Business With Purpose

By Michael Blanding

Nick Vadala’s students were facing a challenge: A California-based nonprofit called San Diego Sport Innovators (SDSI) was looking to expand its operations to other cities, potentially including Boston. But could its unique mission to incubate sports and wellness companies thrive here? “They asked us to research the market to see if it would be viable,” Vadala, BSBA ’82,MBA ’86, explains. “They are helping jump-start for-profit businesses, but also serving a noble cause—helping people build lives and careers through this organization.” Vadala, a Suffolk double Ram who has served in the C-suite for nearly a dozen marketing and technology services companies, is an advisory board member and lecturer at the Sawyer Business School’s Center for Entrepreneurship. In his course, the Suffolk University Consulting Clinic, a half-dozen students learn the ins and outs of consulting and then apply their skills to a real-world problem in the private, public, or nonprofit sector. He’d been turned onto SDSI by Kevin Donahue, MBA ’84, chair of Vibram Corporation, North America, who in turn had been speaking with SDSI Executive Director Bob Rief. Rief started the nonprofit 12 years ago to promote the “San Diego lifestyle” of active, outdoor living, connecting established firms with startups in apparel, nutrition, fitness software, and other health-related industries. Chaired by former Boston Celtics star Bill Walton, the incubator has launched 134 companies—with an unheard-of success rate of 85%—and created 1,000 jobs. What’s more, 51% of the firms have been founded or led by women. Even so, Rief was initially skeptical the concept could work anywhere else. “After all,” he says, “the San Diego lifestyle can only happen in San Diego. But I quickly realized the very same set of conditions exist in Austin, Boulder, Portland, and Boston.” Donahue, an SDSI board member, encouraged him to explore Boston and recruited Vadala and his students to test the waters. The students got to work, speaking to contacts at both established local firms like Reebok and New Balance and new startups in the sports and wellness world. They conducted market research on the demographics of people in the region interested in healthy lifestyles. They surveyed funding opportunities from foundations such as those led by Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Red Sox owner John Henry, as well as venture capitalists and private donors. Their conclusion: A Boston Sport Innovators would not only survive but thrive. “They found that the potential community in Boston is actually much greater than it is in San Diego,” says a grateful Rief, who is now actively exploring how to make a Boston-based incubator a reality. The students’ energy and intellectual curiosity, he says, made their findings particularly valuable: “There wasn’t anybody who was going to give us better information than what we got.” That makes Donahue particularly proud. “Suffolk students have a spirit of self-development and improvement,” says Donahue, a former president of the Dean’s Cabinet. “I thought this would be a great opportunity to give students encouragement to get to the next level.” The project by Vadala’s students is more than just an exercise to help one nonprofit—it also represents Suffolk’s commitment to “business with purpose,” a new vision for the Sawyer Business School that recognizes the importance for business to make profits, but just as importantly to create positive change. “It’s not just about profits, it’s also about people, policy, and the planet. That’s what I call the four P’s of business education,” says Dean Amy Zeng, who has articulated this vision. “Since business is everywhere, in every part of society, business education can make a positive impact and be a driving force to make the world better.” Suffolk’s unique location places it at the center of the public, nonprofit, and private sectors—just steps away from the Massachusetts State House and Boston City Hall, a few blocks from Massachusetts General Hospital, and a short walk to the city’s financial district. Being embedded in the heart of the city has given Suffolk grads a particular focus on mission-driven approaches to business that cross traditional boundaries between public and private. Suffolk is the only business school in the country that holds a public administration accreditation, a healthcare administration accreditation, and a general business school accreditation. At a time when diversity, sustainability, and equity are increasingly becoming must-haves rather than nice-to-haves in the boardroom, the Sawyer Business School’s new vision looks to build upon those strengths with a more intentional focus on helping students create impact. “They may be a marketing major or a finance major,” Zeng says, “but they could figure out how to help address the challenges faced by a nonprofit or public-sector organization.”

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Photograph by Michael J. Clarke

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The course will “raise more questions than it answers,” says Seidle, who will teach the course with Assistant Professor Arkapravo Sarkar. “We wouldn’t presume to say that by the end of the semester we’ll have a solution for global poverty.” But the course will explore practical solutions to problems on a local level as well as how to scale them up more broadly. “There’s an appetite for this we are seeing from students, who are not happy with the status quo and want to change things,” Seidle says. Beyond that particular course, the curriculum will also weave social purpose throughout. While the first year introduces system-level, team-based, and design thinking concepts as ways to better understand problems before jumping in with solutions, later courses will apply these tools to cases involving not only for-profit companies but also nonprofits, government, and social enterprises.

