Entrepreneurship

The Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship supports Harvard Business School's mission to "educate leaders who make a difference in the world" by infusing this leadership perspective with an entrepreneurial point of view.

Founded in 2003 from a donation by pioneering venture capitalist Arthur Rock (MBA 51), the Center supports faculty research, fellowships for MBA and doctoral students, the annual business plan contest, and symposia and conferences.

Approximately half of HBS graduates report starting a company at some point during their careers. For a sense of who these alumni are, and how HBS played a role in their entrepreneurial journey, visit our video archive of HBS entrepreneurs.

What We Do

The Rock Center supports Harvard Business School's mission to "educate leaders who make a difference in the world" by infusing this leadership perspective with an entrepreneurial point of view. All HBS MBAs take a required first-year course in Entrepreneurship, The Entrepreneurial Manager. The average second-year student takes 2 or 3 elective courses, and many work on entrepreneurship-oriented field studies, or participate in the Business Plan Contest.

Apart from this in-class curriculum, the Rock Center seeks to promote and encourage student entrepreneurship by

• collaborating with MBA Career Services to support students during their internship and career job searches
• supporting students seeking to start a new venture upon graduation
• helping students establish relationships with the local community of entrepreneurs and those who support entrepreneurship, i.e., lawyers, accountants, venture capitalists, angel investors.

Student Resource Center

The Rock Center offers a Student Resource Center to support students who are working on starting their own business. We maintain a collection of business plans and books relevant to the start-up process, as well as a collection focusing on search funds.

The Student Resource Center also features a conference room, copier and fax machine. The conference room/copier/fax are available for use by students who are part of the Rock Center Venture Creation Program (VCP).

Students must apply for the VCP by submitting an executive summary of their proposed business, along with their resume (and the resumes of the team). Other benefits of participation include the availability of mentoring and legal advice.

Entrepreneurs-in-Residence

The Rock Center oversees an Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EiR) program in which accomplished entrepreneurs spend a semester or two at the Rock Center. During this time, they try to be available to students to offer counsel on their career or business planning issues.

The EiR typically give a number of informal talks that are sponsored by the Rock Center and advertised via our newsletter and through the Entrepreneurship Club.

Meet this year's EiR.

California Research Center

In July 1997, HBS opened the first of its off-campus research centers – the California Research Center (CRC) in Silicon Valley. The CRC is located at 3000 Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, and run by Alison Berkley Wagonfeld (MBA '96), Executive Director.

The charter of the center is to facilitate faculty research and case writing in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area in general. Since its opening, the CRC has helped develop more than 200 cases that are used in the School's MBA and Executive Education programs. Cases have focused on topics such as the issues faced by very early stage companies, venture capital firms focusing on early stage companies, angel financing, sales force issues in entrepreneurial companies, acquisition-related manufacturing integration processes, the commercialization of technology, capacity issues at biotech companies, and people-related issues in companies of all sizes.

About Arthur Rock

Arthur Rock (MBA '51) is very good at getting in on the ground floor. In a 50-year career as one of the world's most effective and influential venture capitalists, he helped seed the success of economic powerhouses such as Teledyne, Intel, and Apple Computer. And in 2003, through an unprecedented $25 million gift, he launched a new venture at Harvard Business School, one with very promising prospects: the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. "The future of this nation lies with new ventures," says Rock. "They supply the new ideas, the new technologies, the new jobs. HBS has long been at the forefront of understanding the many facets of the entrepreneurial process, from the intricacies of finance to the art of leadership, and I am delighted to be able to support those efforts both now and for the future."

As the largest contribution the School had received (at that time) to support a particular academic program, Rock's gift will open up extraordinary new possibilities for the entire field of entrepreneurial studies. It will also allow the School's existing entrepreneurship program-currently involving over 30 faculty members and more than 20 courses-to reach its full potential by enhancing research, teaching, and course development, and by funding fellowships for MBA and doctoral students. And to help translate the School's findings on entrepreneurship into the world of practice, the Rock Center will also sponsor new conferences and publications. Says Mike Roberts, executive director of the Rock Center, "In the last half-decade or so, the School has dramatically increased the resources that are available to study entrepreneurship. Arthur Rock's gift will give us the chance to set our sights even higher."

This gift is only the latest in Rock's continuing investment in the study of what makes new ventures bloom: In 1981, along with classmate Fayez Sarofim (MBA '51), he funded the first HBS professorship in entrepreneurship, held since that time by Professor Howard H. Stevenson. And in the late 1990s, Rock was instrumental in launching the School's California Research Center (CRC), as founding chair of its advisory board. With his guidance, the CRC has become a crucial intellectual "base camp" for HBS faculty and researchers interested in studying the successes and failures spawned in the uniquely entrepreneurial waters of Silicon Valley. Since its founding in 1997, the CRC has spurred the development of more than a hundred new cases, as well as supporting a variety of other faculty research projects.

On the personal side, Rock is also investing in some very different kinds of start-ups-more than 3,000 of them. As chair of The BASIC Fund-which stands for The Bay Area Scholarships for Innercity Children-he and fellow investors are sending thousands of underprivileged K-8 students to private or parochial schools of their choice. Why? Because "it would be a terrible thing for this country to have all these kids who don't understand the Information Age. There are just no jobs left moving things from one place to another." Of all his current projects, Rock hails this effort as the most exciting.

"Arthur Rock epitomizes the mission of the Harvard Business School," said former Dean Kim B. Clark. "We are dedicated to educating leaders who make a difference in the world," and in a thousand ways, Arthur Rock has surely done that.

