A Conversation With Dean Schmittlein

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Um, and it was great to see you welcoming the , the assembled crowd of, you know, of an initiative also by Sloan graduates on a sunny day here in Boston, which had always is sunny and warm. That's right. Exactly. Make a TV series about that. It's always sunny in Boston.

So as I was walking back across campus, I was, I was struck by the incredible amount of construction and change, physical change that's happening at MIT generally, but also particularly down at this end of the east campus, between the , uh , you know, the, the construction of east 62 over the years. Uh, this is a new heart of Sloan huge building going up on main street. The eventual redevelopment of the Volpi site , uh , also ably led by another slung graduate as well. Israel Ruiz .

Yes. You know, I was, I was thinking about Simon Johnson's quip , uh, at the symposium earlier today where he said, you know, when I was a student at Sloan, you had to walk across campus to get mugged . It was so empty. And now it is some of the most expensive real estate in Boston, if not further. And that's really happened in, in the, in the 10 years since you've joined Sloan and Sloan is smack in the middle of this incredible transformation.

So I was thinking about, you know, if you could share your thoughts with us about the , the role of Sloan in, in this ecosystem, Kendall Square that is , that is , is exploded in the last 10 years. And as you think about how you incorporate the resources for classes or centers or community into graduates lives. So this is really kind of about their future being attracted to be here, their present when they're here and what access they have to resources and then their past. There's alumni.

Yes. Um , that takes them some grads . So , uh, but it is, it's been an amazing 10 years for MIT. Um, the way that innovative, inventive organizations and companies are feeling the desire to be very, very physically close to MIT. That physical proximity seems to be mattering more, not just here in Kendall Square, but in other places.

Also. Uh, one story I just love is the Stanford University trustees coming to MIT and the signature learning or observation that they took away is the value of very close proximity, if you will. Not a 10 or 15 minute golf cart ride away from someone that you want to talk with, but literally a five minute walk away from someone. And that benefit is seen by uh, companies and organizations that want to be this close.

And you know, it's a bit of a, a happy accident of history and of Dick Schmaltzy, my predecessor as dean, that it is the Sloan school that forms to a large degree, the east end of campus or the end that's closest to Kendall Square. And we are in some ways a kind of gateway between the science and engineering of MIT and the organizations that wish to connect to that and to connect to our graduates as well.

Which as you suggested, does represent extraordinary opportunities for them in a sense in both directions. Right. And just is , is there a conversation at Sloane about the courses that might be introduced or added or centers to take advantage of of that huge amount of influx of businesses, which would be attractive for graduates, but also they would look at Sloan as, as attractive for people to hire.

Sure. So some of the development of the curriculum or of course faking relates to entrepreneurship and technology based new ventures, which is not a big surprise, especially in light of what you see here in Kendall Square. There is some around life sciences technology that also in the way that those particular kinds of companies tend to come into being. There are separately courses that connect to kind of what's going on in Kendall in uh , big data, machine learning AI.

That's also a type of opportunity for our students. A lot of our students who would leave the school but maybe stay in the area or engage with activity that's um , related to the area are not part of a pure startup but they're part of a firm that has entered a kind of rapid growth stage in some cases where the initial entrepreneurial team might be kind of resigning, you know , from their role as entrepreneur leaders.

And so their responsibility is to scale an organization or to pivot the organization. And so one of our popular quite new courses is scaling entrepreneurial ventures. And you know, a lot of entrepreneurship classes really are about getting the fin going, getting it off the ground, making sure you get a market, you've got a product, you get some cash, and then maybe you sell. This is not about selling, right? This is about taking that firm to the next level.

I mean, maybe it'll go public some other time, but right . So that sense of opportunity for our students, especially in this world where more and more of them are doing self-directed search. You know, it's not just your , the big companies and they're here on campus and retarded for, well I take and so on.

But they are seeking out opportunities to be in the near term future leaders of units or whole organizations that feel to them like not only the , their opportunities to lead, but in sectors or settings or with the kind of impact that they'd like to have. And is that, do you think that's a conscious or subconscious response to what we're seeing in , in some of the California startups where the goal is that exit moment. And so maybe that's been part of that culture as that .

And so this is a counterpoint to that. And then we're trying to build an economy versus just a few wealthy people. So thank you for this . I feel it was a compliment for MIT and that, and I think it's largely justified. You know, we have graduates who are quite different from each other. So I don't mean to paint with too broad a brush, but this sense like why is it that the world's center of life sciences technology is here in candle .

