Appendix G — ARCHIVE - Older, More Complicated Website Content

LINKS WILL BE BROKEN DUE TO ARCHIVING

Inspirational education and pioneering scholarship to transform business and society.
- Lerner Mission Statement

Description

This website is the primary communication platform for facilitating the development process of Lerner’s strategic plan (to be completed Summer 2024). Please participate in its development and revisions.

Current Status

We are just getting started. Currently, the team is proposing a strategic framework for the plan, developing this website, and recruiting committee/group participants. The strategic plan development process is intended to be a bottom up, collaborative, and inclusive exercise for Lerner College. See the below timeline for key milestones.

Summary of Current Calls for Participation

** FEEDBACK ON THE BELOW REQUESTED BY EOD WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2024

Requests from Strategic Framework Section

  • FRAMEWORK FEEDBACK: Do you like the “Good to Great” inspired framework for discussing strategic plan creation? Is there an alternative framework or modifications you would like to see?
  • PARTICIPATION INTENT: Can we count on your participation? How might you want to participate towards identifying the next layer of community flywheels that have the potential for making Lerner distinct? Please just let us know you want to be involved.

Requests from Crafting Our Flywheel Section

  • FLYWHEEL IDEAS: Is there a part of the Lerner college community that you are passionate about? If so, we want to hear about it! We seek to coalesce our areas of strength into several potential LCF’s; enabling coordinated efforts that lead to sustainable and growing momentum for our college. Please share your passion and tell us about your flywheel thoughts (even incomplete thoughts, we just need visibility into our collective potential). We should all be seeking to enhance our undergraduate community flywheel and also leverage its strengths into other areas of distinction.

Requests from Committee Section

Known needs for volunteers fall into these nine categories:

  1. Impact-focused scholarship
  2. Inter-disciplinary Education
  3. Experiential Learning
  4. Industry-Engaging Co-Curriculars
  5. Professional/Career-Focused Community
  6. Business/Societal Impact Measurement
  7. Rankings & Their Determinants
  8. Donor Motivation and Measurement
  9. Frontier Visiblity & Feedback

Timeline

Plan creation will be done with a sense of urgency, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit. A working timeline is below.

  • Winter Session 2024
    • Create Steering Committee and working groups formed
  • End of Winter session
    • Working groups begin work
  • Start of Spring 2024
    • Working groups brainstorm and host Lerner community forums
  • March 18, 2024
    • Working groups submit drafts to the steering committee.
  • Mid-March to end of April 2024
    • Discussion and feedback sessions to refine the drafts.
  • May 13, 2024
    • Working groups final drafts are due.
  • Summer 2024
    • Steering committee completes final draft.
  • July 1, 2024
    • Final Draft shared with the Lerner Community

G.1 Background

The initial conceptual framework for sketching out a strategic plan borrows from “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t”1, an influential book written by Jim Collins and originally published in 2001. Two concepts from the book will be subsequently drawn upon:

  1. The Hedgehog Concept: The idea to focus on one or a few really big things where sustained and disciplined effort leads to accumulating ever-improving results. The few efforts worthy of focus should meet at the intersection of three criteria:
    1. A Well-Understood Economic Engine - understanding of the fundamental factors and mechanisms that drive a company’s profitability and sustained financial success.
    2. The Potential to Be The Best in the World - if you can’t be the best in the world at it, leave it to others; this does not necessarily mean big, it just means best within a specific community.
    3. Purposeful Passion - without passion you cannot persevere to be exceptional.
  2. The Flywheel Effect: - a flywheel represents a cyclical progression of actions where each action naturally propels the next, creating a self-reinforcing loop to sustain and amplify organizational success. The Flywheel Effect is the observation that great organizations use disciplined long-term effort to slowly increase organizational momentum which eventually catalyzes into prolonged breakthrough results; accumulating small wins that compound over time as opposed to relying on one breakthrough to yield success. Continued pushing in the direction of economic sense, potential for excellence, and palpable passion is the only way to sustain organizational momentum and growth.

G.2 A Candidate FlyWheel for Lerner College

In broad strokes and echoing the language of Lerner’s mission, Lerner college pursues business and societal transformation through three inter-connected roles:

  1. Pioneering scholarship leveraging leading-edge theories, analytics, technology, and diversity;
  2. Inspirational education fostering curious, globally-minded lifelong learners with a leadership mindset; and
  3. Inclusive and innovative community-building capitalizing on Delaware’s proximity to major centers, fostering collaboration with industry, deploying faculty who enthusiastically share their expertise, engaging alumni to inspire excellence, and personalizing success through dedicated advisors and staff.

