The Roadside MBA team is partnering with Stanford GSB to offer our first MOOC! After years globe-trotting, book-writing, and trying out new course material on unsuspecting MBA students, we've picked the best ideas from the Roadside MBA canon and packaged them together in a free, online course. During the course, we'll ask you to think about questions like: What scales and what doesn't? What does your cost structure tell you about your future? Where can you add value for your customers so that they will be willing to pay a price that can ensure you stay profitable as you … [Read more...]
The Roadside MBA Multimedia Project Wins Gold!
We just found out that the Roadside MBA Multimedia Project --- Big Lessons from America's Small Businesses --- won "gold" in the News & Research Video category of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Western district awards. We beat out Cal and the UC system. A hearty congratulations to everyone at Stanford GSB who worked on the project! Check out the announcement here. … [Read more...]
Oyer in today’s New York Times
Paul Oyer was featured in today's New York Times Frequent Flier column, discussing the journeys that led to the Roadside MBA! Check it out here. … [Read more...]
Schaefer on HBR.org: “It Depends”
Scott Schaefer's blog post on Roadside MBA ran on the Harvard Business Review web site last week. A small excerpt: What happens when you put three business professors in a rental car and send them out to talk to owners and managers of small- and medium-sized businesses? Would they discover their MBA frameworks to be a bunch of academic mumbo-jumbo with no real applicability? What we found is that there’s no best path to business success. Managers successfully address seemingly similar problems in very different ways and, as our corollary suggests, the trick is to find which solution fits … [Read more...]
Roadside MBA Launches Column on Inc.com
We have interviewed 100+ small businesses in the last few years, but only had space for maybe 45 in our book. What to do with the great stories, insights, and "It Depends" examples from the other 55+? Our friends at Inc.com have been kind enough to bring us on as columnists, and we're pleased to say that our first piece hit the web just this week. Check out our first column here, and look here for our Inc.com home page where you can find all of our posts! … [Read more...]
Mazzeo and Schaefer on CBS This Morning
Mike Mazzeo and Scott Schaefer enjoyed chatting with hosts Anthony Mason and Vinita Nair (Northwestern alum!) on CBS This Morning last Saturday. Big fun in the Big Apple, and you can catch the video here. … [Read more...]
The Economist Reviews Roadside MBA
Roadside MBA got a (mostly) nice review in The Economist this week. Here's a snip: The book... succeeds admirably in its main aim, providing fresh examples to illustrate the basic tenets of MBA theory. In doing so it cleverly addresses two different markets: MBA students who want fresh grist to their mills and roadside businesspeople who want an introduction to management theory... The picture that emerges from “Roadside MBA” is a surprisingly uplifting one: of a country that is still abuzz with enthusiasm for business. But apparently the stuffy folks at … [Read more...]
Roadside MBA Spring Tour!
Roadside MBA will be back on the road June 12 through 16! We'll hit two countries, two states, two provinces (and our windshield will probably hit many thousands of bugs!) Yes, we're flying to our neighbor to the north, starting our trip in Thunder Bay, Ontario. From there, we'll hit Duluth, Minnesota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. Follow along on twitter or our blog! … [Read more...]
Emmy Nomination for Roadside MBA!
The Roadside MBA Multimedia Project has been nominated for an Emmy Award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, San Francisco/Northern California Chapter. We are nominated in the "Informational/Instructional-Program/Special" Category. The other nominee is a fun piece on the one-year anniversary of San Francisco's new Exploratorium from the Bay Area's local ABC affiliate, KGO Channel 7. This is a "local" Emmy, the kind that your local TV news station might brag about, so we won't be meeting Bryan Cranston at the after-party. But there is a black … [Read more...]
Roadside on the Road in October
It has been very enjoyable to get out and speak to people about the insights from Roadside MBA – over the past couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to participate in a few nice events and tell some of our best stories. Several of these events have been organized through the Kellogg Alumni Association. The school had a great program in downtown Chicago and I sat on a panel discussing growth opportunities and strategy. My two fellow panelists were Kellogg grads with impressive entrepreneurial resumes: Scott Dorsey, who co-founded the digital marketing company ExactTarget after graduation, … [Read more...]