So in part, you know, some of that is driven by analytics, but in part is driven by a desire to build products that have more than just a nanoscale timeframe of, you know, it's not the next angry birds. Right. And so that, I didn't want to say patients exactly, but that sense that certain kinds of impact takes some time to bring to fruition. That is a part of the history of MIT and of the Boston area.

So yes, if there's also understanding that you know, every thing these days seems to be a device and the world of the Internet of things, but still the role or presence or importance of the physical dimension of product in addition to the software dimension of a digital product. That's a part of MIT's history that is more central here than it is in the west coast. I mean , you can find some of each in each place.

So I mean are people tend to give us the leadership in healthcare, by the way, we have great software companies here as well.

We have great consumer engagement and social media companies here in Boston and great robotics and manufacturing and so it's, it is a diverse economy, but more of it has to do with the physical world in which we as humans continue to, you know, habitate right, engage or that, well , I'm looking at your coffee table here and you have a , a set of books that are obviously coming out of Sloan and a lot of interesting topics here between jump-starting America and celebrating entrepreneurship.

How, how do you find an in your busy schedule, how do you find inspiration in your own personal professional life? How do you keep yourself, you can't be the dean all the time. Right? And so what , what do you do to kind of relax? You Binge Watch anything? We talked about your sons podcast, but um , yeah, what have you got sort of variety and spite and into your life. So I'd love to answer that in two parts. If I could.

One part, and I think a really important part, so I can't be at the dean all the time, but I can be a person who happens to be the dean. Right? And so a lot of the inspiration that I get, I mean this is just the naked truth is from the people that I'm around because I'm the dean. Um , it's staff at the school, it's students at the school, it's alumni of this school. And it's of course our faculty.

You are talking about them and not only the kind of intellectual or success oriented dimension of what they do. I mean, in some ways that can be inspirational. But I needed the human dimension that they bring to things. And so I had a student two days ago tell me that as I was searching for a student leader to do a particular job and I interviewed eight , she said, you know, I know that you interviewed my friend Katie as well. You need a real rock star to do this. I think you should pick Katie.

I mean, who does that? There is a thing about our community that I find inspiring, not only the student dimension of it, but including that I have the, I have this wall of experiences that are like that. There is an alumnus that I asked to step up in some ways this last year, including in , uh , an advisory role for the school.

And tears came to her eyes and she talked about how her family had felt so fulfilled by her being able to be a member of the MIT community and how she wanted to tell her father that this was the next step in that journey that she was able to take. And the tears running down her cheek. I get inspiration from all of the members of our community, including staff. We were welcoming 400 new MBA students this past fall.

One of them said at the end of the orientation gathering, I'm not feeling a hundred percent send the bus, I'll take an Uber home. The staff member who he said that to decided not to take the bus either and wait for him. 15 minutes later she went into the vents room and saved his life. Oh , I have those experiences all the time here.

So to the point of inspiration, and I could talk about faculty in the same way , um , not only through their ideas but through their commitment, including a commitment to tell the truth and to know the truth. I get that there's, I get a life full of inspiration from all of that.

And my hope when I am dean and I speak with alumni in some cases or students and others, is that I'm able to bring the elements of those points of inspiration, you know, where they don't have those experiences, but I do to bring them in. But sure, I have a life outside of my idea to some degree as well. You mentioned podcasts and I'm proud and happy to be a part of this one. My son got B back to listening to podcast a bit.

He's an undergraduate student and he and his friends started a very popular, I must say podcast series called anything but politics and it's on Northwestern radio. You can listen to it. You have it folks. And as FW maybe I'm so , uh , fair warning. Keep the kids away from that one. I , I, I, you know, honestly I, I am reading a great book right now. It's called empty planet.

It's about the way that birth rates in countries are dropping off the table and some of the prior forecasts about global population growth are quite likely to be quite wrong and what the consequences of that might turn out to be. But honestly, a lot of the stuff that I read is shorter form. I just don't have, you know, some of the opportunities kind of New Yorker Wall Street Journal stuff is more of what I spend my time reading.

I had binge-watch programs that have been off the air for about 10 years, it seems to me. So it's a little embarrassing to go in that direction. Let's just call it catching up. Uh , that's right. My kids told me about this show. Parks and rec. I, some of you probably haven't heard of it, but uh, I'm on the cutting edge right? There you go. So you talked about um, the , the woman having tears about and having the opportunity to give back to Sloan and MIT.

