This is a special episode from Think Big, Buy Small, the chart-topping entrepreneurship podcast from our friends at Harvard Business School. Think Big, Buy Small explores an innovative approach to entrepreneurship -- acquisition entrepreneurship -- with conversations on how to buy your own business, be your own boss, and get the financial benefits of your efforts through the approach of entrepreneurship through acquisition. In this specific episode, HBS Professors Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff chat with graduating Harvard MBA students about their thoughts on becoming entrepreneurs.

Listen to more episodes of Think Big, Buy Small and follow the podcast here: https://link.chtbl.com/B2cH36AX?sid=deeppurpose

Research has repeatedly shown that we are hard-wired to worry. Whether we worry about our own survival, our family and friends, or our future, it can seem like we spend much of our lives fixated on what could go wrong. In this episode, Helena Foulkes discusses how taking courage can be as simple as asking what could go right – a philosophy that has taken her from the helm of CVS Pharmacy and Hudson’s Bay Company to the campaign trail for governorship of Rhode Island.

In our increasingly virtual world, it can feel like many of our lives take place remotely. When Josh Silverman took the helm at Etsy in 2017, however, he went against this technological grain, helping to usher in a new, distinctly human-centered purpose at the e-commerce company: “Keep Commerce Human.” In this episode spanning the course of his career, Silverman recounts the difficult choices he has made in keeping people at the center of business – and what following that ethos has meant for his personal and professional life.

Despite the decades of progress women have made in the workplace, they remain

underrepresented in leadership positions at companies across the globe. Leena

Nair, CEO of Chanel, is working to change that. Reflecting on her journey from

rural India to London, Leena discusses how she developed the confidence

necessary to usher Chanel into the future – one led by (many more) women.

Few CEOs can claim that they started in entry-level positions at the

companies they now lead. Penny Pennington is one of those few, rising from

financial advisor to CEO and Managing Partner at Edward Jones. In this episode,

Pennington reflects on how Edward Jones’ purpose – “to partner for positive

impact” – motivated her personal and professional life and, nowadays, how she

has been working to realize that sense of purpose for Edward Jones’ employees,

clients, and the communities in which they live.

As a veteran leader in the healthcare sector, José (Joe) E. Almeida, Chairman, President & CEO of Baxter, has made a lot of tough decisions. He led the successful turnaround of the Illinois-based multinational by calling on leadership lessons he gained from his family in Brazil. Almeida says courage is not the absence of fear, but the determination to press on when times are difficult.

What’s really in a payment? During his career at Mastercard,

Michael Miebach has strived to understand how payment solutions make a

difference in people’s lives, even before his appointment as CEO. In this

episode, Miebach explains how he thinks through powering the economy in an

increasingly digital (if uncertain) world and the leadership required to do so.

During the 2000s, Anne Mulcahy was faced with the seemingly

unsurmountable challenge of saving Xerox, rising to the position of CEO after

her predecessor had been unsuccessful. In this retrospective, Mulcahy discusses

the leadership lessons she learned, the role she believes CEOs should play in

today’s society, and how she’s defining her life post-Xerox. 

Harsh Shah and his firm’s co-founders faced a once-in-a-lifetime quandary: should they sell the incredibly successful e-commerce venture they worked so hard to build to a big conglomerate? Reflecting on the circumstances surrounding their acquisition offer, Shah outlines the values that guided their ultimate choice. 

James Mwangi made a courageous decision to leave a comfortable, big-city banking job to rescue Equity Building Society, a local financial institution on which Kenyan farmers and villagers depended. Under his leadership, the struggling firm transformed into a multi-national conglomerate (Equity Group Holdings) that now serves millions of customers across six African countries. Mwangi explains how he found the fortitude to fight for the financial futures of everyday people.

To pilot Alaska Airlines, CEO Ben Minicucci draws on his Italian immigrant roots and Canadian military training, which was put to the test during a tricky operation near the North Pole. Having first gained a reputation at the company as “the numbers guy,” Minicucci discusses how he has been evolving into a leader who cares deeply about Alaska Airline’s employees, customers, and the communities it serves.