Building a sustainable flywheel where these inter-connected roles lead to ever-increasing societal impact becomes an illuminating exercise, Figure G.1 shows one proposal with darker fill used for the three “pillar” roles.

Figure G.1: A research-intensive business school flywheel.

Notice that each “pushpoint” of the flywheel almost inevitably leads to the next. Pioneering scholarship leads to world-class teaching methods and leading-edge solutions to business and societal problems being brought into the classroom; almost inevitably leading to inspiring education. Next, when inspirational education is available, it is almost inevitable that a community of people accumulates to be collectively inspired and educated. And then, having a community through which innovation gets diffused and talent emerges, its almost inevitable that business and society will be positively impacted. Through consistent and sustained positive impact, its almost inevitable that Lerner College’s reputation grows. With increased reputation, talent and resources flowing to the college. Then, the increased talent and resources almost inevitably allow Lerner to continue innovating at the frontier of knowledge. And lastly, by having scholars who test their ideas and theories at the frontier of knowledge, they almost can’t help but craft ever-increasing and valuable scholarship.

In the Figure G.1 illustration, you’ll notice three key clusters—build, measure, and learn—encased within black rectangles. This overlay of rectangles seems to allow for direct comparison of the Build, Measure, Learn framework highlighted in “The Lean Startup.”2 The Build, Measure, Learn approach to innovation stresses the importance of quick experimentation, gathering feedback, and ongoing refinement — essential steps for forward-thinking scholars aiming to effectively test and disseminate their innovations for significant societal impact.

An open question remains though:

Which communities should The Lerner College of Business and Economics be fostering through pioneering scholarship and inspirational education? Which Lerner communties can best sustain and amplify momentum using the logic of the Figure G.1 flywheel?

The answer lies in applying “The Hedgehog Concept”.

G.3 Applying the Hedgehog Concept to Lerner College

Recall the three criteria for choosing which efforts to build flywheel-momentum for: 1. A Well-Understood Economic Engine, 2. The Potential to Be The Best in the World, and 3. Purposeful Passion. By addressing these in order, Lerner’s future areas of focus can be narrowed down for further discussion.

G.3.1 Lerner College’s Economic Engine

Sources of revenue to Lerner’s college’s economic engine are largely tuition-based, roughly 75% of revenue is generated from tuition; hence, educational excellence and associated communities must be of paramount direct importance to Lerner’s future success. Other notable revenue sources include gifts, which account for less than 10% of revenue annually, and fee-for-service/grant-based revenue which accounts for less than 5% of annual revenue. Worth noting, given dormitory capacity limits, future revenue growth at the graduate level is less bounded than at the undergraduate level.

In terms of expenses, Lerner’s college’s economic engine is largely salary-driven; with faculty compensation/benefits comprising upwards of 75% of Lerner’s total expenditures. Adding in the salaries of staff, Lerner college’s expenditures on salaries/benefits are around 90% of total expenditures.

The concentrated sources of revenues and expenses make it easier to crystallize what must be done to sustain and improve Lerner’s economic engine. To maintain and grow revenue, Lerner must:

  1. Celebrate and reward educational excellence as fueled by the other pushpoints in Figure G.1 to sustain and grow tuition revenue.
  2. Increase donor participation, possibly by by allowing donors to easily assess their alignment and desire to participate in contributing momentum to the Lerner flywheel.
  3. Explore more funded activities, possibly through win-win arrangements with outside industry and/or increased focus on grants.

And, in terms of expenses, we must ensure that the large expenditures on faculty are spent in ways which contribute momentum to Lerner’s flywheel. Disjoint, unfocused, and disparate faculty engagement contributes little to negative momentum; we must act using coordinated teams to gain distinctive and sustainable momentum.

G.3.2 The Potential To Be Best In The World

Figure G.1 provides an underlying logic for the flywheel concept at Lerner College, yet more specificity is needed to be an implementable strategic plan. For communication simplicity, let’s label related education/scholarship/community offerings and their build-measure-learn feedback loops as “community flywheels”. Defining the specifics of a community flywheel is something we can all work together on, but directionally-speaking, the scoping of flywheel(s) should suggest a framing where Lerner can reach distinctive, and potentially world-class levels.

G.3.3 Purposeful Passion

The last criteria to become a community flywheel for Lerner is purposeful passion. Outstanding performance is closely tied to passion; without genuine motivation, the determination required for excellence is likely to diminish. To reach excellence, imagine communities of students and scholars sustained by unified purpose; funded by donors, tuition dollars, industry and government; all aligned through vision and sustained enthusiasm. These (potential) communities should be the basis for Lerner’s distinctive brand. Intrinsically motivated participants in these distinctive communities will form the basis for enduring success.

G.4 Call for Participation

With the above framework in place, the following participation is requested:

  • Do you like the “Good to Great” inspired framework for discussing strategic plan creation? Is there an alternative framework or modifications you would like to see? (see more details on flywheels in the next section)
Note

This strategic planning process is iterative and ideas refined over time. Please participate so that even your draft ideas can be included and refined as part of the process.

Every large organization will eventually have multiple sub-flywheels spinning about, each with its own nuance. But to achieve greatest momentum, they should be held together by an underlying logic. And each sub-flywheel should clearly fit within and contribute to the whole. -Jim Collins

Figure G.2: Underlying logic for all Lerner College flywheels.

In this section, we seek everyone’s help to identify candidate flywheels for Lerner College’s focus; with limited resources, we must choose how to scope our offerings in such a way that differentiates Lerner and provides a distinctive, economically viable, and spirited platform for excellence.

Scope will come in the form of naming Lerner flywheels using community-centric language, and identifying the advantages that Lerner offers to sustain and grow momentum within those communities.

For all identified flywheels, Figure G.2 will be used as the underlying logic. To the extent underpinnings of the different flywheels can be aligned and use shared resources/processes, that is preferred, but some obvious nuances between flywheels are to be expected.

G.5 Three Categories of Flywheel

Lerner College is a business school in an R1 research university. By definition, we invest in R&D, we supply undergraduate and graduate education, and we build communities through which our educational and innovation efforts translate into business and societal impact.

Defining the scope of Lerner’s offerings, namely the flywheels we will invest in, is a critical component for ongoing success. Trying to do it all is recipe for doing zero with excellence. According to “Good to Great”3, organizations must not fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more, but rather adhere to these ideas (quoted verbatim):

  • The single most important form of discipline for sustained results is fanatical adherence to the Hedgehog Concept and the willingness to shun opportunities that fall outside the three circles [i.e. economic engine, world-class, passion].
  • The more an organization has the discipline to stay within its three circles, with almost religious consistency, the more it will have opportunities for growth.
  • The fact that something is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” is irrelevant, unless it fits within the three circles. A great company will have many once in-a-lifetime opportunities.
  • The purpose of budgeting in a good-to-great company is not to decide how much each activity gets, but to decide which arenas best fit with the Hedgehog Concept and should be fully funded and which should not be funded at all.
  • “Stop doing” lists are more important than “to do” lists.

Figure G.3: Three categories of mutually re-enforcing Lerner flywheels: 1) The Undergraduate Community Flywheel, 2) the Graduate Community Flywheel, and 3) Lerner Community Flywheels.

To aid the scoping process, Figure G.3 presents three types of flywheels that Lerner will pursue and invest in. Two are obvious, the “Educational Flywheels” of our undergraduate and graduate education communities. The third flywheel is what distinguishes us as a research university from a teaching university; these communities, referred to as Lerner Community Flywheels (LCFs), serve as focal points where Lerner has chosen to push the frontier of knowledge and also, to disseminate key thoughts, ideas, methodologies, and more across its two educational communities.

G.6 Identifying Lerner Community Flywheels (LCFs)

Definition G.1 (Lerner Community Flywheels) A Lerner Community Flywheel(LCF) is a network of people who share a common identity, culture, interest, or objective, where 1) abundant Lerner-affiliated participant involvement is essential for the community’s prosperity, 2) whose mission helps sustain and grow a flywheel using the underlying logic of Figure G.2, 3) whose community contributes momentum to at least one of the educational flywheels, and 4) whose support of Lerner’s economic engine, world-class potential, and evidence of purposeful passion are documented (i.e. the flywheel satisfies Hedgehog criteria).

Definition G.1 offers a definition of what constitutes a Lerner Community Flywheel. This definition aims to be expansive and supports the addition of these qualifiers:

  1. Supportive LC: These are communities, not really flywheels, that exist within Lerner, but are not likely candidates for being world-class and probably have an incomplete flywheel. These communities will require alignment to one or more LCF(s) and distinction comes from contributing flywheel momentum in a supportive role. Many of the communities around our majors/minors currently fall into this supportive role.
  2. Potential LCF: These are communities that Lerner can create or align with, but remain largely untested as flywheels and may not be completely specified.
  3. Promising LCF: These are communities that Lerner has created or aligned with and there is exploratory testing and investment of the flywheel.
  4. Distinctive LCF: These are communities that Lerner has created or aligned with that have proven to consistently sustain and grow momentum using the underlying Lerner flywheel logic.

G.6.1 Aggregration of Flywheels

After candidate flywheels of all types are collected, its expected that we end up trying to stucture our ability to communicate about our mutually re-enforcing flywheels. The structure is unclear, but possibly, 3-5 distinctive or promising flywheels sit at the top of the hierarchy with promising, potential, and supportive flywheels underneath. Figure G.4 shows a potentially absurd and incomplete example of this.

flowchart TD
    A(Lerner)
    A --> C(Customer\nExperiences LCF)
    C --> Hospitality
    C --> Marketing
    Hospitality --> CClub(Country Club\nManagement)
    Marketing --> MktEcon(Marketing\nEconomics)
    A --> D(Quantitative\nModelling LCF)
    A --> E(Tech-Enabled\nFinance LCF) 
    E --> J(Finance)
    J --> L(Fin-Tech)
    D --> Economics
    Economics --> MktEcon
    D --> Analytics
    Analytics --> Sport(Sports\nManagement)
    Analytics --> L
    A --> Change(Change\nManagement LCF)
    D --> Acctg
    Change --> Acctg
    Change --> Leadership
    Leadership --> Women(Women's\nLeadership) 
    J --> Investing
Figure G.4: Potentially absurd and incomplete example showing how LCF’s can be structured hierarchically.

In Figure G.4, Lerner is shown as having four distinctive flywheels with supportive flywheels underneath.

Another alternative structuring might lead to a matrix representation. A strawman proposal of a matrix is shown in Figure G.5.

Figure G.5: Another illustrative proposal of how flywheels can be aggregated into a coherent structure, in this case, a matrix structure.

Although not reflected in either of the above diagrams, all flywheels are assumed to bring mutually beneficial distinction to the educational flywheels (not pictured).

G.7 When is a Lerner community a flywheel?

Identifying our distinctive, promising, and potential community flywheels requires engagement of all Lerner stakeholders to give visibility into all of Lerner’s potential. WE NEED YOUR HELP WITH THIS IDENTIFICATION PROCESS.

As defined, flywheels should provide scope for defining the community, advantages which differentiate the community, and the measures by which community momentum is measured. For illustration, let’s examine these two existing communities at Lerner College:

  1. The Undergraduate Community: Lerner’s largest community, easily thousands of members, and the heart of Lerner’s economic engine, and
  2. Operations Management Community: One of Lerner’s smaller communities consisting of 60+ domestic undergraduate students, 60+ SWUFE students, an active Operations Management Association club, and 11 faculty who teach both operations management and many of the business analytics offerings.

For the undergraduate community, we show how its flywheel is defined; its unquestionably a distinctive LCF. For the operations management community, the question becomes to which flywheel(s) might it be able to align itslef?

G.7.1 The Undergraduate Community Flywheel

Lerner’s largest community, easily thousands of members, is its undergraduate community consisting of the majority of Lerner employees as well as employers, alumni, supporters, and many others who require recognition during this strategic planning process. There is little doubt that this community is the heart of Lerner’s economic engine, has many passionate members, and with the right scoping - is (or can be) truly the best in the world.

Below is a bulleted-list highlighting key components of the Lerner Undergraduate Community Flywheel. Elaboration of each point is probably required and will be done as we move forward in the strategic planning process. The proposal has four key components: 1) a scope of community definition, 2) a list of Lerner advantages in fostering the community for each of the “BUILD” pushpoints, 3) a list of the key metrics for all of the “MEASURE” pushpoints, and 4) a plan to maintain visibility of the knowledge frontier and incorporate feedback for further pioneering scholarship.

