McGill Original Films, a local video production company, created a short video about the recent Extreme Entrepreneurship event at Rock Valley College. CEE’s Executive Director, Dr. Stephen Hicks, was on a discussion panel at the event, and makes an appearance in the video below.
Jack Stack is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of SRC Holdings Corporation, an award-winning, employee-owned organization based in Springfield, Missouri. Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation and its 22 subsidiaries provide a wide range of products and services, including engine remanufacturing, packing and distribution, business consulting and banking. SRC employs 1,600 people and generates annual revenues of about $400 million.
Kaizen: Where did you grow up?
Stack: I was born in Chicago in 1948. My father bought a house in Elmhurst, Illinois, and I lived in Elmhurst from the time that I was about three years old to about 30. Then I was transferred to Springfield, Missouri, where I’ve spent the last 31 years of my life.
Kaizen: It sounds like you were a wild card as a youth—you were kicked out of college and seminary and fired from a job at General Motors?
The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship is sponsoring two essay contests for Rockford College students this semester.
Introduction to Philosophy students were given the topic (Due April 14): What is independence, and is it a good thing? [Contest flyer pdf]
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Business and Economic Ethics students were given the topic (Due April 18): What essential character traits and business skills lead individuals and organizations to succeed? [Contest flyer pdf]
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The winners will receive cash prizes and be featured in upcoming issues of Kaizen.
Chris Macdonald, at his Business Ethics Blog, explores the ethics of the profit motive. The profit motive is often blamed for the unethical and illegal actions of businesspeople that we read about in the news every day. But does the profit motive necessarily lead to wrongdoing? And aren’t businesspeople, like everyone else, motivated by much more than just a desire to profit?
In our latest issue of Kaizen we feature an interview with Jack Stack, Founder and CEO of SRC Holdings Corporation, author of The Great Game of Business and A Stake in the Outcome, and “Father of Open-book Management” (Inc. Magazine).
Also featured in Kaizen are student essay contest winners Sarah Boykin, Shelly Wenzel, and Bethany Borgmann, and guest speakers Michael Strong and Magatte Wade.
A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post separately the full interview with Mr. Stack.
If you would like to receive a complimentary issue of the print version of Kaizen, please email your name and postal address to CEE [at] Rockford.edu.
Vedran Vuk, writing for Not PC, lists five common problems with business school students. Ironically, at the top of his list is “Lack of Entrepreneurship.”
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Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s executive director, talks with economist David R. Henderson on seven myths about free markets.
Watch Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, interview Spring 2011 guest speaker Dr. Al Gini on critical tasks for leadership:
Dr. Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics and Chair of the Department of Management in the School of Business Administration at Loyola University Chicago. He is also the cofounder and Associate Editor of Business Ethics Quarterly, the journal of the Society for Business Ethics. His books include: My Job My Self: Work and the Creation of the Modern Individual (Routledge, 2000); The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure and Vacations (Routledge, 2003); Why It’s Hard to Be Good (Routledge, 2006); Seeking The Truth of Things (ACTA, 2010).
Dr. David R. Henderson is an associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a research fellow with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey and the editor of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. He was previously a senior economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and has testified before House and Senate congressional committees. He has also appeared on CNN, The O’Reilly Factor, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and C-SPAN.
The Institute for Justice’s City Studies series examines the political red tape that keeps entrepreneurs from getting their businesses off the ground. The studies focus on “real-world entrepreneurs from eight different cities across the nation,” such as Los Angeles’ Jill Bigelow. Her “most frustrating experience while trying to open her restaurant was when an inspector would not allow her to open because her previously approved wall tile did not have enough ‘reflective value.’” Despite being in the top ten most economically free countries, the U.S. clearly has a long way to go towards truly supporting entrepreneurs.
Watch the Institute for Justice’s entertaining video that highlights some of the aggravating roadblocks that entrepreneurs face:
