Kelleycommunications

The news of Kodak going belly up this week came as a surprise and an affirmation.

At the Kelley School, students hear a lot about innovation. Top MBA students are consistently challenged to become the next great business minds, people willing to take educated risks and stand ready to capitalize on the rewards and opportunities they create.

The economist blogger Schumpeter has a great take on Kodak's fate. It really hit home with me as I regularly deal with students and faculty and their visions of the business world. Because Kelley embraces experiential education and is one of the most respected entrepreneurship programs in the nation, it makes complete sense that our programs should be talking about the points Schumpeter is trying to make here.

Shouldn't an industry giant like Kodak have been ahead of the curve and anticipated changing trends in the industry? Kelley certainly has been involved in the dialogue about changes ahead for accredited business schools today.

How can a business that set the standard be so unprepared to embrace change?

It really is a scary concept that such an massive company failed to reverse its fortune even when the future became so apparent in the 2000s.

Certainly tech companies have the highest burden to overcome when it comes to staying ahead of the curve, but the lesson here is really about boundary scanning by industry leaders. True leaders must continually innovate their company and be willing to fail to remain innovative. I have a lot of respect for leaders willing to take on those risks and effectively overcome them--especially in light of Schumpeter's final statement here: "Market dominance is only a snapshot in time."

Carpe Diem Boss!

Sheryl Hugill is an Evening MBA student at Kelley Indianapolis. She is among eight students currently traveling in Russia on a study tour. Her latest entry appears below.

I would have blogged sooner, but both our free time as well as our Internet access has been limited here in Russia. We arrived safely in Moscow early Tuesday morning and immediately took off for some sightseeing at Red Square. We have seen the outside of St. Basil's Cathedral both during the day and at night now, but have yet to see the inside because the day we had planned to go, they had decided to close it for cleaning. We plan to try again on Saturday though, after visiting a flea market outside of Moscow to pick up souvenirs.

 

We have had a very busy week here in Moscow. We've had some interesting business meetings the last three days, meeting with various multi-national corporations with offices here in Moscow. We've met with people from Lilly, Cummins, and Skolkovo School of Management. We got the opportunity to tour the brand new facilities at Skokolvo as well as meet and chat with some of the MBA students there.

 

Both of the teams in our group have also met separately with companies here to gather information for our projects. My team has met with Johnson & Johnson as well as some entrepreneurs here with startups in Moscow. The other team is meeting with Hyundai right now. We also met with a large steel company here, Evraz.

 

Our group has learned quite a lot about doing business in Russia, both from a multi-national business perspective as well as small and large companies in Russia. They all face some of the same as well as very different issues.

 

Tonight we are going out to dinner with some of the people we have met. While we are all very tired, I think all of us have thoroughly enjoyed our time here and are somewhat sad about leaving in two days. We have fallen in love with Russia and I know at least some of us have plans of returning before too long.