Don Sexton
– A profile
By The Roach
It’s the last class on Thursday
evening. Starts an hour before sunset and ends a
shade after darkness. There are approximately twenty-
twentyfive of us in the room. Some from SIPA, some from
the business school, all with more than a passing interest
in the subject he teaches. He himself arrives five
minutes before everyone. Accompanied by his black bag
filled with his thirty-year collection of tapes, handouts
for the class and his Anthony Hopkins’ smile.
The room fills up quickly. One
would think being the last class standing between us,
happy hour and the weekend, the attendance would be a
bit thinner. But no, it’s THE CLASS. We wait for
it the whole week; it’s the reason why we came to business
school. To hear him speak and no amount of free booze
is going to make us miss the next three hours.
Alarmed by the dedication of
the students and the suspicious happenings in room 216
on Thursday evenings, we decided to further investigate
this business school professor. We now present our
exclusive report
The name is Donald Sexton; the course
International Marketing. Raised in Hartford, Connecticut
Don has traveled and taught in some very interesting locations
(spanning three continents, three oceans and two seas).
Armed with an MBA and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago,
he has been teaching at the business school for thirty
years. Although trained with Math and Economics,
he is just as skilled with a canvas and a brush. Yes I
exhibit in New York, was his modest answer when we asked
if he still paints.
The one thing that defines Don is
that he likes to put ideas into practice. This is
strongly apparent in his teaching style and his classes.
Some of the ideas that he has played with over the years
include low income consumers, making food and credit accessible
to low income consumers, International Marketing, International
Strategy and most recently Global Branding.
Question
What are the courses that you
have taught over the past three decades?
Several: Marketing Management, International
Business, Advertising, Operations Research, Statistics,
Marketing Research, Business and Economics in the Middle
East, Global Brands, International Competition, International
Marketing, Designing & Marketing of Luxury Products,
Dynamic Programming, Stochastic Models
Question
If you were destined to teach
one course for the rest of your life, which one of the
above would you pick?
That would be very difficult to
live with. One of the benefits of academic life is that
there is so much variety in what you do. To live
with one subject would be very tough. Given that
I have no choice I would pick Global Brands – a very exciting
area in marketing.
Question
What are yours students like?
Generally they are the ones who
want to push their Columbia experience to the maximum.
They either want to do something different or have ideas
that they want to try out. Quite a few of them also have
something of an international interest. In the International
Marketing class they are either well traveled or have
worked internationally.
Most of my seminars are structured
around projects. So in these courses there is a
lot of work and commitment involved on the part of students.
But usually they are the type that is willing to put something
into the course.
Question
How has the improvement in selection
rate over the past nine years affected the quality of
students in your class?
The intellectual level has definitely
gone up. Students seem confident about who they are, what
they want and why are they here. In a class room setting
that is very important since they are more confident about
what they have to say and they say it more often.
Leads to a more yeasty and exciting experience for every
one – teachers included.
Question
How would you define Columbia’s
culture and how has it changed over the past 30 years?
I would say we have the New York
attitude, sophistication and street smarts.
In contrast, when I started in 1966
we used to have student faculty teas, rather than happy
hour. Students and Faculty would get together and tea
would be served in what is now the deli – very different
from the culture today.
As far as the school is concerned
before the 90’s we were a top ten school but then there
were twenty schools within the top ten. Since Dean Feldberg
took over things have been improving remarkably year after
year. It’s incredible. We are now very much up there.
One, two or three. You name the field we are there.
He has definitely done a tremendous job.
As I said earlier students are a
lot more confident about what they want from the school.
They are definitely less competitive with each other and
more competitive compared to what they were ten years
ago. I think that the cluster system has a lot to
do with that. Within the Executive MBA (EMBA)
program we have had a kind of cluster system and it always
seemed that within the ranks of the EMBA level of morale
was always higher than comparative MBA students.
That is one of the sources where the idea for clusters
came from. Over the years the system has raised
spirits and improved relationships within the school.
In ’66 students wore ties and jackets
all of the time, not just in recruiting season. We had
a more formal relationship between students and faculty.
If you went to sleep as a Business School professor in
’66 and woke up in ’99 another thing you would notice
would be the greater collection of courses and the wider
diversity of students. For instance in ’66 there would
generally be only one woman Mba student in a class.
You would also notice that the students are stronger in
academic background and experience. They come with a very
strong base on which you can build upon. It also allows
you to do a lot more in your courses than you would have
been able to do as a teacher thirty years ago.
Another major change would be the
internationalization of the school and the curriculum
which Dean Feldberg made happen
Question
Are we a Case School, a Theory
School or a Practice School?
