School Notes: School of Management
January/February 2008

Fellows Program to honor outstanding SOM alumni

The School of Management has established the Donaldson Fellows Program, named for SOM's founding dean, William H. Donaldson ’53, and aimed at honoring exceptional Yale SOM alumni. Three Donaldson Fellows will be selected each year by a committee of SOM faculty, students, and alumni, from a pool of nominations submitted by members of the SOM community. Donaldson Fellows will be selected based on their demonstrated capacity for inspiring leadership, and for personal and professional conduct that exemplifies the three themes that define the Yale School of Management: leading and managing across boundaries; transforming positive values into personal, professional, and institutional commitments; and bringing creativity and discipline to complex management problems. The first Donaldson Fellows will be announced in early February and will take part in a two- to three-day residency at the school in April for seminars, symposium and panel presentations, and meetings with students.

Latest SOM magazine issue explores markets

"Can we manage with(out) markets?" Q2, the second issue of the Yale SOM magazine, uses this question to launch a series of wide-ranging conversations on the nature of markets, the role of trust and integrity in markets, how markets can alter a society, and whether markets can help the poor. Q2 pulls together top practitioners and faculty from SOM and around the country to tackle some of the most important issues facing business today. Reed Hundt, former chair of the FCC, senior adviser for telecommunications at McKinsey, and vice chair of Frontline Wireless, argues that the upcoming federal wireless spectrum auction could amount to the largest privatization of public property in U.S. history. Legendary investor Martin Whitman describes the factors that push markets toward efficiency -- and how inefficiency presents opportunities to investors. And Robert Glaser, chairman and CEO of RealNetworks, and Richard Sandor, founder of the Chicago Climate Exchange, join Dean Joel Podolny and Professor Robert Shiller to discuss what it takes to create not just a new business but an entire new market. Q2 can be found online at som.yale.edu/q2, where you can also request a print copy.

Students win national finance competition

A team of SOM students won the National Energy Finance Challenge in September at the University of Texas's McCombs School of Business. The group, from the Class of 2008 -- Akshay Dhiman, Ganga Kannan, Jeff Levi, Kate McGill, and Vinod Pathrose -- defeated 15 other schools to claim the title and the $8,000 prize money at the third annual event. The contest was a marathon case study, followed by a grilling by the competition's judges (who weren't told which school each team represented). The match hinged on how well the teams created financial models for a fictional company and recommendations for how the company should proceed in countries modeled on current energy hotspots. Ganga Kannan credited the school's new interactive curriculum with giving the team an edge over the other teams. "It gave us a framework to address the problem holistically and examine the effects of our strategy recommendations on all stakeholders," he said. "We didn't get overly caught up in the financial models." Coming in second place behind Yale was Harvard Business School, followed by Purdue and Northwestern's Kellogg School.