Newspaper Article

Publishing Venture Teaches Harvard a Hard Lesson

Cowan, Alison Leigh

1994

Overview

The market couldn't have agreed more. \"Customers told us they couldn't use it,\" recalled Mr. [William A. Sahlman], a finance professor who has presided over the school's publishing activities since 1991. \"They'd have to shut down their entire company for two weeks to absorb it all.\" The business school has not totally abandoned its earlier ambitions. Management still believes $100 million in revenues is within grasp, but not for another five years. \"I oversold what we could do in a short period of time,\" Mr. Sahlman said. Today, he is reluctant to sound too confident, but he sounds hopeful that the unit's worst missteps are behind it. \"The older I get, the less learning I intend to have,\" he said. THE apathy vanished in 1987 when Michael E. Porter, the school's strategy guru, was about to cut a lucrative deal with an outside company. Relenting, the dean, who by then owned a VCR, realized it would be folly not to get a piece of the action and put up $3 million of the school's money -- about what it costs to develop a new course -- to produce four trial videos. \"I didn't ever expect to get the money back,\" he said. \"As it turned out, we did.\"

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: BOOKS AND LITERATURE / COWAN, ALISON LEIGH / DOYLE, LINDA S (DEAN) / SAHLMAN, WILLIAM A (PROF)