Roadside MBA

I've gotten a few e-mailed questions this week about the "Roadside MBA" project, so I thought I'd explain a bit more about what we're doing, and why.

Mike Mazzeo and Paul Oyer are economists and strategy professors at Kellogg (Northwestern) and Stanford, respectively, and I helped hire both of them at Kellogg in the '90s. (Yes, they *do* owe all their successes to me. Paul especially.) Paul and I have written many articles together, and I've known Mike since we were both undergraduates at Stanford in the '80s.

About two years ago, we were on the phone discussing economics-based strategy courses for MBA students, and were lamenting the fact that the typical Harvard Business School case study focuses on Procter and Gamble, or Ford Motor Company, or Microsoft, or Pepsi, or ... somebody big with billions or hundreds of millions in annual sales.

One of us --- probably me, but I don't actually recall --- pointed out that owners and managers of small and medium-sized businesses might benefit from thinking through their problems using an "Economics-of-Strategy", principles-based approach... but that our profession doesn't always do a great job of encouraging this given that we produce a lot of "big-business" case studies. We all agreed that small business needs attention from economists interested in strategy.

So we decided to hit the road in search of stories that we could use to help translate MBA strategy frameworks for owners of small and medium-sized businesses.

Our first trip was from Memphis to Omaha in August of 2010. We went from Denver to Oklahoma City in Winter 2011, Charlotte to Atlanta in Spring 2011, Missoula to Portland in Summer 2011, and as I type this I'm on a plane headed back to Salt Lake after a weeklong tour from Chicago to Cincinnati. We typically meet in City A, rent a car, stop in Cities B, C, D and E on consecutive days, visit 3-4 businesses per day, and fly to our respective homes out of City F. We have grown to like Holiday Inn Express quite a bit, although to date they have not offered us a sponsorship deal.

(I'm sure by now you're trying to imagine what it's like to drive across America in a rental car with economists for the better part of a week. Really, it's not that bad. I mostly drive. Paul mostly navigates, and, yes, we get lost a lot. Mike sits in the back and interjects with humorous commentary on whatever argument Paul and I happen to be having. By far the worst part is Mike's continuing affection for the New York Yankees, and his constant updates on how many hits Derek Jeter has --- like I care. The winter trip was my favorite, for obvious reasons.)

To date, we've visited 100+ small and medium-size businesses. We try to set a meeting with the owner or a general manager with significant operational and strategic oversight responsibility, and we usually start by just asking for the story of the business. From there, our visits usually turn in to a conversation in which the three of us ask questions about pricing, positioning, strategy, organization, succession, or other topics, depending on what strikes us as interesting. The people we've met are, without fail, creative and energetic, passionate and thoughtful, interesting and driven. It's been really fun, and we have learned so much.

What exactly have we learned? And how can our catalog of examples, stories and mini-cases help other owners of small and medium-sized businesses? We're not telling the stories quite yet, because it's important to for us to get signoff from business owners before putting anything out there publicly. But we're in the process of cataloging, analyzing, and writing; we're hoping to get something interesting down on paper --- er, pdf --- soon.