The Home Depot’s Tom Taylor
Real growth: Center holds inaugural conference
All businesses, no matter the size and industry, struggle with the same issues: how to keep improving and how to be entrepreneurial while remaining disciplined. Goizueta’s Center for Corporate Growth and Entrepreneurship focused
on these, and other, topics as part of an October 2003
conference on “Hitting the Growth Wall: The Problems of Growth in Large Organizations.”
Those attending the conference were executives from major corporations and thought leaders from leading universities. The open, confidential nature of the two-day conference gave the executives freedom to discuss the management strategies and business philosophies that keep their companies moving forward.
Among the corporate leaders presenting were Professor Erich Reinhardt, president and member of the managing board for Siemens AG; Michael Eskew, chairman and CEO of UPS; Richard Schnieders, chairman and CEO of Sysco Corporation; Phil Kent, chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting Systems; and Tom Taylor, president of the Eastern Division of
The Home Depot.
The attendees reached a number of conclusions, ranging from the value of employee
satisfaction and making incremental change
to the current emphasis on “constructive dissatisfaction.”
Event organizers are pleased with the results of the first annual conference. “Real growth is the challenge for our economy for the next ten years,” says Ed Hess, executive director of the Center. “Synthesizing the experiences of leading CEOs and academic faculty was our goal—which was accomplished beyond our
expectations.”
Conference conclusions are a launching pad for further Center work, says Robert Kazanjian, senior associate dean for executive programs. “A number of companies who did not attend have expressed interest in the output of the conference and the activities of the Center. I know of a number of research projects that will follow from this inaugural Center event.”
—Sarah Banick