In a humorous and inspiring piece in The Wall Street Journal, Scott Adams (creator of the popular Dilbert comic strip) writes that most college students should learn the skills needed to run a business, which will prepare them for post-graduate life. Mr. Adams touches on several of his clever entrepreneurial ideas as a student that allowed him to master “the strange art of transforming nothing into something,” and he gives some excellent advice to burgeoning entrepreneurs.

Read the article here.

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.

Watch Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, interview Spring 2011 guest speaker Dr. Al Gini on critical tasks for leadership:

Kaizen interviewee Reena Kapoor wrote a chapter for the recently-published book 42 Rules of Product Management: Learn the Rules of Product Management from Leading Experts from Around the World. She also posted the chapter, entitled “Be All You Can Be – Think like a General Manager!”, on her website. The article urges product managers to think more like general managers, but the methodology applies to anyone who wants to run a business. Ms. Kapoor’s theme is that one needs to learn to ask the right questions about the overall context of a product, and the process of researching and answering those questions will result in a better strategy.

Robert I. Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford’s Engineering School, illustrates two “weird ideas that work”. This presentation is based on his book Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, of which a preview is available here.