PART II. Case studies of entrepreneurial educators in non-traditional settings

CHAPTER 3.

Donna Thompson’s case: Starting a business to address unmet learning needs of adult professionals

Raffaella Borasi, Jing Che, & David E. Miller

3.1. Donna’s story

  3.1.1. Introduction to Donna’s case

This is the case-study of Donna Thompson, who along with a partner, purchased a company on the verge of bankruptcy and radically transformed it to become one of the premiere businesses producing meetings for companies and professional associations across the country. As co-owner of a for-profit organization which she took over, restructured, and grew, Donna is what many would consider a prototypical example of entrepreneur – hence our decision to choose her as our first case-study. As shown in her story, her entrepreneurial behavior did not stop with the start-up phase of her business, but rather continued over time, as she continually engaged in innovations to keep her company at the cutting edge and bring it to the next level, in the pursuit of her ultimate goal of adding value to her organization and its clients.

While at first one may question the connection between education and producing meetings or conferences, this connection was very clear to Donna, as she explicitly stated, “We view a meeting as a way to teach.” For Donna, a former high school history teacher, meetings are indeed a key vehicle to providing learning opportunities for adults, who, after their initial training, rarely engage in coursework or other traditional learning activities within educational institutions. Therefore, she approached the design and delivery of each meeting very much like a big “lesson plan.” More specifically, she believed that one needs to start by identifying the learning objectives (i.e., what you want participants to get out of the meeting), then figure out what are the best learning experiences participants can engage in to achieve those objectives, carefully plan and implement those experiences, and then measure the extent to which the participants have achieved the original objectives. And she also believed that, to do this well, you need to use the same set of knowledge and skills as a successful teacher:

“I do not see a big difference between adult education and education, and the things that work with adults work with kids” (Donna)

Through these shared insights, we see Donna as an educator who recognized the need for a specific educational service, that is, organizing meetings and conferences that would truly provide valuable learning experiences to adult professionals. And, she developed a company to address that need. This description fits well with several definitions of education entrepreneur that are proposed in the literature (e.g., Hess, 2006; Smith & Peterson, 2006; Teske & Williamson, 2006).

It is important to note that this vision for meetings and conferences was quite novel when Donna and her partner took over the company in the late 1980s. In time, they further expanded this vision to reflect the transformative impact of new technologies – such as the Internet, on meetings. Thus, the company’s mission explicitly became to ensure that meetings would become a powerful vehicle for adult education by capitalizing on technology to provide new and richer learning opportunities in this non-traditional educational context. The original name of the company at that point changed to Fusion Productions, to emphasize the “fusion” of meetings, learning, and technology that they were striving for.

While the company started with four employees, plus the two co-owners and a half-million dollar debt, it grew, over time, to over 30 employees and increased its annual gross revenues more than ten-fold. Since its inception and until its closure in 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on conferences, Fusion produced meetings for many professional organizations and companies, helping those entities to further their mission. The company even played a role in events that impacted the national agenda, like the 1999 White House Conference on Travel and Tourism. More information about Fusion is provided in Figure 3.1 as well as throughout the narrative of Donna’s story in the rest of this chapter.

Figure 3.1. Fusion Productions Profile

  3.1.2. Donna’s professional experiences

“What’s next?” This question has driven Donna Thompson to engage in new things her whole life. Plus, entrepreneurship was in her blood. She says,

“My dad was in business, and I had always wanted to at least experience what it was like to be in business.” (Donna)

Donna recalled starting an “odd jobs” enterprise with a friend when she was only ten:

“I’ve always been starting new ventures … when I was a kid … a friend of mine and I formed Odd Jobs Inc. when we were about 10 and did neighbors’ work and marketed it, made up little signs, went around and sold it. It was quite the business!” (Donna)

Donna’s other passion has always been teaching. She was trained at the University of Rochester and became a high school history teacher in the 1970s. During her nine-year term as a teacher, Donna continuously looked for opportunities to challenge herself and learn new things, whether it meant using a new teaching approach, developing new courses, or even leading the teacher union:

“As I started teaching, I always tried to find a new course, a new way to teach it, a different way to communicate the information … I developed a course in psychology … then I developed a course in sociology … then I have to run the teachers’ union, and I have to learn how to bargain a contract.” (Donna)

After nine years of teaching, Donna started feeling the itch to do something different. She was discouraged by the structure and politics of schooling and had seen too many teachers who “had lost their fire”, their love of teaching. She did not want to lose her passion, and she wanted to experience the business world, so she went to work for a small company that did training and marketing education for corporations.