By Martha Eddison

Advisory Board

Lynda Applegate, Harvard Business School EM Faculty Chair

Lynda M. Applegate is the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, teaching courses in entrepreneurial management and technology and innovation, and serving as head of the school's Field-Based Learning programs. Lynda currently chairs HBS' Owner/President Executive Programs and its Building New Ventures executive education and alumni programs. She is also developing the HBS Global Entrepreneurship Knowledge Network and is chairing the School's Building Ventures in Emerging Markets programs. Between 1995 and 2003, she served as co-chair of the Harvard Policy Group on Networked Government Services. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, Lynda was on the faculty of the University of Michigan, University of Washington and University of Arizona. In addition to her academic positions, Lynda worked at Ford Motor Company in the 1960s and held management positions in the health care industry during the 1970s.

Lynda's current research and recent publications focus on the challenges of building new ventures and leading radical business innovation in the face of significant market, technological, and regulatory turbulence. Previous research focused on the impact of information technology on industry and organizational transformation. She is the author of 4 books, over 40 articles and book chapters, and 300 published case studies on this subject. Her online course, Building E-Businesses, was among the first distance learning executive courses available through Harvard Business School Interactive and HBS Publishing.

In 1999, Lynda was awarded Harvard Business School's prestigious Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching, and in 1992, she was awarded the School's Berol Award for Research Excellence. A paper on 21st century business models was selected for presentation at the "Best Papers" session at the Academy of Management annual meeting, and a second paper was selected for presentation at the keynote session of the International Conference on Information Technology and Emergent Forms of Organization. She also won several "Best Paper" awards at the International Conference on System Sciences for papers describing the impact of information technology on group processes, strategic planning, and executive decision making.

Lynda is an active international consultant and has served on the board of directors of both public and venture-backed companies. She is an advisor and advisory board member for senior executives launching new business initiatives in established companies and for entrepreneurs launching independent ventures. In addition, she is on the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Technology Council, is a member of the Technology Advisory Board for NASDAQ, and serves on the advisory board for the World Bank's Global Development Gateway. She also serves as a policy advisor on business and technology to the Comptroller General of the U.S., David Walker. During the late 1990s, Lynda participated on a Blue-Ribbon Panel to define a National Research Agenda on the development of the Network Economy, and participated in a roundtable of advisors to President Clinton's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection.

Paul Baier (MBA 1994), Authoria

Paul A. Baier (MBA 1994) has been involved or started a number of entrepreneurial ventures. While working three days a week at AOL, he bootstrapped Compare.com, which enabled customers to compare prices on everything from PCs to mortgages. Later, He worked for Open Market, an e-commerce software firm, for four years, joining nine months before it went public. He then led Open Market's expansion into business-to-business applications.  In 1999, he founded and ran PurchasingCenter.com, a "My Yahoo" portal for industrial purchasing agents who purchase $2-$10 million of factory supplies a year.  After the dot-com crash, he renamed the company Excara and switched to selling enterprise software for managing product content.  In 2002, he started two nonprofits in response to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.  He is currently acting VP of Product Strategy for Authoria as he researches and evaluates other start-up opportunities. He graduated from Kenyon College, has one daughter, and lives in Wellesley, MA.

Shelby Bonnie (MBA 1990), CNET Networks

Shelby Bonnie, Chairman and CEO of CNET Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: CNET) has overseen the company's evolution from a start-up in 1992 to its position today as the leading global media company informing and connecting the buyers, users and sellers of technology. One of CNET Networks' first employees and senior executives, with past responsibilities including COO, CFO and Vice Chairman, Bonnie assumed his current role in 2000.

The next year, he directed the company's efforts in introducing the Interactive Messaging Unit (IMU), the online industry's catalyst for going "beyond the banner" and standardizing new ad formats that dramatically enhanced both the user experience and ad performance. His influence in this evolution earned him his current role as Chairman Emeritus of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, where he continues to champion innovation in online advertising.

Bonnie had guided the successful marriage of CNET Networks' authoritative, award-winning content with the power of technology, evolving the company's leading media brands into vibrant online learning environments and marketplaces, including both advertising-supported and fee-based services. Today, CNET Networks' online properties attract more than 66 million Web users each month ranging form C-level executives and IT professionals to technology or consumer electronics enthusiasts and gamers.

Prior to joining CNET Networks, Bonnie was a managing director at Tiger Management , a New York-based investment firm.

Jon Burgstone (MBA 1999), Symbol Capital

Mr. Burgstone is Managing Director of Symbol Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund, where he leads the firm's activities in portfolio management and research. Mr. Burgstone also serves as Faculty Chair and Adjunct Professor of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Earlier in his career he was co-founder and CEO of SupplierMarket, a leading internet supply chain software provider. SupplierMarket.com was purchased for approximately $1.1B by Ariba, where Mr. Burgstone served as Vice President and co-head of corporate development. He has also worked as a high-tech strategy consultant (semiconductor, telecom, online financial services), and in general management for Ford Motor Company.

He is a trustee of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and serves on boards of the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School and the University of Illinois College of Engineering. Mr. Burgstone actively supports organizations working to improve education and to promote human rights.

