities.
If their existing resources do not help them seize the opportunity, top companies will look for them.
Sahlman suggested that Barnes & Noble could better address Amazon's competitive threats by offering online ordering in its store and picking up the next day.
This will give givcn Barnes & Noble the lead time advantage on Amazon.
Sahlman held 30 courses in his course, 19 of which invited the case protagonist to class so that students had the opportunity to ask them questions.
This helps students at Harvard Business School to gain a deeper understanding of the various real-life situations of success and failure in starting a business. -
And strengthen the ability of students to look at their own management in the way of starting a business.
Sahlman describes another case that interests me.
Entrepreneur John Osher started a company that produces mass batteries
Operate lollipop.
He sold the company and wanted something else to do.
He found another opportunity and invested $1 in 1999.
The new company 5 million--
Later, in 2001, it was sold to P & G for $0. 475 billion (PG).
The new company put Dr.
John spin brush-
$5 electric toothbrush, using most of his technology for batteries
Operate lollipop.
Osher's company has only 12 employees, but it sells it to companies such as Target (TGT)and Wal-Mart (WMT)
Because people want a cheap electric toothbrush. -
He competes with the $80 model.
P & G has been trying-
Doing what Osher has done is not successful-
So it bought the company.
Sahlman pointed out that this market opportunity has specific features that Harvard business school students may use to identify other startup opportunities: Sahlman stressed that Harvard Business School wants students to see that starting a business is something that a student can learn from.
It consists of four steps: of course, it sounds simpler than it actually is.
One way to determine if opportunities are good is structured experiments.
Sahlman noted that the goal here is to look at the customer's response to the information by building a prototype, and make adjustments accordingly to purchase the information in the cheapest and fastest way possible.
It's not hard to imagine how this approach inspires students at Harvard Business School and turns many of them into entrepreneurs.