“…I still loved teaching, and this was a way to take my skills that I learned in teaching and transfer them to another occupation.” (Donna)

One major aspect of this company’s business was to do the stand and delivery type of training programs for companies. Another aspect of the business was to make these training programs into videos or slides so that they could be easily replicated. A third piece of the business was to do surveys and reports for associations. Donna’s role in this company required her to learn new skills in marketing and sales, while at the same time applying her educational knowledge and skills, although with an adult population and in non-traditional learning contexts.

  3.1.3. Donna’s innovation #1: Taking over and turning around a bankrupt company

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

The possibility of taking over the company that Donna was working for came up unexpectedly, as she and her future partner came to realize that the company was running a debt of about half a million dollars, and therefore the owners would likely have to declare bankruptcy and close the company. While the reaction of many would have been to start looking for a new job, Donna and her partner began, instead, to consider the possibility of a radically alternative solution, that is, taking over the company in exchange for assuming its existing debt.

“The business was about to go bankrupt … There was a young guy working there and we were both doing sales … we sat down and said, you know what, we think there is a good business here, it’s got to be run right and … change the business focus, but we think we can make something out of this. So instead of going bankrupt, we got these people to sell us the company for $34.” (Donna)

A critical element in even conceiving of the possibility of taking over the company was their vision, from the very beginning, about the potential of transforming the company’s focus from providing professional development services (mostly to corporations) to producing effective meetings for corporations and professional associations.

The idea of focusing on producing meetings had developed because of their own experiences participating in meetings that were mostly unproductive. They realized that there was an unmet need in the field, which they could address in a novel way:

“What made us have the idea [was] … going to all these meetings … where we were trying to sell our services and [seeing] how badly they were run.” (Donna)

“Both of us became very concerned … that millions of dollars were being spent and nobody was measuring anything, no-one had any idea if anyone was learning … and trends were coming and business wasn’t going to fund this anymore, so people were going to start looking for outcomes … it was an idea that grew out of those observations, and a feeling that if you could put some measurement tool behind it, if you could design something using objectives that people could measure … you would be able to create another type of meeting.” (Donna)

Donna and her partner had a very short time to decide whether to move forward with their idea, or not.

“In those situations, you have to be able to confront and close quickly. Because the more you elongate those situations … it’s probably a bad analogy, but it’s kind of like … a divorce. The longer a divorce drags out, the more the lawyers get involved, the more people start thinking, the more their egos get involved. If you can strike while it is hot, you get over it quicker. And yes, you may not walk out with the perfect situation, but that’s not what you are in there for.” (Donna’s business partner)

During this short period of time, though, they did a lot of thinking and talking together to further develop their idea of how the company could be changed to focus on meeting production only and what it should look like to do so effectively. They managed to satisfactorily coalesce their ideas and planning, even within this very short timeframe.

They soon concluded that there would be multiple benefits to taking on the company, as doing so would allow them to “salvage” an organization in which they had invested a lot, enable them and other people they cared for in the company not to lose their jobs (and, in fact, possibly end up making a lot more money than they currently did!), and also do something that had never been done before. They also thought they could move the field forward and be beneficial to many clients.

As they evaluated the potential value of their idea of transforming the company to focus on organizing effective meetings, Donna recognized the parallels between “classroom teaching” and “providing effective learning opportunities to adults in the context of business meetings”. She believed that her background in education and experience as a classroom teacher would give them a competitive advantage. As her partner recollected:

“… the meeting industry, I think it was clear at this point that there was a need for change. Meetings used to be just fun, you go and have a big party. So, coming from Donna’s instructional design background, my business background, it was pretty easy to look at this and say, here’s a model that is broken … that we can move into and really grow. …The analysis was that we could do something here that we could all be good at, feel great about, and create a model that we recognized was broken before.” (Donna’s business partner)

Donna and her partner had previously thought about the potential of producing meetings, and in fact had already successfully engaged in organizing a few meetings for clients. These experiences gave them confidence that the idea could really work:

“We found out very suddenly how much trouble the company was in. … the ideas around meetings came before that, and in fact we had started already to do one of our first meetings where we tried out these new things … when the decision came down to, are we going to walk away and get jobs elsewhere or are we going to take this on. I don’t know that we would have taken it given its current form, if we hadn’t had the vision for what we could do with the meeting business.” (Donna)

As they examined the market potential for this idea, Donna and her partner realized that potential clients could be not only businesses and corporations but also professional organizations that had a need to run conferences as an integral part of conducting their business. They also thought that this could provide diversification and, thus, reduce their risk. Also, they knew from their own experience that nobody else was doing meetings the way they were envisioning.