Mr. Burgstone earned a BS in engineering from the University of Illinois, an MS in engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He received the 2006 Distinguished Alumnus Award by the University of Illinois Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

Michael Cline (MBA 1985), Accretive Technology Partners

J. Michael Cline is the founding Partner of Accretive Technology Partners, LLC, a private equity firm focused on building market leaders in the business process outsourcing, software, and IT services markets. Mr. Cline had previously spent ten years as General Partner at General Atlantic Partners. While at General Atlantic Mr. Cline co-founded Exult and Xchanging, today's leading business process outsourcing companies. Prior to General Atlantic, he was an associate at McKinsey, a leading global management consulting firm.

Mr. Cline has an MBA from Harvard Business School and obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University. He is a Trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and serves on the boards of Manugistics (MANU), Exult (EXLT), Equitant, NewRoads, Fandango and several other leading private technology companies.

Srikant Datar, Harvard Business School

Srikant M. Datar is the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University. A graduate with distinction from the University of Bombay, he received gold medals upon graduation from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India. A chartered accountant, he holds two master's degrees and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Cited by his students as a dedicated and innovative teacher, Datar received the George Leland Bach Award for Excellence in the Classroom at Carnegie Mellon University and the Distinguished Teaching Award at Stanford University. He is a co-author (with Professors Charles T. Horngren and George Foster) of the leading cost accounting textbook, Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis published by Prentice-Hall

Datar's research interests are in the cost management and management control areas. He has published his research on activity-based management, quality, productivity, time-based competition, new product development, bottleneck management, incentives and performance evaluation in several prestigious journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Management Science. He has served on the editorial board of several journals and presented his research to corporate executives and academic audiences in North America, South America, Asia, and Europe.

Datar has worked with many corporations, including General Motors, Mellon Bank, General Chemicals, Solectron, TRW, VISA, AT&T, Boeing, DuPont, Co-operative Bank and British Columbia Telecommunications, on field-based projects in management accounting. He is a member of the American Accounting Association and the Institute of Management Accountants.

Kent Dauten (MBA 1979), Keystone Capital, Inc.

Kent Dauten graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College in 1977 and received his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979. From 1979 to 1994, Mr. Dauten worked at First Chicago Venture Capital/Madison Dearborn Partners, Inc., serving as Senior Vice President of First Chicago Venture Capital and Co-Founder of Madison Dearborn Partners, Inc. He is currently the Founder and President of Keystone Capital, Inc., a private equity investment advisory firm. Mr. Dauten is also the former CEO and President of HIMSCORP, Inc., a medical records storage and retrieval company that he successfully merged with Iron Mountain in 1997. Mr. Dauten currently serves on the Board of Iron Mountain, as well as Health Management Associates of Naples, Florida.

Mr. Dauten has been active with Lutheran Social Services of Illinois (past board chair), School District #29 (past president), Ascension Church (past president), and the Metropolitan Planning Council (past board nember). He is currently involved with the Northwestern Memorial Foundation (board member), the ELCA Fund for Leaders in Mission (leadership council), the Dartmouth College President's Leadership Council, and the Wake Forest Parents' Council, and is a guest lecturer at various business schools. He and his wife Elizabeth have four children: Jenna - 19, Mandy - 18, Ben - 16, and Kit - 12.

Daphne Dufresne (MBA 1999), RLJ Equity Partners

Daphne Dufresne is a Principal at Weston Presidio Capital, a diversified venture capital firm with over $2.3 billion in assets under management. With offices in San Francisco, Boston and Menlo Park, Weston Presidio has worked side by side with the entrepreneurs behind more than 200 companies. Daphne joined Weston Presidio in 1999, following her selection as a 1999 Kauffman Fellow. She is currently involved with the firm's investments in Hunter Fan, Picarro, @hoc, Insulair and Zoots.

Daphne previously led business development for the online trading platform of Interactive Investor, a London-based financial advisory site. She also spent a summer on Wall Street working for Merrill Lynch in its Financial Institutions M&A group. She began her investment career as an Associate Director in Bank of Scotland's Structured Finance Group, focusing on management buyouts in the United Kingdom and France. Prior to that, Daphne served as an Associate in Accenture's (formerly Andersen Consulting) Strategic Services Group, specializing in business and technology strategy for Fortune 500 companies.

Daphne is very active in the Boston community. She was recently appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Economic Stabilization Trust by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. The Trust provides direct loans and guarantees to manufacturing businesses. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Big Brother Association of Massachusetts Bay, a mentor to a Robert A. Toigo Fellow, a member of the Brigham and Women's Hospital Leadership Forum, and a member of the Steering Committee for New England Springboard Enterprises. Daphne is a frequent guest lecturer at Harvard Business School and has judged the Harvard Business Plan competition for the last four years.

Daphne earned her BS in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and her MBA from Harvard Business School.

Paul Edgerley (MBA 1983), Bain Capital, Inc.

Paul Edgerley joined Bain Capital in 1988 and has been a Managing Director since 1990. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Edgerley spent five years at Bain & Company where he worked as a consultant and manager in the healthcare, information services, retail and automobile industries. Previously, Edgerley, a certified public accountant, worked at Peat Marwick, Mitchell & Company. Edgerley received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and a BS from Kansas State University. He and his wife, Sandra, reside in Brookline with their four children.

Shikhar Ghosh (MBA 1980), Verilytics

Shikhar Ghosh has been an entrepreneur since 1988. He has been the founder and CEO of several software and services companies including Appex and Open Market. Appex was the fastest growing privately held company in the U.S. in 1990 (BusinessWeek). EDS acquired Appex in 1990. Open Market was one of the pioneering software providers for Internet based businesses. It was selected by several publications including Fortune as one of the leading entrepreneurial companies in the US.

