UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

500 Words With Ship Mate

500 Words With is an ongoing feature of the UCLA Anderson Blog featuring the entrepreneurial ventures of UCLA Anderson students and alumni. 

By Julie Epstein

The idea of being out to sea, stuck on a boat with your entire extended family sounds either like an awesome vacation or a total nightmare – depending on your family. For brothers Jan and Mike Jirout (’10) it became a business opportunity of Titanic proportions. Jan is the creator and Mike, the business developer behind the mobile app called Ship Mate. Recently, Mike, spoke to the UCLA Anderson Blog about Ship Mate, how it launched and the uncharted waters the family-run operation is sailing toward in the future.

The brothers Jirout -- with a little help from family and friends -- launched the app in 2009 after conceiving the idea during a family trip. Aside from the obvious innovation and user friendliness of Ship Mate, Mike credits a good deal of the brand’s success to hard work and to luck. 

“About every two years we go on a huge family cruise; there’s usually more than 50 of us. One year, when we were all sailing to the Caribbean, my brother Jan came up with an idea to keep track of our family on board. He literally picked up a book and taught himself how to program and eventually created this app with two basic features: making a contact profile and being able to track where they are on the ship. He brought it to Apple and it turned out that the demand was huge. We were getting about 800 downloads a day in the beginning. We’ve maintained a spot in the Top 25 most downloaded travel apps for about eight months now and reached number nine at one point. When Jan put it together it was the very first cruising app so a good deal of it was timing.  Now we’ve got a lot more features. You can track your ship’s location, look at a deck map, get port information for a bunch of the bars and restaurants when you dock  make a daily itinerary and our chat feature allows you to stay in touch with those that will be on your cruise.”

From B-school to boating: How Mike’s years at UCLA Anderson contributed to Ship Mates’ success.

“I took a lot of entrepreneurial classes and I read so many business plans that it just gave me a lot of faith in our plan. We were capturing a certain time with this new technology that my brother was at the forefront of, and because he saw the future of mobile apps, we were in a position to establish ourselves as a leader in the industry. I took part in the Vistage-on-Campus Program at Anderson and we got to meet leaders in the industry including John Anderson and just meeting all of these high profile individuals and being comfortable speaking with them has really been an asset. I’m able to contact and reach out to them on a more comfortable basis and that’s something I got from (attending) Anderson. While Jan was developing the business plan I was in business school meeting with industry figures and my professors trying to vet it out, put it together and develop a framework to make it work. Through Anderson, Alan Buckelew, the CEO Of Princess Cruises put me in touch with his executive team and meeting them was really amazing.”

More from UCLA Anderson Forecast's Jerry Nickelsburg; Comments on the Bifurcated California Economy and Greece's Impact On California

Senior Economist Jerry Nickelsburg and the rest of the team at the UCLA Anderson Forecast have been making the media rounds lately. This is what happens when they release a pair of forecasts for the U.S. and California that describe the national economy as "stalled," tell us that they don't forecast a recession because the economic sectors that typically cause recessions when they become weak are already so weak they can't really get much weaker and that "the differential between Coastal California and Inland California has begun to widen and the specter of long-term economic stagnation in Inland California has reared a not very pretty head."

Just this morning, Nickelsburg was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in an article about the lawsuits challenging the state's budget. 

The sluggish economy and turmoil in the financial markets, meanwhile, remain a huge budgetary threat. Lawmakers stitched together California's spending plan in June by building in a $4-billion windfall from a rebounding economy. It is unclear whether that money will materialize.

"The recovery is stalled out," said Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast. "Slow growth means less income; less income means less tax revenue."

Last week KNBC reporter Conan Nolan attended the UCLA Anderson Forecast conference, then decided to invite Nickelsburg in studio. The result were the pair of videos below, in which Nickelsburg elaborates on a range of topics from the bifurcated state ecomomy to the potential impacts of economic instability in Greece.

 

UCLA Anderson Team Challenges Effectiveness of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

UCLA Anderson Ph.D. student Benjamin Everly was bouncing around ideas in the office with Associate Professor Margaret Shih when they started discussing the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. At the time, DADT was still the official policy of the nation's armed forces, a policy that allowed gay men and women to serve in the military as long as they kept their sexual orientation private. The "theory" behind DADT was that serving alongside openly gay comrades would hinder the performance of other soldiers. They uncovered some studies that examined how concealing or disclosing one's identity impacted one's own performance, but there was a gap in the literature when it came to how disclosure impacted one's colleagues.