We are a bit of each. Each professor
has a different style. I won’t say that we are a case
school or a theory school or even a purely practice school.
This means that our students have more choice
Question
What has been the traditional
focus of Marketing at Columbia?
Traditionally it has been buyer
behavior. It started with two professors John Howard and
Jagdesh Sheth. Both of them did a lot of important work
on buyer behavior and one of the major models within that
field is associated with their names - the Howard
– Sheth Buyer Behavior Model. Many Ph.D. thesis
were focused on their model
Right now it would be safe to say
we have three key focuses. Management as in managing the
marketing process, Analytical capability and Psychology
as in consumer behavior. In each area we have world class
faculty
Question
Why Teaching?
Why? Because I wanted to work on
the practical side. I know that may sounds odd but if
this were 1966 and I had just come out of a Business School
with a Ph.D. I would be destined to work on research for
the foreseeable future. Where as I wanted to work on things
with a practical focus. One of the benefits of academic
life is the flexibility to work with the subjects that
you want to work with. I started with social problems
of low income consumers, then moved to marketing then
to international issues within marketing and now I am
working with Global Brands. Academic life allows
you the flexibility of career shifts while working at
the same place
Question
You traveled quite a lot and you
taught at quite a few schools internationally. How did
the business school students differ in the schools where
you taught?
Another advantage of academic life
is that you can spend time where you want. Over the years
as you develop interests and contacts in certain countries,
you come across opportunities. I have taught in many places
including Russia, China, Iran, France (INSEAD), the Czech
Republic, Poland and Cyprus.
INSEAD has a very leveraged and
focused program. Unlike traditional business schools,
you are looking at classes 5 days a week, 8 hours a day,
9 months without a break. You are under pressure
most of the time. The easiest way for me to tell
when one of my colleagues had just given a mid term was
when my students hadn’t prepared for the case due for
my class.
When I taught in China, I taught
one of the first courses after the Cultural Revolution.
They were hungry and very grateful and they soaked up
as much as they could.
At that time in China the
selection rates were one out of hundreds of applicants.
They were a very select group and extremely motivated.
Though there were things that they could not fully appreciate
since they did not exist in their society at that time
(advertising or free markets) but you could see that these
students would be the entrepreneurs who would change their
world. Little by little and in small steps but they would.
And it was very gratifying to know that you had made a
small contribution towards their cause
Question
You are in a position to affect
market practices five years down the road with what you
teach right now. What happens if some point in time you
realize that you are or were wrong? What do you do when
that happens?
The first reaction is ‘How, why
or what did I miss and what can I learn from my mistake’.
The next question is ‘What might be the impact of my mistake
and how can I fix it’
I try not to start with adopting
a position that is right or wrong. My emphasis is generally
on teaching my students to learn to think through the
process. It’s a not question of my answer is right or
your answer is wrong but more a question of what process
you followed to arrive at whatever you suggested.
In the long run processes are more stable and more robust
than theories. Effective learning is learning to
work with processes
Question
You have done a lot of consulting
work also. How does that happen?
In my case it is mainly been someone
hearing me at a lecture and then passing the reference
by word of mouth. Over the years your reputation
builds on itself. It’s an important relationship since
it allows me to stay in touch with the non-academic business
world.
You also have to be very clear that
your University responsibilities come first. In my thirtythree
years at Columbia, I have never missed a class.
Question
Who are the teachers that influenced
you?
Richard Miller – Professor of Economics.
Robert Rosenbaum – Professor of Math and John Frazier
– Department of Arts. All at Wesleyan University
in Connecticut. They are still teaching by the way.
If it wasn’t for these three gentlemen
I would probably be an Astrophysicist (since I was studying
astrophysics when I met them). Miller because he
opened up Economics, Rosenbaum for showing me the universality
of Math and Frazier for Arts.
At Wesleyan I was in a system with
no grade, no distribution requirements. The emphasis
was solely on learning, not on performance.
At University of Chicago, Professor
George Stigler, Milton Friedman, Harry Johnson and Harry
Roberts
Question
The books and movies that influenced
you the most?
Books
Ayn Rand – Fountain Head
Karaoke – On the Road (Don’t remember
the author)
Joseph Heller – Catch 22
Movies
La Dolce Vita – Felliny The sweet
life (1960)
Black Orpheus 1960
The Seventh Sumarai – the original
Japenese version.
Question
What about professional reading?
Anything by Peter Drucker is highly
recommended. William Arnold on Branding and Competitive
advantage of Nations by Porter
Question
Any word of advise for MBA students?
MBAs. Have some sense of who
you are and where you want to be. Then be patient and
try to get there, and you will