A number of other factors were also important in making the decision to take on the significant financial risk of assuming a half-million–dollar debt. First of all, they felt they did not have much to lose by taking that risk, as they knew that otherwise the company would close and they would be out of a job. In contrast, the gains would be great if their idea worked and the company became successful.

Second, they knew that the company had a good reputation in the field, so there was value in taking it on despite the debt. Rather than starting a new company to produce meetings, they could capitalize on the name recognition and reputation, while benefitting from the equipment they would be able to retain. They also believed that their idea of organizing meetings had great potential:

“We both had a strong belief that it would succeed. I honestly can’t tell you that we thought of failure” (Donna)

Their vision of what they could do with the company, having confidence in their ability to succeed, and their overall evaluation of potential risks and benefits, led them to decide to move forward with their idea of taking over the company.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

Donna and her partner had only a week – not only to make a decision about whether or not they wanted to take over the company, but also about what kind of offer to make the owners, employees they wanted to keep with them and what those employees should be offered, and how to deal with the creditors. Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that they did not create a formal written plan – especially since there was no need for a written plan for securing financial resources, as buying the company meant essentially agreeing to assume the existing debt. Nevertheless, a lot of important planning did indeed take place during this critical week.

“When we started, the plan was … so much a part of us that we did not need to write it down.” (Donna)

As already mentioned, their decision to take over the company went hand-in-hand with the decision to refocus the company on producing effective meetings.

In addition, they also agreed that they would expand their portfolio of clients to include a balance of corporations and professional organizations (for whom annual meetings are a “must”), as a way to manage risk:

“Our plan was to have our business be about 50% associations and 50% corporate. The strength of that was that when there would be an economic downturn or companies would have a bad year they would cancel a meeting, even if we had a contract they could cancel, the associations did not.” (Donna)

One of their biggest challenges was the financial one. Because they were assuming such a huge debt, they knew that they could not also take on any additional loans. At the same time, taking on the company’s debt ensured that they did not have to purchase new costly equipment, as they would “inherit” all the equipment they immediately needed.

A key decision they needed to make at the planning stage was about current employees that they would ask to stay. This decision, however, was not a difficult one once they chose to refocus on producing meetings, as only some employees had the needed skills set. Fortunately, all these individuals also had the attitudes and work ethic they were looking for, so they were all offered the opportunity to stay.

“When we bought the company there was probably 12 people working at the company, and we realized that we wanted to keep the very best people … so we picked three people that we knew were outstanding… These were people who chose to come with us. They were excited about the adventure to begin with, they had worked for the company, they knew everything was going to be different.” (Donna)

“The good news is we got the right ones from an attitude perspective, [and] we got the right ones from the loyalty perspective. And when we looked at the match of what they could do well, they could do meetings well.” (Donna’s partner)

More challenging was the decision of how to compensate these people in a way that would be affordable, while at the same time encouraging cost-effective and entrepreneurial behaviors among all employees.

“That was literally the first day that we were planning. My partner and I sat around an old kitchen table and we said, how do we make people feel they are part of this adventure? How do we make them watch the dollars the way we watch the dollars?” (Donna)

Inspired by a business article Donna had recently read, Donna and her partner decided on a compensation system that was comprised of a guaranteed base salary, bonuses determined based on individual contributions to the success of the company, and most importantly a profit-sharing scheme where about 10% of the profits each quarter would be equally divided among all employees.

“I had just read an article … on some form of gain sharing and I said that would be a cool thing, [my partner] loved it … We didn’t do the gain sharing the way the [article] did, we couldn’t afford to do that, but we put our own plan together and we just did it because it felt right.” (Donna)

This compensation scheme seemed especially important to entice the people they wanted to stay on, given that the company’s dire financial situation would require some severe salary cuts (about 20-25%) for at least the first few months, in addition to the partners agreeing to forego their compensation for the first few months. Interestingly, all the people to whom they offered the opportunity to stay on, accepted their offer.