Before joining Appex Shikhar was a Partner  of The Boston Consulting Group. He has been chosen by Business Week and Forbes as one of the leading Internet and technology entrepreneurs. He was the Chairman of the Massachusetts Software and Internet Council and serves on the boards of several private and public companies and nonprofit organizations. He got his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1980.

Andrew Goldfarb (MBA 1993), Globespan Capital Partners

Andy is Executive Managing Director of Globespan Capital Partners and is based in the firm's Boston office. He serves or has served on the boards of Ocular Networks (acquired by Tellabs), Silknet (NASDAQ: SILK), edocs , Idiom Technologies , Incipient, Silicon Dimensions, and Virtusa . Andy has also led investments in Aptis Communications (acquired by Nortel Networks), Argon (acquired by Siemens), Cerulean Technology (acquired by Aether), Net Perceptions (NASDAQ: NETP) and Pirus Networks (acquired by Sun Microsystems).

Prior to Globespan, Andy was Senior Managing Director of JAFCO Ventures, where he established the Boston office in 1997. Previously, Andy directed Trans National Group's venture investing. Andy negotiated TN's investment in Infoseek (NASDAQ SEEK) and Interzine (acquired by TimesMirror). He also negotiated TN's investment in the consolidation of ProMark Teleservices and S&P Data to form International Data Response Corporation (acquired by Telespectrum; NASDAQ TLSP).

Prior to founding TN Ventures, Andy managed new business development activities and served on the Executive Committee for TN. Andy was integral in the sale to MBNA of a major operating division, TNFS, one of the largest credit card origination companies in the United States.

Earlier, Andy worked in the Corporate Development Department at Kikkoman Corporation's Tokyo headquarters for four years. There, he was primarily responsible for identifying new business opportunities in the Japanese market and was involved in the expansion and development of Kikkoman's health club business. Andy has also worked at Booz-Allen & Hamilton in the Marketing Intensive Group and at OPTA Food Ingredients. Andy received an AB in East Asian Studies and Economics, magna cum laude, from Harvard College and received an MBA, with Distinction, from Harvard Business School . Andy serves on the Board of the Institute of Contemporary Art as well as on the fundraising and admissions committees of Harvard College. Andy is also fluent in Japanese.

Todd Krasnow (MBA 1983), Orchid Partners

Todd Krasnow graduated from Harvard Business School in 1983. Following three years at the Star Market division of Jewel Companies, Todd joined Staples before it opened the first office superstore in the country, as part of the original management team. In twelve years at Staples, Todd had a variety of responsibilities. He created the company's first catalog, and later ran that business as a $500 million operation. In 1992, Todd helped launch, and then ran, Staples' international ventures. Several years later, he became executive vice president of sales and marketing. Todd identified and negotiated the naming rights for the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and won a gold "Clio" award for the best retail advertising in the U.S. Under his sales leadership, the multi-billion dollar retailer enjoyed four years of double digit comparable store and delivery sales growth.

In 1998, Todd left Staples to co-found dry cleaner Zoots with Staples founder, Tom Stemberg (who remained Staples C.E.O.). Todd was C.E.O. of Zoots for five years, building the company to over fifty stores in the Northeast. Zoots is credited with introducing a number of innovative concepts to the dry cleaning industry, including 24-hour-a-day accessibility and dry cleaning on line.

Recently, Todd hired a new C.E.O. at Zoots and became chairman of the company. He then started Orchid Partners with four other entrepreneurs. Orchid Partners is a venture capital firm focusing on early stage, New England- based, technology, communications, software and consumer product companies.

Todd earned a BA in chemistry in 1979 from Cornell University. He holds several patents for his work as a chemist at General Foods in the early 1980s. He has served on the board of the Newton Schools Foundation and the Newton high school task force. Todd is married and has three children.

Dan Levitan (MBA 1983), Maveron, LLC

Dan Levitan and his partner Howard Schultz co-founded Maveron in 1998. Levitan and Schultz, who shared the same philosophies about what makes a great company and powerful consumer brand, wanted to bring to fruition their shared values and vision for a different kind of venture capital firm. Within six months Levitan raised $75 million, eventually creating the largest venture capital fund in the state of Washington, now totaling more than $400 million under management. Maveron's mission is to become the premier financial and strategic partner to the great consumer brands of the future. Prior to his role as Managing Partner at Maveron, Levitan was a managing director at Schroder Wertheim & Co., a leading investment banking firm in New York. At Schroder's, Levitan headed consumer investment banking, new business development and founded the West Coast investment banking division. Levitan serves on the board of directors of The Motley Fool, drugstore.com, Quellos Group, Potbelly Sandwich Works, and Cranium, and has acted as a consultant to numerous private, public and philanthropic organizations, including Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Board of Visitors and Pilchuck Glass School. Levitan is a graduate of Horace Mann School, Duke University, and Harvard Business School. Levitan's personal interests include fine art, Duke basketball, and mountain climbing. In 1997, he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, and in 2000 ascended Mount Rainier for the second time.

Carl Martignetti (MBA 1985), Martignetti Companies

Carl is President and Co-owner of Martignetti Companies, the leading distributor of wines and spirits in New England. He is co-chairman of the Harvard College Fund, past chairman of the Harvard Associates Program, and a member of the Harvard Committee on University Resources. He is a Trustee of the Belmont Hill School and of the Boston Lyric Opera, a Director of the American Repertory Theatre, a member of the Executive Council of the Inner City Scholarship Fund, and a member of the President's Advisory Board of the Massachusetts General Hospital. Carl received his BA from Harvard College and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Terry McGuire (MBA 1985), Polaris Ventures

Terry McGuire is a co-founder and Managing General Partner of Polaris, which he founded with Steve Arnold and Jon Flint in 1996. Terry focuses on investments in the life sciences.