Everly said he and Shih could imagine a variety of impacts and scenarios and decided to take a look at the issue. They added Everly's fellow Ph.D. student Geoffrey Ho to the research team and set about to conduct a study and write a paper. 

The resulting study has since been published online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The paper concluded that working alongside a person with an ambigious sexual orientation was more detrimental to performance than working alongside an openly gay colleague. It basically proved the opposite of what most DADT proponents believed and that performance was enhanced when the ambiguity was eliminated. 

Before getting the results, Everly admitted that the survey results could have gone the other way, they might have confirmed the beliefs of DADT proponents. "If the results had revealed that participants performed worse when they knew they were working with a gay colleague, there would have been further opportunities to find out why and what types of interventions might be needed to increase performance. That would also have been a contribution to the literature," Everly said, "We were committed to publishing the results no matter what they said."

The study had two components. According to the paper, Study 1 examined whether participants working with openly gay partners perform better on a cognitive task than participants working with ambiguously gay partners. Study 2 examined whether participants working with openly gay partners performed better on a sensory-motor task than participants working with ambiguously gay partners. In both cases, those working with an openly gay partner performed better than those working with the ambiguously gay partner.

At the UCLA Anderson Blog, we wondered how a study done on UCLA students translated to those in the military. We had no intention of stereotyping either population, except to wonder if there were attitudinal differences between those who chose to attend university and those who chose to enter the military. Everly explained that the potential for differences between the two populations was dealt with by measuring the heterosexism of the participants. The team found that there was no difference in results between those with high and low heterosexism. 

Everly, who is just starting his third year in Anderson's Ph.D. program (with a goal of possible finishing in four years), is considering expanding the research into his dissertation. He's careful to point out that the study is not intended to persuade gays in the military (or anywhere else) to "come out;" noting that there are a variety of circumstances and factors that one must consider before "safely" making that decision. 

"We're not making that argument that everyone should come out and recognize that coming out is not always safe," Everly said. "And not all people will perform better when they know their colleague is gay. What we found out is interesting and exciting, but we still want to be cautious."

Press Release on Study

The study has generated some media attention including: Market Watch, News Blaze, Reuters, Quoteline, Sinshell TV, Ad Hoc News, BioPortfolio.com, BayouBuzz.com, EnterprisePost.com, and Road Runner.             

Peter Ueberroth on His Leadership Style: "I'm a pretty good selector of quality people with exceptional skills and am not afraid to seek out brighter people, more skilled in many ways than I am. Then I have to earn the right to be a leader."

Last spring, Peter V. Ueberroth, managing partner of Contrarian Group, received the John Wooden Global Leadership Award. Each year, the JWGLA honors one person with this prestigious award for his/her exemplary leadership style and service to the community. 

Just prior to his taking the stage at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to receive his honor, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mr. Ueberroth to discuss his leadership style, his mentors, his decision to purchase (along with his partners) the famed Pebble Beach golf course and his relationship with Coach Wooden. The entire interview will be published in a future issue of Anderson Assets magazine and a version of it is now online here. 

Here is are a few excerpts from the Peter Ueberroth interview:

How would you describe your leadership style and how would your subordinates describe it?

I'm a pretty good selector of quality people with exceptional skills and am not afraid to seek out brighter people, more skilled in many ways than I am. Then I have to earn the right to be a leader.

Did you have a close relationship with Coach Wooden?

The answer to that question is "no." It wasn't a close relationship. He was open to me and encouraged me to come to him if we had issues to discuss, especially during the time of preparations for the Los Angeles Olympic Games. He felt he might be someone who could help, and he recognized that we would face a lot of challenges. He wasn't asking for that role; it was the reverse. I asked if we could go to him if we were stuck and couldn't figure something out. Privately, without attribution, I did that half a dozen times.

What motivated you and your partners to buy the Pebble Beach golf course and resort from the Japanese group that owned it at the time?

There are some places in the United States and in the world that deserve to be kept intact for generation after generation. When I learned that the Japanese ownership wanted to sell the property, I contacted my partner, Dick Ferris, who had been chairman of United Airlines and a lifelong friend. We, then, approached Bill Perocchi about buying the Pebble Beach property. I asked Clint Eastwood, who has been a friend for a lot of years, if he would like to participate, and Dick asked Arnold Palmer to join us. It's been a terrific partnership.

