As published in the August 1, 2008 Toledo Business Journal
Tom Gutteridge
University of Toledo
Bringing businesses and the University together
Toledo Business Journal recently interviewed Tom Gutteridge, Ph.D., University of Toledo (UT) College of Business Administration dean, professor of management, and chair of the Science and Technology Corridor Corp. board. He shared the following thoughts.
Toledo Business Journal: Can you discuss the aspect of the UT College of Business Administration’s mission statement concerning serving as a resource for regional economic development?
Tom Gutteridge: If you look at the mission and vision statement, there are three or four kinds of things that are in there. One is that we want to be known for enhancing the world of business practice. We’re a professional school like law, medicine, or education. So I’m very fond of saying what we have to look at is this integration of theory and practice.
The second part of that is we want to be known for global scope and our regional impact. So we want to make a difference in that we are a metropolitan business school, and that’s different than a Miami University or an Ohio University, because we are in Toledo and northwest Ohio and, for that matter, southeastern Michigan.
We want to be known for that interface and bringing the business world into the business school and taking the business school, our faculty, and students out into the business world.
So that’s embedded in our mission and our vision.
TBJ: What resource does the Executive Center for Global Competitiveness (ECGC) provide in regional economic development?
TG: We chose that name carefully. Global competitiveness is really what it’s all about.
I was an experienced dean – this is my 25th year as a business dean – but it was my first year at UT in 2003 and I was giving my first talk to a group of alumni and business leaders. And I was talking about what we need to be known for and the integration of theory and practice as well as the global scope. And I added another dimension to that, which is that we want to be at this intersection of business and technology. We do that for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is we’re part of the University of Toledo and we’re known for our strong technological centers of excellence: engineering, arts and sciences, pharmacy, and now the medical school. And if you look at my faculty and myself, most of us have technical undergraduate degrees.
One of the alumni came up to me and said, “Great talk, Tom, but you’re wrong.” I said, “OK, where am I wrong?” And he said, “Global has nothing to do with it. We’re here in northwest Ohio; we don’t have to worry about global competitiveness. And by-the-by, we don’t have to be high-tech.”
I said, “Number one, much of your competition, many of your products that you may have to get from a supply chain, and many of your customers going the other way do have these global ties.”
It’s interesting how we perceive ourselves.
So, whether it’s your business or my business, we have to understand that we are in a global marketplace. And who we hire, who we sell to, who we buy from, who our competitors are – they are very much global. And it’s competitiveness – we have to be able to compete with these individuals.
Back to the ECGC – what I discovered when I came here is that we’re known as a university and a business school. We’re known for teaching, we’re known for research. We also wanted to be known for what is now becoming called outreach and engagement interaction with the business community. And I found we had some pretty good centers when we get to some of the specifics.
But we did not have a one-stop shopping center so that – if you want to hire a business grad or to employ them as an intern, you need a consulting project done, or you want to know if there’s a non-credit seminar about leadership or sales – you would know who to call. The answer is the ECGC.
That kind of grew with a woman named Carrie Herr (director of ECGC). She used to work for UT and headed up continuing education. So it’s kind of a one stop-shopping center. She spends her life out there dealing with companies in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan – large, medium, and small companies. She talks about it being one company at a time.
TBJ: Can you share recent activities of the International Business Institute (IBI) involving commerce from the Far East as it relates to potential impact on regional economic development?
TG: IBI really does a couple of things. One, the International Business Institute and Don Beeman, who is a faculty member, are very much focused on getting students in and – whether it’s as a major or a minor and whether it’s an undergraduate or an MBA – helping them prepare for global careers. So part of their education is both coursework as well as study abroad. That’s one part of what they’re doing.
The second part that’s germane to what you’re talking about is the area of international trade. For example, the IBI together with ECGC just put together an Introduction to Doing Business in Asia forum. They are also working together on creating a wiki (a website that allows users to collaboratively edit its content and structure) on doing business in an international dimension.
There’s a Strategic Education Economic Development (SEED) part of UT. It’s a 501(c)(3) that I helped set up. What they do is have member companies that include UT, Bowling Green, and a number of other companies. So if they want to go abroad, we can help set up contacts. We have UT and SEED offices in Beijing and Shanghai and will soon have an office in Delhi. So that’s kind of what we’re trying to do – create awareness and provide assistance to companies that are interested in either locating abroad or are interested in being able to partner abroad. Or international companies that are wanting to locate here.
