TEACHING & LEARNING
Consulting
to Growth Businesses
Opening the Doors to Private Equity
OUTREACH
Wharton
West: Back to School
Q&A with The Newly Appointed Director of The Wharton Small Business Development Center
Faces of Wharton Entrepreneurship
RESEARCH
Inside The "War Room"
Tracking Digital Transformation
Research
Inside the "War Room"
At the end of the fourth floor hallway of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center is one of Wharton's secret weapons in the race to gain new knowledge about entrepreneurship. Each day, a half dozen or more University of Pennsylvania undergraduates huddle over computer screens or consult together on research projects in one large corner office.
They call it the "war room," and to those chosen, it is one of the most coveted work-study jobs on campus. "It's an amazing opportunity," said Tambu Munhutu, a senior at Wharton and team supervisor in the war room. "You learn a lot about different industries. I've looked at the airlines and telecommunications industries and I have more of an idea of how each industry works and have more to say when we have a question."
One project Munhutu worked on focused on disruptive technologies, from the study of the shift from cutting ice off lakes to modern refrigeration or the more recent impact of the DVD on the VCR. Another project looked at characteristics of leading companies in the airline industry that were able to significantly outperform the market.
Comrades in Academia
Every year, the Snider Center hires up to 20 students, who work in small teams throughout the school year and during the summer break formulating answers to tough research questions. "As we got closer to the start of school, we had three or four requests per day," said Roz Cohen, Associate Director of the Snider Center, who hires and manages the pool of research assistants in the war room. What does she look for? "You have to be a self starter. You have to be very flexible. You have to be able to stop x and do y without it being a problem for you. You have to be able to think out of the box." While many of the research projects involve the pursuit of specific information, the students are encouraged to take their analysis to the next level to find new lines of research or develop conclusions.
For students who take the task seriously, it is much more than a job. "There is a lot of learning here," Cohen said. "It is not like work study jobs where you just come to work and make copies. There is serious searching, putting together the pieces, and answering questions."
The questions become most direct during a weekly meeting with Executive Director Ian MacMillan or other researchers. The results of the research are incorporated into faculty research papers and book projects.
Veterans Return
The experience of participating in this research community shapes the perspectives and sometimes the careers of students after they leave. Cohen recalls a war room student who took a summer internship at a small consulting firm in Chicago. Because of his knowledge of research from the war room and his direct study of one of the firm's clients as a Wharton research assistant, the student was able to make immediate contributions during the internship. "This student was the expert," Cohen said. "He was training others in using the tools. The experience here is invaluable."
For Sean Nevins, who graduated from Wharton's undergraduate program in 1996, spending nearly four years in the war room led directly to a career as an entrepreneur and consultant. After graduating, he founded a consulting firm, The Zermatt Group, to apply tools such as "Discovery Driven Planning" that he learned about during his work at Wharton.
"The experience in the war room had one of the biggest impacts I can think of," Nevins said. "I had gone to Wharton planning to do international business, but working in the Center is what got me on the entrepreneurial track." Nevins founded Zermatt shortly after graduation, a corporate venture capital consulting firm offering advice to corporations on developing their entrepreneurial initiatives.
The community of Snider Center researchers continues to influence his thinking, and he has remained in touch with colleagues from the war room as well as with Professor MacMillan. "The group of people that worked there was just an exceptional group of people to work with," he said. "It was a great experience to be in an environment where you have a lot of people who are very different in their backgrounds. Not everyone was from Wharton but they were all there because of a common interest in entrepreneurship. Aside from the academics and everything you learn, that is something that had an influence on everyone who worked there."
The experience had such an impact that Nevins and war room comrade Justin Cook that they wanted to do something to support and acknowledge the work of current students. A couple of years ago, they created the Ian C. MacMillan Award for Excellence in Research and Leadership, which is presented annually to an outstanding research assistant. "The idea was to create some sort of recognition for the people who really give their heart and soul to the center," he said. "We had gotten a lot out of the Center and we wanted to give something back."
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