Almost half a year after visiting the Golden Triangle, Harvard Business School is lauding the region’s work and lessons faculty have taken from an excursion to the area.
Harvard Business School published a report on Tuesday highlighting the late October trip 16 faculty members took to the Golden Triangle. The report, titled “Manufacturing a Renaissance in the Deep South,” walks through the decision of HBS faculty to visit the region, summarizes the trip and touches on how the school has implemented lessons learned in the Golden Triangle into a course for students.
In the report, Senior Associate Dean for Research Jan Rivkin notes he originally gained an interest in the region through a 2014 report in The Atlantic. Meanwhile, HBS leadership, including Dean Nitin Nohria, began to feel that HBS faculty, which traveled extensively to study global economic issues, could focus more on issues at home in the United States. The report notes the sentiment came to a head after the 2016 election, when Nohria, Rivkin and HBS Senior Associate Dean for Executive Education Luis Viceria “were processing and unpacking the election results and were struck by the structural changes afoot domestically.”
Rivkin, speaking to The Dispatch Wednesday afternoon, said he felt faculty needed to focus more on domestic economic issues.
“The heartland of America is a place the Harvard Business School used to visit quite often,” Rivkin said. “In the excitement of globalization, we started visiting other parts of the world.”
The report recounts the local visit, including meetings with Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins and tours of area industries like Steel Dynamics and PACCAR. The faculty also visited East Mississippi Community College and the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center at Mississippi State University.
Higgins, in an emailed statement, said he was thankful for the attention the region has received from HBS and other organizations.
“Who would have thought when we started on this adventure 15 years ago we would be where we are getting recognition from worldwide organizations like The Atlantic, PBS, ’60 Minutes’ and now HBS?” he said. “It’s great for our region and shines a spotlight on our need to keep pushing the envelope and setting goals for the Golden Triangle for the next decade.”
Case study
The report also notes the impact the visit had on campus. In the time since the visit, HBS professors Joseph Fuller and Bill Kerr co-wrote a case that Kerr taught in his Managing the Future of Work course, which is a new class in HBS’ second-year elective curriculum.
The case focuses on the lead up to the LINK securing the Yokohama Tire Manufacturing plant in West Point — to the point where Higgins had to impress the company’s chairman on a visit to West Point that included a tightly-timed helicopter ride over the site in the face of foul weather. From there, students had to decide what they’d do, and discuss and debate their reasons for or against certain ideas with their classmates.
Higgins and LINK Chief Operating Officer Macaulay Whitaker visited the class a few weeks ago and, after the students were given time to come up with their own solutions to the dilemma, shared how the LINK landed the project.
Kerr, in an emailed interview with The Dispatch, said the Golden Triangle case was the top-ranked case for students in the Managing the Future of Work course. He said the case resonated with students on at least three levels.
“First, the ambition and resolve to build a bright future for the region and have everyone come together, from LINK to businesses to EMCC to nSPARC and others, is exceptional,” Kerr said. “Students valued the experience of seeing different actors and institutions collaborate for a common future.”
Kerr also said the attention to detail in the Golden Triangle’s effort — even down to making sure Yokohama tires were on every bus for the company’s visit — was “exceptional.”
Lastly, he said the profiles of LINK leadership, including Higgins and Whitaker, and other regional leaders were important to give students examples of strong leadership.
Rivkin said Higgins’ and Whitaker’s visit to the class was an important exposure to successful leadership for students.
“We desperately want to help our students become themselves,” Rivkin said. “To do that, it helps enormously for them to experience a wide variety of leaders while they’re on campus. That means from all over the world, from all sorts of industries, with all sorts of different styles. Joe Max’s creative style, his competitive style, his unwillingness to let anything get in the way of the success of the Golden Triangle — I think it’s good for students.
“Some may be inspired and decide they want to go about things the way he does,” he added. “Some may decide that, you know what, maybe that way isn’t for them. But all of them learn.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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