My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.
I never learned management. I never went to business school. I'm an artist. I happened to have really clear ideas of what I thought my business should be.
The time I have already spent at Harvard has been a stimulating experience, and I look forward to developing my relationship and activities with the students, faculty and friends of the Harvard Business School community.
It's obviously unfair to paint with a broad brush here, but the germ of an idea for a breakthrough in technology doesn't come out of a business school curriculum. It comes out of a laboratory or a math lecture or a physics tutorial.
I went to art school in Chicago for a year at Columbia College. I had this whole master plan of getting into sustainable development and green architecture and construction, so I wanted to go to business school and then get my masters in construction and development.
The lessons I learned from my mother and her friends have guided me through death, birth, loss, love, failure, and achievement, on to a Fulbright scholarship and Harvard Business School. They taught me to believe that anything was possible. They have proven to be the strongest family values I could ever have imagined.
One of the people who most influenced me was Ben Shapiro, a marketing professor at the business school. He used to rant and rave and pound his fist: 'It's all about the customers!' And he was right. He was also right that, at that time, retailing was devoid of really talented people; he urged me to go in that direction.
I teach in the medical school, the School of Public Health, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Business School. And it's the best perch... because most of my work crosses boundaries.
Well... I graduated from the business school of Northumberland University in Newcastle.
I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations.