Experiences of Successful Center Directors - Baylor University

are more important in the early stages, such as during fund raising. We started
ours after we had our past successes, but it was largely through the push of the
president and the chairman of the trustees. It is also probably our best fund
raiser. And he and I had several pretty hard conversations about it. Why do we
want this? Will it really help us and the program, or is it primarily for fund raising
issues? So there is a lot of tension, I think, in advisory boards.
And I think we have had a proliferation of advisory boards, not only in entrepreneurship
but elsewhere at Babson, and sometimes I wonder about the real value
of them. Some people say they are fabulous—they do this and that. The other
extremists say, well, they are just a lot of heartache. To make it meaningful, you
have to have meaningful programs. Maybe our advisory board is different than
most in that it is a lot of entrepreneurs locally and internationally. In fact it is a
much bigger challenge to get them together on a date and have really meaningful
things for them to work on. So all I can tell everybody is that we built the whole
program without an advisory board and we have had one at Babson for only two
years. So if you like, we may be the other way around in terms of doing it.
So I do not think advisory boards are a necessary part of what Jeff Timmons did,
but he has been gone for six years. It fell to me to build links with key trustees
whom I knew were interested in entrepreneurship. And I went to some length to
build those links, inviting them to our regular, monthly entrepreneurship faculty
meetings. We would get them to come and talk to the faculty and let the faculty
talk to them. We also would have them judge business plan competitions. We
sought their advice where I knew they had some advice and I wanted to listen to
it, about industry perhaps or whatever. So, we did it very informally but nevertheless
built some very good links into the trustees. It is always important because
presidents come and go, deans come and go, academic vice-presidents come
and go and who knows what might happen if you do not have those strong links.
So I personally think that strong links with a few powerful trustees are more
important than advisory boards.
ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS FOR THOSE TRYING TO START A PROGRAM?
I think the endowed chair was an important signal when we raised the money for
that. I think it was a commitment. Again, some of the Babson family still serve on
the trustees, so that gave good visibility to the trustees. It showed that someone
was willing to step up to the plate and put up a significant sum of money for an
endowed chair, because in those days there were very few. So, it was pretty
exciting to get people to come to Babson through that chair but that would not be
so easy for the school today because there are just so many endowed chairs, in
entrepreneurship. Nevertheless an endowed chair can attract a significant senior
scholar who does not have to worry about tenure.
44