Read the whole interview with Peter Ueberroth here.

 
 

More Coverage of Tuesday's UCLA Anderson Forecast Conference, Leamer, Nickelburg and Shulman Offer Their Views On California's Economy

The UCLA Anderson Forecast conference was held on Tuesday of this week (September 20, 2011). NBC LA's Conan Nolan spent the day at the Skirball Center where the conference was held and produced the report above.

Nolan, along with co-authors Bill French and Mary Harris, also authored an accompanying piece. In it they quoted UCLA Anderson Forecast Director Ed Leamer, along with Senior Economists Jerry Nickelsburg and David Shulman. They asked Nickelburg about his forecast for California, in which he noted the vast differences in ecoomic growth between Inland and Coastal Californias. Said Nickelsburg:

"All of those construction workers who were building houses in the inland part of the state don't have any outlet for their skills. There's no demand for new construction."

View and read the entire report here.

 

Linda Smith ('95) Finds her Life's Work in Guatemala

(Photo courtesy Linda Smith)

Our own Scott Fletcher recently wrote a fascinating story for the UCLA Anderson website about Linda Smith ('95), who has dedicatied herself to promoting reading, literacy and self-sufficiency in Guatemala. Here is an excerpt:

Linda Smith ('95) first traveled to Guatemala in 1988. She was between jobs and eager to learn Spanish. A friend had suggested Guatemala saying that the Spanish spoken there is beautiful and spoken slowly with all the letters clearly pronounced. She spent three months living with a family in Antigua, Guatemala and traveling around the country. Unknowingly, Linda's experiences in Guatemala would become the foundation for her life's work.

Upon returning to the U.S., Linda taught school for a while and then started a small business importing clothing and crafts from Guatemala. "I worked with families of artisans and sold woven shirts, pants, belts, purses and similar items," she says. "That's when I first realized that perhaps there was a place for me in the business world."

To read all about Smith and her important work in Guatemala, please click here. 

UCLA Anderson Forecast: No Recession In The Forecast For National Economy; Inland California Raises Many Questions

(Source: UCLA Anderson Forecast)

The UCLA Anderson Forecast releases its latest report this morning. The outlook is not rosy.

On the national front, Senior Economist David Shulman says things are "far worse" than they were just three months ago in June; his forecast  calls for average Gross Domestic Product growth of just 0.9% on average for the next five quarters (ending in the first quarter of 2012). But, both he and UCLA Anderson Forecast Director Ed Leamer are steadfast in their belief that the U.S. ecomomy is not in a recession, nor is a recession in the forecast, which runs through 2013.

“Simply put, the three sectors that would normally put the economy into recession are already depressed; housing, consumer durables and inventories,” Shulman writes. “Even if housing starts drop to new lows, this sector of the economy has shriveled so much that it would only have a modest impact on economic activity … it is one thing for housing starts to decline from an annual pace of two million units to one million and quite another for starts to decline from 600,000 units to 300,000 units. If we are to have a new recession it would have to come from a collapse in exports, a generalized decline in consumer spending with a resultant decline in business investment. All plausible, but we are not forecasting that eventuality.”

In California, Senior Economist Jerry Nickelsburg writes of a "bifurcated" California, one in which the relatively recovering areas of Coastal California are offset by seriously slumping Inland California. Nickelsburg writes, “Now that the U.S. economy has stalled, the differential between Coastal California and Inland California has begun to widen and the specter of long-term economic stagnation in Inland California has reared a not very pretty head.”

We had the opportunity to ask Nickelsburg to elaborate on his forecast for California, to expand on where he believes things are headed. He told the UCLA Anderson Blog:

"The forecast implicitly raises the question of what Inland California will look like in five years. Currently, Inland California has some of the highest unemployment rates in the country and if the recovery does not happen rapidly, what might happen to the region?

"There are lots of possibilities. Unemployed workers in construction, manufacturing, government and transportation could develop new industries. Or, Inland California could languish until population pressures and housing price pressures from coastal communities induce people once again into longer commutes (from inland communities) and revitalize construction again. Or, we could even see outmigration, as in other areas, when industries go into long periods of decline.

"The forecast doesn't answer these questions necessarily, but it does raise the implicit question: What Will this area look like in five years and what should public policy be?"

One area of public policy that interests Nickelsburg is education. He says that in an information economy education becomes key and that workers must be prepared to educate themselves and reinvent themselves over the course of their careers. 