Prior to starting Polaris, Terry spent seven years at Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. investing in early stage medical and information technology companies. Terry began his career in venture capital at Golder, Thoma and Cressey in Chicago. He has co-founded three companies: Inspire Pharmaceuticals (ISPH); AIR (Advanced Inhalation Research, Inc.), and MicroCHIPS. Terry represents Polaris on the boards of directors of Acusphere, Compound Therapeutics, deCODE, GlycoFi, Microbia, MicroCHIPS, Remon, Transform Pharmaceuticals, and Wrenchead.

Terry has served on the boards of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council and MassMedic. He has also been on the boards of Akamai, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, and Aspect Medical Systems. Other Board seats include: the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College; the Foster Center for Private Equity at the Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth College; and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

Terry holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS in engineering from The Thayer School at Dartmouth College, and a BS in physics and economics from Hobart College.

Christopher McKown (MBA 1981), Health Dialog Services Corporation

Mr. McKown is president and co-founder of Health Dialog Services Corporation, a leader in providing evidence-based medical information and decision support to patients facing treatment decisions and living with chronic conditions.

Prior to Health Dialog, Mr. McKown was the founder (1987) and president of Response International Services Corporation, a niche insurance direct marketing company sold to Providian in 1994. Mr. McKown was a principal in Booz, Allen & Hamilton in New York from 1981 to 1987. Mr. McKown is a director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston; a director of the Pine Street Inn; an overseer of WGBH; co-chair of the Director's Advisory Committee at the Arnold Arboretum; and treasurer of the Friends of the Boston Night Center.

He received his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1981, and a BS from Penn State in 1977. He lives with his wife and their two daughters in Milton, MA.

Glen Meakem (MBA 1991), Meakem Becker Venture Partners

Glen T. Meakem is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Meakem Becker Venture Capital, a venture capital firm located near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that is focused on the eastern and Midwestern United States and invests in and helps to build early-stage companies in the information technology, biomedical, and service industries.

Prior to entering the venture capital industry in 2004, Mr. Meakem was the founding Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of FreeMarkets, Inc. Mr. Meakem founded the company in 1995. During its history, FreeMarkets first created the market for internet deployed supply management software and services and then went public in 1999 in a record setting IPO. Later, the company expanded dramatically across the globe, achieving over $US 180 million in annual revenues and tens of millions of dollars in positive cash flow. Mr. Meakem and his team sold the company to Ariba (NASDAQ: ARBA) for $US 500 million in 2004.

A trailblazer in electronic commerce, Mr. Meakem was named one of 40 technology pioneers by the World Economic Forum in 2003, and holds eight United States patents for electronic commerce inventions. FreeMarkets and Mr. Meakem were profiled in a widely taught Harvard Business School case study.

A leader in Pennsylvania, Mr. Meakem is a member of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Mellon University, and is a former Chairman of the Board of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania - Heinz History Center. He is a member of the Boards of Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, The Urban League of Pittsburgh, Sewickley Academy, and the Extra Mile Education Foundation. He also sits on the advisory committee of Imani Christian Academy, an inner-city private school. Mr. Meakem has won numerous awards including the Anti-Defamation League's National American Heritage Award, Ernst &Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Western Pennsylvania, Syracuse University's Salzberg Medallion for Exceptional Business Achievement, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Cultural Award, and Junior Achievement's Spirit of Enterprise Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Early in his career, Mr. Meakem held professional and managerial positions with General Electric, McKinsey &Company, and Kraft-General Foods. A former officer in the United States Army Reserve where he achieved the rank of Captain, Mr. Meakem also volunteered for and served in the 1991 Gulf War. Mr. Meakem holds a B.A. cum laude from Harvard University, an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration from Robert Morris University.

Mr. Meakem is married with five children.

Mick Mountz (MBA 1996) Kiva Systems

Mick founded Kiva Systems in January 2003 after spending time in high tech product development, manufacturing, operations, and marketing. With a unique blend of warehouse management expertise and technology insight, Mick is the chief architect of Kiva's game-changing product vision. Prior to Kiva, Mick worked on a business process team at Webvan designing a next generation distribution strategy for grocery home delivery, during which he experienced first-hand the high cost of order fulfillment and the inflexibility of existing material handling systems. Prior to joining Webvan, Mick spent three years in product marketing at Apple Computer as a Product Manager where he helped move many new technologies into the standard desktop platform including FireWire, DVD, Fast Ethernet, and 3D graphics acceleration. He began his career at Motorola, where he worked as both a Mechanical and a Manufacturing Engineer. In 2008 Mick was a winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in the New England region. In 2009, under Mick's leadership, Kiva was ranked number six on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in America, and Gartner named Kiva one of its "Cool Vendors in Supply Chain Management." Mick holds seven United States technology patents. He earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MBA from Harvard Business School.

