We will have Samuel R. Allen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of John Deere at the Poole College of Management on Wednesday, February 1 at 4:30 PM as a part of the Wells Fargo Executive Lecture Series. Allen will be speaking on the topic: A Strategy to Help Feed the World
As you may know John Deere is based in Moline, Illinois and is the leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery in the world. In 2010 it was listed as 107th in the Fortune 500 ranking and employees over 50,000. Products solder under the John Deere name include tractors, combine harvesters, cotton harvesters, baler, planters/seeders, sprayers and ATVs. The company is also a leading manufacturer in construction equipment and forestry equipment. Clearly John Deere is committed to selling its products which no doubt contribute in improving world food situation.
Since many of you are interested in social venturing, it might be a good idea to see what an established company like John Deere is doing to co-align business and corporate goals. That got me thinking, how does a company doing business that aligns well with social goals benefit or suffer from public perceptions? Should it reinvent and re-brand itself? Should it globalize and change its strategy aligned for very large privately owned farms and see how it can work with much smaller land holdings and ill developed infrastructure? Interesting times ahead. Check out what their CEO is saying
http://www.deere.com/wps/dcom/en_US/corporate/our_company/news_and_media/speeches/2011may10_allen.page
Great news—Thanks to the hardwork of students past and current, our class was recently on the Carlson School webpage. Here is the link to the story.
http://www.carlsonschool.umn.edu///news/story.aspx?story=08/31/10/New-Class-Helps-Students-Strike-’Gold’
Congrats to Alex and John on their success.
Kauffman Foundation recently launched istart–a website community to help connect with the other startups, mentors and investors. I think the idea is to promote and simplify business plan competitions and make business plans searchable so firms get visibility from the right sources. Chekc it out.
http://istart.org/home.php
I found this nice website that gives voice to real world entrepreneurs. Good resource to make yourself heard as well as to get a sense of good business plan pitches. Go register and pitch your company.
http://vator.tv/
If you or anyone has an idea for renewable energy, you might want to send an application for the business plan competition at the University of Albany.
http://www.neny.org/ContentManager/index.cfm?Step=Display&ContentID=314
On a list serve, someone forwarded this article from the Harvard Business Review blog… seems to be apt based on what we discussed last class. What do you think?
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/04/is_it_ok_for_entrepreneurs_lie.html
Sign up early for the 3M seminar on securing IP. This 2-hour session will provide an overview of intellectual property and suggest procedures for cost-effectively securing IP assets within science and technology related businesses. Attorneys with extensive experience in a securing and managing intellectual property in a broad range of industries will lead the discussion.
This is a GREAT opportunity, but it is LIMITED to the first 50 registrants. Preference is given to graduate students, but even if you are an undergrad, you might be able to get in (you could mention that you are in this technology entrepreneurship class to show that you have a demonstrated interest). Check out the flyer.
We would like to give you some time to work on the feasibility report and presentations. Do you think we should shift the report and presentations to after the Spring Break? We can have a session before the Spring Break on licensing or startups and other strategies to improve appropriation.
Please send us the report by email in MS Word format so we can edit it and put in comments for future improvement. Use the guidelines mentioned in this post (also in the syllabus) for the report.
1. 12 point font 1 inch margins all sides double spaced
2. 6-7 pages with suitable appendices and references (6-7 pages even for two co-authors on one report)
3. In addition submit the document in the following format (your name (s)_one – two word industry title. docx
4. Use appendix for charts and tables as evidence for the claims mentioned in the report. Do not put random charts that you do not refer to in the report.
5. Use references as evidence for claims made. Use footnotes or any other citation style that allows the reader to go through the key idea easily.
Hope that helps. Good luck with the reports.
For the presentation:
1. Prepare 5-7 slides for your presentation on Tuesday. Answer the main question of each section on each slide.
2. Prepare a 3-5 minute presentation. Use additional slides for support in case there are questions. These might have some tables or additional evidence.
I have posted the slides for the technology and markets module. I apologize there was a glitch in translation for the simulation model so it did not work exactly, but I had written a paper related to this model a year ago and I can share it with you if you are interested. Send me an email and I can send you the paper on pdf.
It clarifies the details of the simulation model in some depth. For those who want the paper on Patenting and timing strategy in the bio-pharmaceutical industry (presented in class) send me an email as well. This paper also has a simulation model of these strategies we discussed in class.
I am excited to read your industry creation presentations next Tuesday. Good Luck
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