Forecast Press Release on UCLA Anderson site

Los Angeles Times coverage of the latest forecast

Daily Breeze

Orange County Register

KABC-7 Los Angeles

Associated Press via Houston Chronicle

Bhagwan Chowdhry: "There Is No Good Time or Bad Time To Tackle Poverty"

Spoiler Alert:

If you watched the final episode of HBO's Entourage last Sunday you know that Vince is getting married to Sophia, Turtle is a millionaire, E and Sloan are trying to reconcile and Ari and Mrs. Ari are starting a new life in Italy -- maybe. If you don't watch Entourage and have no idea what I'm talking about, well, just bear with me.

Yes, Vince is getting married to Sophia, but would Sophia have said "yes" to his proposal if he didn't show a real interest in UCLA Anderson Professor Bhagwan Chowdhry's Financial Access at Birth (FAB) program? 

We'll never know for sure, but Chowdhry's appearance on the popular program did help raise FAB's profile. (Learn about FAB here and here.) In a brand new interview he did with Fox Business, show host Shibani Joshi confesses that, while FAB has gotten its share of publicity, she had not heard of the program until Chowdhry's Entourage appearance. When asked about the difficulty of bringing all the necessary entities together to make a FAB work, Chowdhry was straight to the point:

"Poverty needs no time. Poverty is something that needs to be tackled anytime. This is a long-term plan. We are talking about ... it will take a decade or two before this makes a huge impact. So, I think we need to start now. There is no good time or bad time to tackle poverty."

Please watch the entire Fox Business interview with Bhagwan Chowdhry here. 

(Note: Due to an incompatible file format, we are not able to embed the video on the blog.)

Screen shot of Entourage courtesy HBO

Richard Rumelt's "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" On FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Shortlist

Richard Rumelt, UCLA Anderson's Harry and Elsa Kunin Chair in Business and Society, new book is called "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters." As we noted here back in August, he described the book to CNBC this way: "It's really about strategy, not only in business, but in politics, in military affairs in non-profits," Rumelt said. "I'm trying to say that there's a core of good strategy in all of these different activities and that pattern is a recognition of what is the problem that you're trying to overcome."

Now, "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" has been shortlisted by FT Goldman Sachs for business book of the year. The Financial Times says Rumelt's book "demolishes many companies' efforts to set themselves on the path to prosperity and suggests how they could improve."

Richard Rumelt's book "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" on short list for best business book of the year.

Richard Rumelt talks to CNBC about "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy"

Rumelt on CNBC earlier this year:

 

Ed Leamer and the UCLA-Pulse of Commerce Index Hope 2011 Is More Like 2003 Than 2007

The most recent Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index^TM is out and the news is not good. The PCI declined 1.4% in August -- a large decline -- and comes after the July index that was down 0.2%. The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index^TM "is based on real-time fuel consumption data for over the road trucking and serves as an indicator of the current state and possible future direction of the U.S. economy. By tracking the volume and location of diesel fuel being purchased, the index closely monitors the over the road movement of produce, raw materials, goods-in-process and finished goods to U.S. factories, retailers and consumers."

Here is the latest Ceridan-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index^TM video, featuring UCLA Anderson Forecast Director Ed Leamer, who is also the chief economist for the PCI:

 

 

We had a chance to interview Leamer yesterday and we asked him to share with us his thoughts on what the PCI was telling him about the rest of the year. We didn't mention "the R Word" but ... well ... here is what he said:

"We're very concerned about what comes next the rest of the year. The summer has come with great concern about economic growth and prospects in the labor market. People are thinking about another dip, with an actual decline in GDP and rise in unemployment.

"The index is extremely weak in August, down 1.4% after being down in July. The index is saying this economy is troubled. But how do you interpret that?

"One way is the Wall Street approach -- 'Omigod, the recession is coming. The second way is the UCLA way. Our way is to look back carefully at the history and see if similar circumstances have let to recessions.

"The answer is, the Pulse of Commerce Index had problems in 2003, after the 2001 recession. Trucking was also weak in 2007 and that led to the horrible recession of 2008. So, is 2011 like '07 or '03? Our position is that it's like 2003. 2007 had a great imbalance in the housing sector after decades of excess spending. 2003 was just the beginning of an expansion and the hope is that 2011 is the beginning of a long expansion. We believe circumstances are more like 2003 than 2007."