“Being in downtown Boston, surrounded by a rich network of organizations, provides us a great opportunity to work with clients,” says Associate Marketing Professor Andrew Smith. “When students go on job interviews later and drop these names, it sounds impressive.” In a recent section taught by Smith, students wrapped their minds around a sustainability challenge involving VF Corporation (VFC), the parent company of apparel brands Timberland, The North Face, and Vans. The company enlisted the class to research how it could better position itself around environmental concerns for younger consumers. That was particularly exciting for students, says Smith. “If you were to think of a bull’s-eye—the perfect client, the perfect project—it would be a big brand they are aware of, and an issue of concern to them,” he says. “Ultimately it comes down to a better learning experience and more effective outcomes when we turn to more experiential projects rather than drily delivering content without application or relevance to their lives.” The company was looking to better understand the concerns of millennials and Gen Z, who, according to demographic surveys, care more about issues of sustainability and other social issues than previous generations. That concern, however, doesn’t always translate into action at the point of purchase, as Smith’s students found. Starting with industry reports and other preexisting market research, they conducted in-depth interviews with people who fit the target group. From there, they developed a larger survey they could implement online. In addition, the students took field trips to see VFC brands in the wild—at stand-alone stores like The North Face as well as department stores such as Macy’s—to examine how items were displayed and what communication was occurring around sustainability. Based on their research, students found a gap between attitudes and behaviors, with younger consumers caring about the environment, but often making purchases based on other factors like price and durability. At the same time, the students found that the brands often weren’t communicating all they were doing to use sustainable materials and help the environment—especially in department stores where they had less control over marketing. “When we think about outdoor goods and sustainability, the first brand that comes to mind is Patagonia—but VFC is doing a lot to reduce their carbon footprint, reduce water usage, and encourage recycling,” says Smith. “So a lot of students’ recommendations were around letting consumers know more about the very good things they were doing.” In addition, students recognized opportunities around better touting the durability of products—which, after all, contributes to reducing waste and therefore helping the environment. “In contrast to a fast-fashion producer, this is something a consumer can wear for five or ten years rather than throwing it out next season,” Smith says. “That’s something consumers care about.” One group even recommended that brands open a store in New York City or other major metropolitan centers to specifically sell secondhand goods as a benefit to the environment. The experience, Smith says, was a heady one for students, who were forced out of their comfort zones to consider the perspective of consumers who may not have been like them. In addition, it gave them a better understanding of the fact that companies such as VFC are genuinely interested in creating social good beyond their own bottom line. “We’re all very cynical of greenwashing and you wonder if these things really matter,” Smith says. “It’s affirming for them to hear from a VP of sustainability at a firm and realize this is something companies care about—then when they graduate they can go out and find organizations aligned with their values and that they can feel good supporting.”

A new curriculum to match new priorities

As part of that effort, the Sawyer Business School pursued a comprehensive, two-year review of the undergraduate curriculum. After more than 150 hours spent consulting with faculty, staff, students, and alums, the curriculum committee approved a new curriculum late last year dubbed “Boston Depth, Global Breadth,” which seeks to draw more connections between disparate fields, incorporate more experiential learning and design thinking into classes, and emphasize social well-being along with financial growth. “What we were reading in reports and hearing from external stakeholders is that the world has changed,” says committee co-chair Pelin Bicen, an associate professor of marketing and associate dean of undergraduate programs. “Equality is a problem, injustice is a problem, poverty is a problem, climate change is a problem; how can we take on those problems?” As a result of that inquiry, the committee helped create a unique new course, Tackling Wicked Global Problems, which will zoom in on major issues and explore how business can better address them. “What we’re challenging students to do is to move beyond just thinking about how businesses can solve these problems for their own benefit,” says Russell Seidle, associate professor of strategy and international business and the committee’s other co-chair, “but also how businesspeople can come together to address these intractable, global problems affecting not just Boston but the world as a whole.”

Discovering common ground

Contemporary business education, says Sawyer Business School Dean Amy Zeng, needs to consider “not only profits, but also people, policy, and the planet. That’s what I call the four P’s.”

In his course Managing Across Differences, Professor Greg Beaver and his students (including Beck Tinker, front row, right) examine how bias and stereotyping can lead to discrimination in the workplace.

Those values include not only companies’ relationships with their consumers but with their employees as well. On a recent Wednesday, several dozen students sat in a classroom on the eighth floor of the Sawyer Building for the course Managing Across Differences, taught by Greg Beaver, an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship. “So far,” Beaver says once the class has settled, “we’ve talked about race and women in the workplace,” groups whose identities are usually readily apparent. Today’s topic, he continues, is LGBTQ+ employees, who may not be immediately identifiable. “We’re going to talk about what kind of complexity it adds when it’s an invisible identity.” Beaver, whose research focuses on diversity and inclusion in the workplace, has been teaching this course at Suffolk for the past five years, challenging students to think more closely about bias and stereotyping and how they can lead to discrimination in the office. This particular class begins by examining the difference between heterosexism (assuming that everyone is, or should be, heterosexual) and homophobia (treating LGBTQ+ people with fear or hatred). The percentage of Americans publicly identifying as LGBTQ+ has been steadily increasing, Beaver tells the class, from 3% of boomers up to 21% of Gen Z. At the same time, LGBTQ+ folks face challenges in the workplace beyond laws preventing discrimination, Beaver says. Disclosing their identity by coming out could help them acquire benefits for their same-sex partner, as well as making them feel accepted for who they are; it could also lead to social avoidance and bias from homophobic colleagues. The course, Beaver says later, can be eye-opening for students who have never had to deal with discrimination themselves; even members of one group, such as women, can be surprised by considering the experiences of others, such as people of color. And even if someone is inclusive themselves, they may need to think twice about the safety of team members, such as sending an LGBTQ+ individual to countries—or even some US states—with more repressive laws. “In the broadest sense, the class helps to bring awareness to these identities,” Beaver says, “and thinking like a manager shows that how you speak to your employees or what you ask them to do might impact different groups in different ways.” Through all of these classes and experiences, the Business School helps students find opportunities where they can have social impact, whether that’s a more inclusive work environment or a more sustainable manufacturing process. In order to address real problems in the world, students will need to do their research and present their case in a way that will make those in a position of power listen, whether that’s a policymaker, a company CEO, or a nonprofit board. Dean Zeng believes they will. “There are so many great examples where Suffolk has been successful in giving students the skill sets and range of perspectives to be effective in addressing important issues," says Zeng. “We can equip students with the business and people skills they need to tackle problems coming from all sectors.”

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Oftentimes, those cases involve working with real-world clients. In a market research class, students have consulted for supermarket operator Roche Bros. and home sound-system maker Sonos.

Helping companies and consumers translate concern into action

MANAGING across differences