The third piece of that, and going back to how we are of assistance, I was part of the group that went to China, India, and Jordan in April; and while we were there we visited Dana [Corporation]. In previous visits we visited Tenneco and SSOE, Inc. Part of what we want to be as a business school is a resource for the international affiliates of our regional companies here.
TBJ: How does the Center for Family Business assist area companies?
TG: It’s a niche. We are in some senses all about niches. We’re a business school, but you have to take businesses and define them typically by different industry niches. So we can talk about what we do in healthcare, what we do in sales, and what we do in financial services.
This one is now family and closely held businesses. That came about over a decade ago, about 1992, because the family businesses said they needed some help. In some senses, they have the same problems that every other business does – the marketing, the financing, etc. But we have a set of unique problems. How do mom, dad, the siblings, aunts, and uncles get along? How do they plan for succeeding generations?
What came out of that is we set up the Center for Family Business. It’s a networking group, so we have about 150 small businesses that are a part of that and pay a modest amount of money ($400) to be a part of that. So they have an opportunity to attend forums and mini forums. They, for example, had the opportunity to attend the Doing Business in Asia forum.
They also have affinity groups, which are smaller groups that come together and share what’s happening in their businesses. So it’s a networking group and then there are sponsors, like Huntington, Seymour & Associates, a couple of accounting sponsors, and a couple of law sponsors. What those sponsors do is specialize in providing services to them as resources.
TBJ: What is the Center for Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CTEI), and how does it serve students and area business?
TG: CTEI follows a small business center we had when the small business administration provided funding for students to defray expenses. They did away with that, and the number of projects we did started to dwindle.
About two years ago we concluded that we really needed to focus, we couldn’t be all things to all people. So we focused on small business technologically based startups. So what CTEI does is a couple things. One is a minor we have at the undergraduate level. Students, regardless of what their major happens to be, can take a minor in entrepreneurship. Likewise there’s an MBA specialization entrepreneurship. So that’s the education part of that.
We then do some research in that area and then we outreach an engagement. We will have a team of about four MBAs available to work with, and we focus on technologically based startups and small businesses. They will provide business planning assistance, marketing assistance, feasibility studies, and those kinds of things.
We build a pipeline for that with the incubators and partner with the Regional Growth Partnership (RGP).
We also have students who go out as actual interns that work at the RGP or a new business startup or the incubator.
Finally, as we speak, I’m trying to set up an alumni entrepreneurship network where we reach out to where they’re located. The UT grads could [have backgrounds in] business, law, or engineering. What they have in common is they have interests in and experience with entrepreneurship startups, venture capitals, and those kinds of things.
TBJ: What benefits occur when the business community in our area and the faculty and students of the College of Business Administration work closely together?
TG: Obviously this has to be win-win for everybody. The [keys are] what the students get out of it, what the college / university gets out of it, and what the organization that we’re being of assistance to gets out of it. So it’s a value proposition.
Business school education a decade or so ago would be a professor standing up for the class period and talking to you. There may have been some interaction, but it was all classroom based.
We’re building a 54,000 square foot addition: The Savage & Associates Complex for Business Learning and Engagement. A part of that is going to be five action-learning labs. Today, you learn in large part by doing. You need the book learning, but not by itself.
You get the learning through these labs, through internships, and through these projects. It’s part of your learning as a student. You will be able to hit the ground running. That’s part one.
Part two for us as a college and a university is very simple; we’re in a recruiting war. We want to attract more students to come here. Well why should they come here? Because our education is more real world and more relevant and we’ll better prepare you for the career world. So it’s a branding, marketing, image building recruiting piece. It’s a value proposition. It’s the return on the investment. It’s the information or the consulting services or it’s the training they feel – from the standpoint of quality and price – is giving them a good return on the investment.
TBJ: Are there any other issues that you would like to address?
TG: Why are the university and the business community investing in this big dig? It’s a $15.4 million proposition of which I’ve agreed to raise about $3.3 million. I am going to the business community and I am asking them for that $3.3 million. There are naming opportunities, so we have folks stepping up and giving us anywhere from $5,000 and $10,000 at one end of the spectrum and up to $300,000 and $400,000 for a chance to name a classroom or to name an action learning lab.
And the reason all of us are investing in this is because it’s a paradigm shift. It’s a complex for business learning and engagement. So it’s going to be the home for undergraduate or MBA or Ph.D. programs. So all that learning is going to take place. But it’s also a place where the students, faculty, and business community are going to come together.
So that’s going to be very exciting and increase our ability to interact with the business community.