The Last Word
Knowledge Before It Gets Into Print

Where do you find the great new ideas in business before they make it into print? Wharton's professors are always researching and often before their ideas are published, their knowledge is first shared with managers in our classrooms.

It can take years for research to trickle down into articles or books for managers. For example, Mike Useem was using stories of leadership decisions in our classrooms long before he published his The Leadership Moment (Times Books, 1999) and more recent Leading Up. Jerry Wind was discussing marketing and organizational implications of convergence in the Wharton Fellows program before his insights were published in Convergence Marketing (Prentice Hall, 2001) late last year. Paul Schoemaker has taught scenario-based strategic planning in many of our programs, long before he gathered these insights into the book Profiting from Uncertainty (Free Press), due out in July. Ian MacMillan was employing his distinctive approaches to new business development long before he put them into print in articles and The Entrepreneurial Mindset (Harvard Business School Press, 2000). Richard Shell shared his distinctive approaches to negotiations with managers in the Wharton Executive Negotiation Workshop for years before publishing his book Bargaining for Advantage (Penguin USA, 2000).

This is, of course, just a very small sampling of the many faculty insights from our classrooms that found their way onto the bookshelves. Managers in our programs had access to these insights long before they were put into print.

At Wharton, we don't believe knowledge should be locked away in an ivory tower. We strive to blend the business basics (Finance and Accounting for the Non-Financial Manager, Leading the Effective Sales Force, Critical Thinking) with new perspectives and insights culled from work and study around the world to bring you timely and meaningful classes. We look at the intersection between our knowledge and the needs that you bring to us. Where there is a need, we work with faculty to bring their insights into the classroom. We are committed to keep launching new programs and extending the frontiers of business knowledge — in our classrooms and in print.

Robert E. Mittelstaedt, Jr.
Vice Dean and Director
Wharton Executive Education

    

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