Gary Mueller (MBA 1994), Internet Securities

Gary Mueller is Chairman of Internet Securities Incorporated (ISI), an online provider of financial and business information on the emerging markets. Gary founded ISI in 1994 and has led the company ever since. ISI currently has 250 employees in 19 countries and its subscription-based service covers over 50 emerging markets, including Brazil, Mexico, Russia, China, and India. In 1999 Euromoney Institutional Investor, a FTSE 250 company, purchased ISI. In June 2000 Gary was appointed to Euromoney Institutional Investor's Board of Directors. He is a graduate of Harvard College (1988) and Harvard Business School (1994).

Venkatesh Narayanamurti, Harvard University

Venkatesh ("Venky") Narayanamurti is Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He is also the Dean of Physical Sciences and a professor in the Harvard Physics Department. From January 1992 to September 1998 he served as the Richard A. Auhll Professor and Dean of Engineering, as well as Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was Vice President of Research and Exploratory Technology at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, from May 1987 to January 1992. He obtained his PhD in Physics from Cornell University in 1965. He joined Bell Laboratories in 1968 as a member of technical staff, and became Director of Solid State Electronics Research in 1981. He has published widely in the areas of low temperature physics, superconductivity, semiconductor electronics and photonics. He is credited with developing the field of phonon optics—the manipulation of monoenergetic acoustic beams at terahertz frequencies. He is currently very active in the field of semiconductor nanostructures.

Narayanamurti is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the IEEE, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. Over the years he has served on numerous advisory boards of the federal government, research universities, and industry. Most recently he has served as Chair of the Directorate of Engineering Advisory Board, NSF (1995-1996), Chair of the National Research Council Panel on the Future of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (1996-1999), and Chair of the Committee of Visitors for the Division of Materials Research, NSF (2002). Currently he is a member of the Advisory Board for the University of California's Miller Institute for Basic Science and a member of the Dean's Leadership Councils of Princeton and Cornell Universities. In addition to his duties as Dean and Professor, Narayanamurti lectures widely on solid state, computer, and communication technologies, and on the management of science, technology, and public policy.

Steven Papa (MBA 1999), Endeca

Steve Papa founded Endeca in 1999 after recognizing that in this age of overwhelming information overload, information access methods available for people to find what they are looking for or get answers are ineffective and inefficient. Endeca is located in Cambridge MA, has over 100 employees, and is backed by Venrock, Bessemer, and Ampersand ventures. With Steve's guiding vision, Endeca's information access technology, with seven patents pending, now addresses a wide range of information challenges across a variety of industries and in the public sector. Today, Endeca is a growing and thriving software company with customers such as the CIA, Harvard Business School Publishing, IBM, ABN Amro, Old Mutual, Putnam Investments, The Library of Congress, Forrester Research, Barnes & Noble and many others. Despite the difficult technology market, Endeca has received numerous accolades such as Enterprise Outlook's 2003 Investor's Choice Award (one of ten software companies nationwide most likely to succeed) and ComputerWorld's Innovative Technology Award (one of twenty-five annually).

Prior to Endeca, Steve was part of the early team at Inktomi where he was the business lead in charge of creating the company's infrastructure caching business, which grew to make up 60 percent of Inktomi's revenues prior to their acquisition by Yahoo!. He was also part of the original business team at Akamai. In addition, Steve was a venture capital associate with Venrock Associates, the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, and was responsible for managing AT&T's $500 million high-end enterprise computing system product line.

Steve holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Operations Research from Princeton University.

Bill Sahlman (MBA 1975), Harvard Business School

William Sahlman is the Dimitri V. d'Arbeloff Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. The d'Arbeloff Chair was established in 1986 to support teaching and research on the entrepreneurial process. The Chair honors the late Dimitri d'Arbeloff (HBS '55), whose entrepreneurial skills helped make Millipore Corporation a world leader in its industry.

Mr. Sahlman received an AB degree in Economics from Princeton University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a PhD in Business Economics, also from Harvard.

His research focuses on the investment and financing decisions made in entrepreneurial ventures at all stages in their development.

Mr. Sahlman's most recent article, "Expensing Options Solves Nothing" (Harvard Business Review, December 2002), discusses proposals to require a charge to income for the estimated value of stock option grants. He notes that we already disclose detailed information on stock options and that the proposed charges do little to add information to the income statement. Moreover, there are far more serious issues in accounting and governance that warrant attention including the level and structure of executive compensation, other liability and asset accounting practices, and the role of the board of directors.

In "The New Economy is Stronger Than You Think" (Harvard Business Review , November/December 1999), Mr. Sahlman describes the positive role of entrepreneurship in the economy. He emphasizes the impact of enabling technologies like the Internet on critical factors like inflation and productivity.

In "How to Write a Great Business Plan" (Harvard Business Review , July/August 1997), Mr. Sahlman describes the appropriate role of the business plan in new venture formation, whether in a new company or within an existing enterprise. The article emphasizes the role of people in making businesses succeed.

In 1985, Mr. Sahlman introduced a new second-year elective course called Entrepreneurial Finance. That course has been taken by over 8,000 students since it was first offered. Mr. Sahlman and an HBS co-author, Paul Gompers, published a casebook in 2002 entitled Entrepreneurial Finance (Wiley). In 2000, he helped introduce and teach a new course in the first year called The Entrepreneurial Manager.

Mr. Sahlman was co-chair of the Entrepreneurship and Service Management Unit from 1999 to 2002. From 1991 to 1999, he was Senior Associate Dean, Director of Publishing Activities, and chairman of the board for Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. From 1990 to 1991, he was chairman of the Harvard University Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. He is a member of the board of directors of several private companies.

