Len Schlesinger: Can you really teach entrepreneurship?
Babson president Len Schlesinger observes that infants view things with an open mind. As they learn more, they get better at predicting responses to actions, awareness gets narrower and deeper, and people begin to optimize their lives. Until they can’t. And this is the struggle of the entrepreneur. In this video story, Len inspires us to think differently about keeping an open mind.
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Len Schlesinger
Leonard A. Schlesinger became the 12th president of Babson College on July 1, 2008. He came to Babson from Limited Brands, where he served in executive positions since 1999, most recently as Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer. Earlier in his career, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Au Bon Pain. His academic career includes twenty years at Harvard Business School. President Schlesinger is well-known for his pioneering research and publications on the “service profit chain.” He is the author or co-author of nine books, including The Value Profit Chain, The Service Profit Chain and The Real Heroes of Business…and Not a CEO among Them, and has written over 40 articles for academic audiences as well as for The New York Times, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review.
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Alain Theriault
So inspiring. Thanks! Seems to me that we went from 70% thinking, 20% deciding, 10% doing, to 70% action, 20% thinking and 10% deciding. AS for unknowability, I like to put it on a scale from "probability" to "unknowability" with "uncertainty" in the middle. I do think that "real" entrepreneurs thrive in uncertainty (from a former study done at Harvard on "decision & entrepreneurs") and are more adapt to face unknowability. Learning from the unexpected is a cornerstone of the new "entrepreneurship teaching", I agree. Let's teach them to adapt :-)
Wed, 02/16/2011 - 17:34