I want to talk about the creation of the alumni board and its evolution over the last, what, four years, I guess it's now been. So some of the signature feelings about understanding the alumni community and how passionate they feel and how deeply they feel about this school have come from my experiences with this board. That's not the reason for the creation of the board, but I'm certainly very grateful for that. As you know, the board was created as one phrase for it.

I'm not sure it's full and fair, but isn't as a working board. It's a board that is deeply engaged in action on behalf of the school and also of course on behalf of the alumni community. And I think as you know, a significant fraction of the board's energy is expended on strengthening the alumni community and strengthening the relationship for instance of students were the lumps and so on. That's been an important priority for me during my time as dean.

I would also say that it's really important to have the right composition for a board like this. And there was a lot of thought that went into that in the first place. And by the way, I mean, I would say some people feel like it's right for them and other people, you know, decide that some other kinds of engagement makes more sense.

Me With a research center or something like that because this really, it , it requires a curiosity about the school , um , a listening as much as speaking in some cases. And then as we said, the working or acting on behalf of, I think there's a generosity of spirit , uh , that it asks of the board members. And again, that's really a great thing to see. It is also one of the ways in which our Sloan communities are different from communities at other schools.

And I know a great deal about other schools because the deans of those schools are friends of mine. And I worked as you know, at another school before coming to MIT. So alumni boards are not often the favorite thing of the school's administration in some other business schools. And I think it is because there is less of a willingness on the part of the alums who serve to serve a kind of modern sense of the purpose of that particular school and to support and facilitate that.

So a little bit like the difference between being customers and co-producers. Right . And I think the alumni board succeeds best here , um , and has succeeded extremely well in being a co-producer and I'm grateful for it. Yeah, I see that as, as we are, as we set off each year on our new missions.

It's really, instead of spending a lot of time thinking about things to do, I found it really helpful to have the , the office of external relations come to us and say, here are the challenges that we're facing. Help us chew on them and come up with something, advance it in some way or not find that it's useful or not really important.

Um, yes, because if you turn that around, alums have many enthusiasms and sometimes a great many ideas and some of those are calibrated than some, maybe not with the schools opportunities or capabilities that are particular moment. And so if there isn't the right starting point for conversation back and forth, it can feel to the alumnus . Like, you know, they're just sort of shouting into an abyss, you know? And that's very frustrating. Right.

So from your perch, what do you see the biggest challenges where alumni can play a role in solving that? There's obviously a fundraising component to it. There are other things that you have on sort of a , a short wishlist. It's clear , um, CRISPR to you and to me that we're not at the end of the path of engaging alumni in particular, but business leaders more broadly, we need to do more and better.

We need to experiment in some ways that are thoughtful and clever and well-informed and take the right learnings from those experiences. I think of that as one of the sweet spots of engagement with the alumni board historically. And the fact that it's been a historical point of focus doesn't mean that we're, you know, sort of washing our hands and saying, okay, we're done with that because we're really not.

And so I , you know, in some sense we're about a third of the way to where we would ultimately like to get in, in that kind of engagement. So I hope for continued good work in that regard. There's a student piece of this as well.

I mean, you know, honestly the faculty drive the curriculum and so there's not such a sweet spot for, I mean on occasion they are interesting and good ideas that come from alums, but the overall experience of students and the way that engagement with the lungs or ideas from all arms can support and strengthen that experience. I'm also very grateful for that kind of avenue of engagement with the alumni board. I know that our students value it greatly.

There's going to come a time, this is not an economic forecast, so I'm not saying when, you know, we were saying earlier, this has been a very kind 10 years for MIT and you know, for about nine of those 10 years there's been an economic growth kind of background to this. Those things never go on forever.

And so among the things that we hope and trust that we're doing is building the resilience of the community four times that will come when opportunities are much more scarce and if depending can shoot to connect the, you know, the various parts of our community alarms with alums , students are graduating students with alumns in order to create or sustain or preserve opportunities that may not be before us today.

But one of the things that we can do today to ensure that we have a strong enough community to take us through those times set the foundation. Well, thank you very much for uh , for joining us each . Schmittlein that's been great to talk to you and I hope you'll listen to us . Will subscribe to the series Sloanies talking to Sloanies for more interesting conversations

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