  1. Scope of Community:
  • Current and aspiring business leaders.
  • Globally-minded, with a Middle-Atlantic regional focus.
  • Engaged in UD’s undergraduate educational mission.
  1. Lerner Advantages:
  • Pioneering Scholarship Advantages
    • Impact-Focused: Lerner’s emphasis on business and societal impact, not just publication, ensures Lerner’s faculty is participating at the frontier of knowledge; testing theories, shaping society, and serving essential roles in innovative communities.
    • LCF-Empowered(TBD): Lerner’s Community Flywheels provide distinctive areas of focus. All undergrads get exposed and help to push the innovative frontier of these LCFs. (note: its important we define the LCF’s to aid the Lerner mission).
  • Inspirational Education Advantages
    • Inter-disciplinary: A key strength of Lerner is the breadth of its undergraduate offering. Inter-disciplinary majors like business analytics, flexible curriculum that allow for double-majors, and a bevy of minors expose students to multiple fields of interest and their intersections.
    • Experiential: The Lerner way has always been experiential, e.g. Hen Hatch, Vita Nova, Marriott, Blue Hen Investment Club, Capstones, etc.
    • LCF-Empowered(TBD): Educational differentiation will be supplied by LCF’s. The 3-5 LCF’s will provide themes that pervade the Lerner brand and provide distinction. Using the fake example of Figure G.4, Lerner’s advantage might be in educating customer-centric, computational, financially-savvy, leaders for change.
  • Innovative Communities Advantages
    • UD-Powered: Safe, beautiful environment, that is part of a great college town.
    • Industry-Engaging Co-curriculars: Many diverse, active student clubs, Hen Hatch, multiple institutes, all TBD LCF communities, etc.
    • Professional & Career-Focused: The shared and exceptional experience of BUAD110 plus stellar career services.
  1. Measuring Lerner Momentum
  • Business and Societal Impact
    • % of Graduating Students Rating Experience Good Or Excellent: 93%
    • 2022 Average Starting Salary: $63,691
    • LCF-Powered Initiatives: Most important measures or signs of impact should be LCF-based, for example if we were to have an Entrepreneurial LCF, then we might seek to measure student venture funding.
  • Reputation and Influence
    • Undergraduate and department-based rankings?
  1. Frontier visibility and feedback plan/report Most innovation will be the responsibility of the LCF’s and hence, each LCF will have its own feedback mechanisms.

More ideas for defining this community are in Appendix: B.

G.7.2 A Supportive LC: The Operations Management Community

As stated above, operations management is one of Lerner’s smaller communities consisting of 60+ domestic undergraduate students, 60+ SWUFE students, an active Operations Management Association club, and 11 faculty who teach both operations management and many of the business analytics offerings (including at the Ph.D. level). The community has modest alumni and industry engagement, but probably potential for growth. Many publications from the faculty have been excellent, but largely individual efforts.

With motivation and effort, operations management could certainly try to become a potential LCF, but at the moment let’s assume the decision is to align the operations management community with a promising or distinctive LCF along with the two educational communities. Since it is unclear what LCF’s exist yet, let’s just take a few guesses. Presented here are some thematic abstractions of operations management where the area can likely contribute momentum:

  1. Data Science: Through alignment with the MIS community, the UD Data Science Community, and the UD AI community, operations management can participate or lead the idea of business students who can mathematically model business problems, use computers to solve those moath problems, and then persuade organizations to follow their insights. UD faculty have expertise in statistical modelling, optimization, and data visualization.
  2. Fin-Tech Process Improvement: Fin-tech at UD seems hot. Perhaps operations management can participate in the revolution of using tech to replace existing financial services.
  3. Analytics: Analytics, similar to Data Science, is hot at UD. Perhaps operations management specializes in contributing to this momentum.
  4. Sustainable Business: The OM faculty has some expertise in crafting sustainable, resource efficient, and equitable business processes.

So, above are just some ideas. Maybe some departments will simply span LCF’s with innovation encouraged to align with any LCF. At this point in the process, all ideas are welcome, we should all be divergent thinkers right now. After all the flywheel ideas and community suggestions are aggregated, a clearer picture will emerge as to what should be done.

