Building a better business school

Entrepreneurial spirit key, Babson president says

(Jodi Hilton for the Boston Globe)

Leonard A. Schlesinger, 56, took over as president of Babson College in Wellesley July 1. A former Harvard Business School professor who has worked in both academia and business, Schlesinger came to Babson from Limited Brands Inc., in Columbus, Ohio, where he was vice chairman and chief operating officer. Earlier in his career, he was executive vice president and chief operating officer at Au Bon Pain, based in Boston. Schlesinger recently spoke in his office at Babson with Globe business reporter Robert Weisman.

What's the biggest thing you've learned in the first six months?
When I got here in the spring, I had the opportunity to be around for four or five months before I took over. I talked about the institution being a jewel. And then a large part of my agenda was to get the rest of the universe to understand that and to manage the process of continuing to polish it. And it's been everything that I thought it would be and more. It's an extraordinary place with an extraordinary capacity to educate and impact people's lives, and a place that can have a reach and an impact that goes way beyond this campus 13 miles west of Boston.

Where do you want to take Babson over the coming decade?
Over the last 15 years, we've been consistently ranked number one in entrepreneurship on the graduate level. And over the last dozen years, we've been number one in the world for entrepreneurship on the undergraduate level. It would be folly to walk away from that competitive position. So a large part of the agenda is to cement and extend that competitive advantage we have in the entrepreneurship space by broadening the definition of entrepreneurship and by extending our reach globally.

The economy has been battering all kinds of organizations, from businesses to academia. How is it affecting Babson?
Well, there is no question that we're not exempt from the realities of the economy. First of all, it presents us all sorts of new teaching material that we're able to develop free of charge. The second piece of it is, unlike the wealthier endowment institutions, we're a tuition-dependent institution, and so our continuing success right now is driven by our ability to remain attractive to a population that wants to connect up to the education that we offer.

In this new environment, what should business schools teach the next generation of business leaders?
The realities of today's environment are pretty compelling in terms of questioning what we do in business schools. And I've argued regularly over time that the content component of a business school curriculum is irrelevant within a decade. Now, I'd say it's irrelevant within five years. So the issue for us is making sure that what we are teaching is linked up to the environments we're playing in. And in a continuously changing world, we have to recognize that we're starting people on a journey of lifelong learning. We're not finishing up the process of their education.

As you noted, Babson has been a pioneer in teaching entrepreneurship as a discipline. Can you export that concept beyond the Boston area?
There's no question. I'm regularly quoted as saying the world needs what we do, and I absolutely believe it. And there's no question that there's a method to what we do, and that method is broadly exportable. And there are large constituencies in the world that would benefit enormously from being able to bring a more entrepreneurial mind-set to their work. We've had a number of initiatives outside the United States over the years. The first formal program that we announced just a few months ago is a tri-continent MBA that will have us in China, in Europe, and in the United States.

You've said that you want to raise the profile of Babson nationally and globally. How do you do that in the shadow of Harvard, MIT's Sloan, and the area's other business schools?
We've been generally known as the finest business school between [routes] 128 and 495. And that's a nice position to start from. But I'd like to actually broaden the geographical reach in a fundamental way. What we do is distinctly different from what all of these other institutions in this market do. Rather than cowering in the shadows of these other institutions, we need to just focus on what we do and make sure the world understands that in what we do there's nobody better.

The college launched a $200 million capital campaign back in 2007. How's that going?
We finished the academic year at $90 million. So we're moving along quite nicely. And we're very optimistic, even given the economy, about our ability to continue to grow that campaign.