I'll have a Tall Glass of Milk with That

Earlier this week I attended a small round-table discussion with Jim Farrell, the founder of F'Real (www.freal.com), and a handful of my classmates in the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital club. I hadn't planned on attending at first because F'Real sells milkshakes and it wasn't obvious how the company and its challenges were immediately relevant to my career. Lucky for me, there was a spot open at the last minute and I took advantage of the opportunity. Here are a few reasons why the conversation was immensely relevant:

1. Amidst all the hype of the financial crisis--all the talk of greed, recklessness and misuse of government (tax payer) bailout funds--Jim Farrell and his company were a breath of fresh air. For one thing, there are few products that incite such joy and nostalgia as the all-American milkshake. Second, Jim is a true, pure entrepreneur. This wasn't a conversation about business plans and venture funding. Rather it was about an individual believing in a product so sincerely that he was willing to take a leap of faith to create something with his own personal well-being on the line.

2. I've always believed that entrepreneurship is the most elevated form of ethics and this discussion reinforced that belief. Let me explain: MBAs, professionals and academics commonly talk about ethics in terms of what is unethical. They try to decipher unethical behavior and figure out ways to curtail it. This is fine and reasonable, but it's baseline. A more powerful approach is to understand ethical behavior in the positive. It can be subtle. For instance, with his dinner, Jim ordered a glass of milk. I absolutely loved this--a manager of a milkshake company that orders milk for dinner is poetic. As an aside, my dad once told me that he sat by Famous Amos on an airplane and for the entire trip, from takeoff to landing, the guy snacked on his own cookies. It seems to me that a manager who loves his product so completely could not help but be ethical. Ethical behavior can also be overt and it usually surprises people. Jim discussed F'Real's relationships with its dairy suppliers and the loyalties that existed even when F'Real began to outgrow the volume capabilities of some of these dairies. I won't go into the details, but it was touching. Further, entrepreneurship is inherently ethical because it is creative and progressive. By their very nature, entrepreneurs seek to make people's lives better, by offering better products, by creating new jobs, and ultimately by invigorating the economy.

3. Finally, technology and innovation are key to F'Real. The company has several patents, and it uses a special, high tech blender, and an innovative process. Again, details aside, suffice it to say that F'Real has a simple product that leverages a deep technological and process-oriented insight. All-too-often tech-focused entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are snobs about high technology--they glorify areas such as nanotechnology and artificial intelligence--but oftentimes the most productive, profitable technologies are far more grounded and intuitive.

Are you Analytical?

It's the one question I remember from my Johnson School admissions interview because it's the one question I didn't know how to answer. For me, it was like someone asking "are you nice?" or "are you a fan of Bob Dylan?"...and then pressing me to prove it. My answer was "yes," but I stumbled when I had to explain why I categorized myself as such.

Even though I highly doubt the question would be posed to an engineer, I imagine that if it was, she would just point to her undergraduate transcript, list several quant classes and put it to bed. In retrospect, I could've probably pointed to my transcript as well, emphasizing the fact that the great philosophers were masters of analytics and arguing that philosophy represents the more complex, natural extension of mathematics, engineering, and systems in general. It didn't occur to me at the time.

Now that I've officially finished one half of the core, I'd like to take another stab at the question:

The deepest, most versatile analytical ability comes not from the ability to work with numbers (although that can be important) but from the ability to problem solve. For that reason, the "ability to think" and the ability to solve problems is the very essence of the modern liberal arts education. So, my undergraduate education, which could be so easily dismissed as ancillary to business, is the very foundation that I continually rely on time and again, in the core, in business, and in life. It allows me to adapt, solve problems, and make decisions. Coupled with innate ability and professional experience, a liberal arts education is precisely what makes me analytical and allows me to solve tough problems, no matter how big the numbers are.