G.8 CALL FOR HELP: Identifying Lerner Community Flywheels (LCFs)

Is there a part of the Lerner college community that you are passionate about? If so, we want to hear about it! We seek to coalesce our areas of strength into several potential LCF’s; enabling coordinated efforts that lead to sustainable and growing momentum for our college. Please share your passion and tell us about your flywheel thoughts (even incomplete thoughts, we just need visibility into our collective potential). We should all be seeking to enhance our undergraduate community flywheel and also leverage its strengths into other areas of distinction.

G.9 Committee

All Lerner Stakeholders Should Submit Lerner Community Flywheel ideas via email to Adam Fleischhacker (ajf@udel.edu). Specific Committee Assignments and Working Groups Will Be Managed via this link to google sheet of assignments

Huge parts of the Lerner Strategic Plan rely on the identification of an LCF structure. Please participate by submitting suggestions via email to Adam Fleischhacker (ajf@udel.edu).

** FEEDBACK REQUESTED BY EOD WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2024

G.10 Committee Volunteer Sign-Up

** VOLUNTEER SIGN-UP REQUESTED BY EOD WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2024

Figure G.6 is a structure of how we will request volunteers

Figure G.6: Structure of needed participation. Some aspects of the plan we are confident in and can recruit volunteers immediately, other aspects are still TBD and needed volunteers are likely to by LCF-specific.

We will use this link to handle our google sheet of volunteers. You can also just volunteer via email to Adam Fleischhacker (ajf@udel.edu)

G.10.1 Currently Known Needs for Volunteers

While we need EVERYONE to think about flywheels and potential LCFs, there is some urgency to simultaneously develop our more stable educational flywheels. Currently, the known needs for volunteers fall into these nine categories (please sign-up via google sheet or email):

  1. Impact-focused scholarship: What does impact-focused scholarship look like? How is it facilitated? Lerner seeks to move beyond just publications and to ensure ideas are diffused into business and society. What does this look like and what mechanisms can help?
  2. Inter-disciplinary Education: What does inter-disciplinary mean and how does Lerner facilitate and encourage it as part of delivering inspriational education?
  3. Experiential Learning: What is experiential learning? How is it done well? In what ways can experiential learning be further-infused to deliver inspirational education?
  4. Industry-Engaging Co-Curriculars: To form community, industry-engaging co-curriculars (clubs, symposiums, etc.) are our best mechansims. How can we facilitate industry-engagement to ensure our students, faculty, and community have eventual access to both current practices and the frontier of knowledge.
  5. Professional/Career-Focused: How do we ensure professionalism in our community, particularly in the education flywheels? How do we engage with industry to be world-class in our ability to align potential employeers with our students? Is BUAD110 the only shared experience among all of our students? How does executive mentoring and Lerner Edge differentiate us?
  6. Business/Societal Impact: While each LCF will have its own measures, the two educational community flywheels should articulate the way their educational-missions contrinute to business/society. We need to measure this type of impact.
  7. Rankings & Their Determinants: One way of measuring the reputation of our eduactional programs is through rankings. We need to understand what rankings are important to Lerner and the specifics of how are they determined.
  8. Donor Motivation and Measurement: There is a working theory that a strong vision for the educational mission of Lerner is most likely to lead to a large gift. What has been seen in terms of donations and their motivations at our peer schools?
  9. Frontier Visiblity & Feedback: Scholars at the frontier test their knowledge with immediate feedback. How can Lerner ensure it closes the loop on getting feedback on its attempts to have business and societal impact?

G.11 Limitations

In its current form, the ideas of this website are far from a complete thought. There is vast room for improvements. Below is a bulleted list of known limitations, it is not exhaustive:

  • Representation of huge groups of Lerner college is currently missing. The perspective of anyone reading this is almost certainly under-represented at this point.
  • Ultimately, a good strategy must help decision-makers make trade-offs. Do we pursue money teaching abroad or spend more time developing curriculum for domestic students? Do we pursue student growth or pursue higher quality students at current enrollment levels? Do we offer a major in generative AI? blockchain? etc. The current document is not useful for trade-off decisions yet.
  • Assessing Lerner communities against the hedgehog concept should include an assessment of how Lerner aligns with University of Delaware priorities and communities (e.g. Data Science Institute). This is especially important as the business school often focuses on applying insights from other disciplines to organizational or entrepreneurial settings.

  1. Collins, J. (2001). Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t. New York,NY. HarperCollins Inc↩︎

  2. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011.↩︎

  3. Collins, J. (2001). Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t. New York,NY. HarperCollins Inc↩︎