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

As the decision and planning stage went so quickly, Donna and her partner immediately plunged into the implementation, and a lot of decisions still had to take place at that point.

To manage their financial situation, one of the first things they did was visit clients with whom the company had contracts and explain the situation and their ideas, to ensure that these contracts could be continued. This secured them with some revenues and cash flow from the very beginning.

Another way they managed their financial risk was to work toward reducing their initial debt by going to each creditor and negotiating both the amount and the repayment time for the debt. Someone else with a background in finance made them aware of this option, and this became one of the first steps they implemented after the purchase and transfer of ownership were completed. It is important to keep in mind, though, that as they started, they did not know how much they would be able to reduce their debt in this way.

Given their financial situation, cutting costs as much as possible was a necessity. So, in addition to reducing everyone’s salary as planned, they immediately moved to cheaper facilities, and did so essentially on their own with the help of friends, as they could not afford moving expenses! Overall, they very carefully watched how every dollar was spent.

“We bootstrapped … we just cut spending to the bone. … that meant we did everything ourselves. … We got out of our lease … and went to a little tiny hole-in-the-wall space … none of us had big offices. We basically spent no money. … My partner and I didn’t take a salary for probably 6 months … and then we began very slowly once we got the debt paid.” (Donna)

Donna recalls that the first year was very difficult and intense, especially for her and her partner, as the new owners:

“It was 24/7 … I do not think we had a day off for easily a year and maybe more … It was incredibly intense because we did not have a salesperson at the time. Hugh and I were doing the sales, but we were also helping in the delivery of the product, so … really you would be doing your selling during the week and then you would work all weekend on the delivery of the product.” (Donna)

At the same time, this situation enabled Donna and her partner to pay close attention to all the details that would ensure a successful implementation not only of their overall plan, but also their first and most critical contracts. This approach also allowed them to identify if things were not going as expected and make the necessary adjustments.

From the very beginning, Donna and her partner were also very disciplined in setting financial goals and monitoring their accomplishments. At first, their goals focused on eliminating the initial debt, but soon after that they started setting specific sales goals for each year:

“We knew we had to pay off the debt, so that’s a half million dollars. We knew we had to pay salaries. All the people that came with us took a cut in pay, but we knew we wanted to get them back to the salary they had been making before, that was our short-term goal, and then get enough money to keep us going,” (Donna)

Even after their initial debt was paid out, which took about a year, and they were in a better financial situation, they continued to watch all costs very carefully and find ways to keep costs down.

They were also disciplined in hiring new employees, as they usually waited to hire a new staff member only after sufficient contracts were in place to sustain a new employees’s salary.

They were also very strategic about marketing their new company. Recognizing that they did not have the financial resources to undertake a costly marketing campaign or advertising, they tried creative approaches such as developing a relationship with an association called Meeting Professional International (MPI). This gave their business a way to reach potential clients, be in touch with the competition, and stay abreast of what was going on in their field. Donna and her partner were eventually able to secure a deal to produce the MPI annual meeting, which gave Fusion great visibility and served as a marketing tool for them.

Ensuring long-term sustainability and/or bigger impact

Over the next few years, Donna and her partner continued to set more and more ambitious financial goals, and they grew their base of clients by delivering high quality, productive meetings.

Though Donna and her partner took on smaller contracts at the beginning as a way to explore the potential value of specific clients and prove themselves to customers, the team slowly became more selective in what they took on by considering projects based on the following set of questions:

• Is this a good fit? Can we meet the needs of the client with the services we offer?
• What is the potential of this client in the long term? Is their company growing? What other contracts would be possible in the future?
• What are the additional benefits, if any, of this contract for Fusion? Might they help our visibility? Will they help us to establish ourselves as specialists in a particular area?
• Do we have the capacity to do this? If not, are there ways to do it anyway?
• Will they be willing and able to pay for our services?

At the same time, they remained flexible and occasionally took on some contracts that did not meet all these criteria if they felt such contracts had potential for the future or presented a unique opportunity for Fusion in some other way.

As they grew and assumed more and bigger contracts to produce meetings, Donna and her partner also began to delegate more of their responsibilities for the production of specific meetings to project managers, whom they supervised, so that she and her partner could devote more time to managing their growing organization.

Keeping a close look on spending, expecting high performance from the staff (with appropriate compensation incentives), and setting and monitoring clear financial goals, were all important elements to ensure that the company stayed healthy, and not only survived, but grew.

Over the time that Donna was with the company, its staff and revenues grew almost ten-fold in response to a growing demand for their services. The company not only increased the number of clients served but also the size and scope of the meetings produced. They also continued to enhance the kinds of meeting organization services provided to clients. For example, over time they added new tools to measure the extent to which a meeting’s objectives had been achieved, more convenient ways for participants to register, and new opportunities for participants to interact before and after a meeting.

While Donna and her partner continued to be driven by the desire to grow the company, there were times when they turned down opportunities for growth. At one point, for example, they considered hiring a person who had the drive and capacity to increase operations. But his personality might have alienated several the original employees who had been loyal for years, so the partners decided to not take on this opportunity.

A number of things changed as the company grew. First of all, moving from a staff of 4 to over 30 changed the dynamics of the working place and working relations, leading to more differentiated responsibilities and less collaboration. Certain things, like gainsharing and bonuses in particular, did not work as well as before. Even more importantly, this growth meant big changes in the co-owners’ roles and responsibilities. For example, at first Donna was working in the trenches alongside employees and was directly involved in the production of the meetings. Later she had to learn to teach others how to do what she had been doing and develop explicit systems for what she had naturally engaged in so that others could take on the same role, and she could move to different things.

Perhaps even more important than growth for the long-term success of the company, was the partners’ commitment to continually watching the market and the competition to ensure that they stayed at the cutting edge. The U.S. economic situation was a major external factor affecting the growth and operations of Donna’s company. The way the economy picked up in the 1990s brought more businesses doing meetings, along with resources to devote to those meetings. As a result, Fusion grew dramatically. But when in the early 2000’s the economy experienced a downturn, due to the breaking-of-the-tech-bubble. Many companies also cancelled their meetings and participation to conferences as a result of the attach on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. In one year, Fusion lost more than half of its corporate contracts but managed to survive by continuing to serve professional associations for their meetings.

“That was a very tough time…when the economy went down; [but] our association strategy [worked] … 50% of our clients were still there, and so, while keeping obviously our corporate clients, we focused on picking up new association clients. Smaller associations, and that filled the gap for us”. (Donna)

  3.1.4. Donna’s innovation #2: Reinventing the company by embracing new technologies

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

As time passed and Donna’s company grew, differentiating themselves and staying at the cutting edge became increasingly critical and difficult. More companies around them “learned” how to produce meetings the way they did, and technology was changing the ways in which things could be done.

“You see, business is all about differentiation, and when we started, we were the only ones that were doing meetings … with objectives. Well, it did not take long before other meeting companies looked at us and said, well, we can do that. … so they started doing what we did .. now we were not differentiated anymore. How do we keep re-inventing ourselves? So technology was a big way we could re-invent ourselves and bring something new.” (Donna)

Donna recalled how in 1997 they began to realize how personal computers and the Internet were going to revolutionize society and especially the ways meetings could be run. Fusion wanted to be a part of it. For example, a big part of their revenues at the time came from preparing slide shows for presentations at meetings. But with the introduction of PowerPoint, anybody could easily and cheaply create and modify a slide presentation; they could see that this part of their business would soon go away. At the same time, they saw several potential applications of new technologies that would allow them to do new things to make meetings more effective. For instance, they envisioned creating websites with an online registration system, setting up chat rooms for people with like interests or special interest groups to communicate with each other both before and after the meeting, and distributing pre- and post- opinion surveys via email to better measure the extent to which the meeting had achieved its objectives. They expected that these new services could become one of their big differentiators.

Donna and her partner recognized this was a potential turning point for the company, and decided it was time for the company to “reinvent itself” through technology. There was no question in the partners’ minds that embracing the new technologies was the way to go, if they wanted to ensure the long-term success of their company:

“You could see the handwriting on the wall, you could see where the world was going and if you weren’t able to play in that arena … if you don’t jump on early enough you will never catch up.” (Donna)

The problem was that they felt that neither of them had the expertise needed to effect such a change.

“As we looked at this explosion of technology and everything, it became very clear that if we didn’t have someone dedicated to this both from a visionary standpoint and from an implementation standpoint, we were going to be left behind real quick.” (Donna)

“We needed a lot of technology skills, we needed really fast, but neither [my partner] nor I had the background to do it.” (Donna)

However, they did not let this lack of current resources deter them. Instead, they searched for a project leader for this initiative.