Angelo Santinelli (MBA 1989), North Bridge Venture Partners

Angelo Santinelli joined North Bridge Venture Partners as a Principal and became a General Partner in the firm's fourth and fifth fund. Prior to joining North Bridge, Angelo was with Shiva Corporation, a leading provider of remote access networking products, where he served as Senior Vice President Worldwide Marketing and Business Development. At Shiva he was responsible for building and managing the product management, product marketing, marketing communications, knowledge management and Web groups. Prior to Shiva he was with the Boston Consulting Group where he participated in the high-tech practice group. Angelo also spent several years in sales with International Business Machines. Mr. Santinelli's venture investing is targeted at the communications and Internet infrastructure industries.

Angelo is a senior lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management. He is a graduate of Fordham University, 1984 and Harvard Business School, 1989.

Asif Satchu (MBA 1999), Chronos Capital

Mr. Satchu is a founding Partner of AMV Capital, a distribution rights investment fund. He is also a co-founder of StorageNow, one of Canada's leading self-storage companies. Mr. Satchu was previously Chairman of SupplierMarket, a leading supply chain management company. Prior to co-founding SupplierMarket, Mr. Satchu worked at Tiger Management Company and Morgan Stanley. Mr. Satchu received a bachelor's degree from McGill University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Robert Smith (MBA 1985), Castanea Partners

Robert A. Smith is currently Vice Chairman of Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. and Managing Partner of Castanea Partners, Inc. Mr. Smith is the former Co-Chief Executive Officer of both Harcourt General, a diversified publishing concern, and Co-Chief Executive Officer of The Neiman Marcus Group.

Mr. Smith serves on numerous community boards, including the Children's Hospital, Boston, Facing History and Ourselves, Harvard Committee on University Resources, and the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge. and is an overseer at the Beth Israel/Deaconess Medical Center. He is a Trustee of the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, and the Stoneman Family Foundation.

He received his degrees from Harvard, AB 1981, and MBA, 1985. Mr. Smith and his wife, Dana, have three children.

Howard Stevenson (MBA 1965), Harvard Business School

Howard H. Stevenson is Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. The Sarofim-Rock Chair was established in 1982 to provide a continuing base for research and teaching in the field of entrepreneurship. Dr. Stevenson is its first incumbent. The program for entrepreneurial studies uses a multi-disciplinary approach to the creation and maintenance of entrepreneurial focus of business organizations. He is a Senior Associate Dean and Director of External Relations. From 1999 to 2001 he served as Chair of the Latin American Faculty Advisory Group. He also served as Senior Associate Dean and Director of Financial and Information Systems for Harvard Business School from 1991 to 1994. He has been chairperson of the Owner/President Manager Program in executive education and of the Publications Review Board for Harvard Business School Press of Harvard Business School Publishing Company.

He was a founder and first president of the Baupost Group, Inc. which manages partnerships investing in liquid securities for wealthy families. When he resigned from active management, Baupost assets had grown to over $400 million. He is now co-chairman of the Advisory Board of Baupost LLC, a registered investment company. From 1978 to 1982, Professor Stevenson was Vice President of Finance and Administration and a Director of Preco Corporation, a large privately-held manufacturing company. In addition, in 1970-71, he served as Vice President of Simmons Associates, a small investment banking firm specializing in venture financing.

Prior to 1978, he held various academic appointments at Harvard University, specializing in Real Property Asset Management and General Management. He received his BS in mathematics, with distinction, from Stanford and his MBA, with high distinction, and DBA degrees from Harvard University. He was a Thomas Watson National Merit Scholar and a recipient of the ALCOA and Ford Foundation Fellowships for graduate study.

He has authored, edited or co-authored six books and forty-one articles including New Business Ventures and the Entrepreneur, with Michael J. Roberts and H. Irving Grousbeck; Policy Formulation and Administration, with C.R. Christensen, N. Berg and M. Salter; The Entrepreneurial Venture, with William Sahlman. "The Importance of Entrepreneurship" and "Capital Market Myopia," with William Sahlman; "A Perspective on Entrepreneurship," and"'Preserving Entrepreneurship As You Grow," "The Heart of Entrepreneurship," "How Small Companies Should Deal with Advisers," and "Why Be Honest If Honesty Doesn't Pay" have appeared in Harvard Business Review. Other scholarly papers of his have appeared in Sloan Management Review, Real Estate Review, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Business Strategy, Strategic Management Journal and elsewhere. He has also authored, co-authored or supervised over 150 cases at Harvard Business School. He is the author of Do Lunch or Be Lunch: The Power of Predictability in Creating Your Future, published by HBS Press. His latest book, co-authored with David Amis, is Winning Angels: The Seven Fundamentals of Early Stage Investing.

He is currently a director of Camp Dresser & McKee and Landmark Communications, as well as a trustee for several private trusts and foundations. He is a director of Sudbury Valley Trustees where he served as president from 1996 to 2000. He is a trustee of the Boston Ballet and a member of the Harvard Club of New York City.

Steven Sydness (MBA 1981), Endurance International Group

Steve Sydness is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Endurance International Group, Inc. Steve joined Endurance International's predecessor company, BizLand, Inc., in September 1999. Through organic growth and fourteen acquisitions over two years, Endurance International has become one of the largest providers of Web site hosting and related online services to small and medium businesses. With operations in the U.S., Canada, and India, Endurance International serves businesses worldwide.

Prior to joining Endurance International, Steve spent twelve years at Great Plains Software (now Microsoft Business Solutions), most recently as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing. Before that Steve worked three years with Kissinger Associates and four years with McKinsey & Company, in their New York and Tokyo offices.

