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Enron Mail |
I am very interested in pursuing this and I believe Enron presents an ideal
case study for the purposes you outlined. I am copying Christie Patrick on this message and asking her to coordinate this for us. Christie has worked on other case studies and will be very helpful in navigating Enron for you. Don Sull <dsull@hbs.edu< 11/03/2000 10:46 AM To: skean@enron.com cc: pmarshall@hbs.edu, wsahlman@hbs.edu Subject: Possible Harvard Business School event Steve, Wanted to thank you again for reviewing the strategy as simple rules article. It is forthcoming in the next Harvard Business Review and will send you some reprints once the magazine hits the newsstands. Also wanted to gauge your interest in a possible even at the Harvard Business School in April 2001. We are currently finalizing our plans for the Entrepreneurial Manager--a first year course on entrepreneurship taken by all 1,000 of our MBA students. As part of the course, we will feature an entrepreneurial company as the capstone class in the course. Last year we featured Intuit, taught an Intuit case study and hosted Scott Cook who spoke to the entire MBA class. The session was a huge success--the highest rated class in our course and had a lasting impact on how our students think about entrepeneurship. We were wondering whether you and your colleagues might be interested in being our featured company this year. If you decided to proceed, we would first write a case study focused on the process of creating new ventures within Enron. The case would probably consist of three portions: an overview of the Enron corporation, an in-depth description of one or two ventures successfully formed in the past, and a profile of someone currently attempting to start a new venture within Enron. In preparing the case, we would draw heavily on existing case studies, articles, and book chapters profiling Enron to avoid duplicating effort. We would then supplement our desk research by interviewing approximately 15-20 Enron employees, including top management team members (especially Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling), some folks involved in past ventures, and the people currently attempting to start a new venture. Each interview would take approximately 60 minutes. We could probably complete the bulk of the interviews in a two to three day visit to Enron, supplemented by telephone interviews. The ideal timing for these interviews from our perspective would be the last week of November or the first few weeks of December. We would then return to Boston, write a draft of the case and then submit that to you for review and clearance in January. We could then make any last minute changes before distributing the case to the students for the April discussion. In addition to writing the case study, we would like to invite a group of Enron executives to HBS when we discuss the case in April. The ideal date would be the 27th of April, but we could schedule the Enron day the 23rd, 24th or 25th if the 27th were impossible for you. Last year Intuit sent along six folks--some junior, some senior--each of whom sat in at least one of our class discussions. In addition, Scott Cook spoke to the entire MBA class. We would like to follow the same format this year, so it would be super if either Jeff or Ken (or in the best of all worlds, both!) could speak to the MBAs as a whole. With Intuit last year, we kicked off at about 8:30 and wrapped everything up by approximately 1:00. We would shoot for roughly similar timing this year. Many of our students equate entrepreneurship with start-ups, and this day is designed to show them that it is possible (although extremely difficult) for large companies to be entrepreneurial. As such, you and your colleagues would be providing an invaluable service to our students, and we would be deeply grateful for your contribution. The event might also have some direct benefits to Enron in terms of increased profile among our students. If you were interested, we could also explore opportunities to leverage this event to further increase Enron's profile as a leader of the New Economy. We might, for instance, bundle the case study with a teaching note and edited video as a module on "entrepreneurship in large companies" and distribute it to other business schools through Harvard Business School press. My colleagues and I would be most grateful for your cooperation and would be happy to explore ways that you might increase your return on the time invested. Please let me know if this opportunity might be of interest to you and your colleagues and how you would like to proceed. I very much look forward to hearing from you. Don Donald N. Sull South Hall 211 Harvard Business School Boston, MA USA 02163 dsull@hbs.edu telephone: 617 496 7179 fax: 617 495-3817 home page: http://www.people.hbs.edu/dsull/bio.html assistant: Maurie SuDock (617 495-6473)
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