In 1992, Steve took a leave of absence from Great Plains to run for the United States Senate from his native state of North Dakota.

He holds a BA in business administration and history from Principia College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Rob Wadsworth (MBA 1986), Harbour Vest Partners

Mr. Wadsworth has been a founding Managing Director of HarbourVest Partners, LLC since its creation in 1997. HarbourVest Partners is a global private equity firm managing over $15 billion in committed capital for institutional limited partners. HarbourVest's business activities include investing as a primary and secondary investor in venture capital, leveraged buyout and mezzanine funds, as well as investing as a direct investor in venture capital and buyout transactions worldwide.

Prior to HarbourVest, Mr. Wadsworth was a general partner at Hancock Venture Partners from 1988 to 1997. Hancock Venture Partners was the predecessor firm to HarbourVest Partners. Previously, Mr. Wadsworth worked for Booz, Allen & Hamilton, where he specialized in the areas of operations strategy and manufacturing productivity. Mr. Wadsworth received his bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, in systems engineering and computer science from the University of Virginia and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. He currently serves on the boards of several domestic and international private companies. Mr. Wadsworth is presently a director of Concord Communications, Inc., ePresence, Network Engines, Inc., Switchboard, Inc., and Trintech Group PLC, all public companies.

Mr. Wadsworth focuses HarbourVest's efforts in direct investing world-wide where the firm has historically invested over $2 billion in venture capital, expansion capital, leveraged buyout, and recapitalization transactions.

Gwill York (MBA 1984), Lighthouse Capital Partners Inc.

Gwill E. York is the Founder and Managing Director of Lighthouse Capital Partners. Ms. York has spent the last twenty years in a variety of positions in the venture capital community, the last fifteen focused exclusively on structured venture capital investing. She directs the firm's East Coast investment activities, and provides oversight of other operational activities for the Lighthouse Funds. Since co-founding Lighthouse, she has led the firm's investments in companies such as Millennium Pharmaceuticals, StorageNetworks, DataSage, Corvis, Triton, Curis, and Sirocco Systems.

Prior to co-founding Lighthouse in June 1994, Ms. York was a Senior Vice President with Comdisco Ventures where she directed and managed East Coast investment activities. She joined Comdisco Ventures in 1988 having been recruited to establish its East Coast presence. During her tenure, Comdisco Ventures successfully launched its national presence and became the market leader in the venture debt industry in both market share and profitability. While at Comdisco, she led its investments in over fifty companies, primarily in the biotechnology and communications equipment areas, including Human Genome Sciences, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Appex, Brooktrout Technologies, and Cascade Communications.

Prior to joining Comdisco, Ms. York was a Senior Business Analyst for Fidelity Investment Company from 1986 to 1988. From 1984 to 1986, she worked in a medical software start-up, which successfully raised venture capital from four leading venture capital firms. She started her career in 1980 at Salomon Brothers in the corporate finance department.

She holds an AB in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is on the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees for the Museum of Science in Boston. She has been active on several visiting and alumni/alumnae committees over the years for Harvard University as well as served on the National Council of the Harvard Medical School.

Mike Roberts (MBA 1983), Harvard Business School
Executive Director of the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship

Michael J. Roberts is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit. Dr. Roberts is the Executive Director, Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, and is also Executive Director, Case Development. In his role in the School's case development efforts, Dr. Roberts oversees the training and coordination of the school's casewriters.

Dr. Roberts was formerly an assistant professor at the school in the General Management area and taught the second-year elective course Entrepreneurial Management. He also developed and taught the second-year elective course Managing the Growing Enterprise. Dr. Roberts has worked in a variety of private sector industries. Prior to and during business school, he worked for McKinsey & Co. and Morgan Stanley, respectively. From 1989 to 1991, he served as Director of International Business Development for Cellular Communications, Inc. where he led a successful effort to acquire the second cellular license in Italy. He has also served as Chief Financial Officer of a start-up chain of quick service Italian restaurants, and as Vice President of Business Development for a company in the healthcare services field.

Among Dr. Roberts' other clients were numerous start-up companies as well as AT&T, Chrysler, and Ameritech. Dr. Roberts received his BA, cum laude, from Harvard College in economics in 1979. He was awarded his MBA, with high distinction, from Harvard Business School in 1983. He completed his formal studies in 1986 when he received his doctorate, as a Dean's Fellow, in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

He is the author of over fifty case studies on starting and managing entrepreneurial companies. He co-authored New Business Ventures and the Entrepreneur with Howard H. Stevenson and H. Irving Grousbeck, a textbook that is used at over 100 graduate business schools. Dr. Roberts is also the author of numerous papers and articles on the challenges of managing the transition from entrepreneurial to professional management.

History of Entrepreneurship at HBS

Since the founding of HBS in 1908, many of its graduates have become entrepreneurs.  Indeed, by 2008, nearly 50% of its MBA graduates were becoming entrepreneurs by their 15th reunion.  The first formal courses in entrepreneurship began in the late 1930s and 1940s, and those course offerings have multiplied rapidly in the last 10 years.  All first-year MBAs take a required course in entrepreneurship, and can choose from nearly 2 dozen second year electives on that topic.  The School has an entrepreneurship department of 35 faculty, the second largest at the School.

Read more about the history of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School in “Shaping a Legacy: the History of Entrepreneurship at HBS,” and “A Half-Century of Teaching Entrepreneurship.”