A unique opportunity presented itself as a friend of Donna’s partner, with the right kind of background, was looking for a career change. The only way to secure his collaboration, though, would be to offer him a full partnership and co-ownership in the business – something that they realized would change the culture that they had created in the organization as well as the dynamic between the two partners. This presented the need for another critical decision in the trajectory of the company.

“That was a very big [decision,] … tougher than buying the business … because you have a certain dynamic and you know that dynamic works and now you are going to bring in a third person. … I was very well aware of that, and I also knew it was going to totally change … the business … it was going to change the relationship, it was going to change the management.” (Donna)

They considered this possibility very carefully, as they recognized the risk it presented. Yet they also saw great opportunities for their company in the embracing of new technology. In the end they felt this was the best choice. As it was their practice, Donna and her partner shared their decision and its rationale with the other eleven employees at the time.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

A lot of planning went into figuring out how the three-way partnership would work and how the company would be restructured, even if little of it was put into writing. While Donna and her first partner had brainstormed a lot of applications for technology to make meeting planning and organization better, as they prepared to grow into the technology realm the planning itself pretty much took place with the new partner on board. This involved goal setting, cost planning, equipment needs, hiring of new staff, etc.

First of all, the partners realized that they needed some additional resources to launch this innovation, and they analyzed their finances to make sure that the company could afford to do so. They didn’t want to alter the bonuses and gainsharing program that was already in place (although both had to be reduced somewhat for a while) but the three owners all agreed to temporarily reduce their gains to make this investment.

The new partner was critical in securing the needed equipment at very good prices, using his knowledge and connections in the technology sector. He also was put in charge of hiring the new personnel with the needed technical expertise.

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

A lot of important decisions had to be made at the implementation stage.

To minimize the initial financial risk, the hiring of technical personnel was done by the new partner one at a time, as new, big contracts were secured that needed their specialized expertise.

“We brought [our third partner] on, and he hired one person, and that one person had one contract, and then [the three of us] went out and got another contract, and when that contract came in … we hired another person to do that contract. …” (Donna)

When they first started to bring in new technology-related services to their clients, there was no immediate success. Clients were skeptical of how they were going to do their meetings with and benefit from these brand-new ideas. In their early development stage, the new technologies were not as stable as they are now.

“[I]t was slow, it was hard at the beginning…but it started to give us a place where we could differentiate ourselves with the competition…” (Donna)

One of the unexpected challenges that this innovation brought along had to do with the different kinds of people they would need to hire to attend to the technology:

“We had built a culture where we had people who had been with us from the start, and loyalty was their hallmark … and now we started hiring people from the techy world who have no loyalty to anyone.” (Donna)

Ensuring long-term sustainability and/or bigger impact

The technology component of the company continued to grow both in absolute and relative terms, as Fusion continued to proactively look for and adopt new technologies that would allow them to improve the quality of the meetings they were organizing and, thus, the learning opportunities of the participants.

Fusion became recognized as a pioneer in the field with regard to the use of technology, and they eventually chose to organize an annual conference about relevant advances in technology for companies like theirs that were producing meetings.

While this innovation radically transformed the company, sometimes in ways they had not anticipated, both Donna and her first partner felt that, had they not made the decision to transform the company with technology as they did, the company would not have grown and thrived as it did, and perhaps might not even have survived:

“I would say, had we not done that, we would not be here.” (Donna’s business partner)

  3.1.5. Donna’s innovation #3: Embracing a high-risk/high-reward project to move to the next level

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

Another turning point for the company was the decision in 1999 to bid for the production of a very high-profile meeting, and eventually being awarded that contract. As the Clinton administration went about revamping the budgets for all the major government departments, they decided to hold a White House Conference on Travel and Tourism to facilitate their goal of setting up public-private partnerships between big companies and government agencies to promote travel and tourism all around the world. They asked MPI to nominate some companies that could take on the organization of such a conference, and Fusion was among the names MPI provided. So Fusion was invited to bid for the contract of this White House Conference along with four other companies.

Donna and her partners immediately realized that organizing a conference of such high profile, and involving a lot of potential big clients, would provide a unique marketing opportunity for their company. They also recognized that it would establish Fusion as one of the premiere meeting companies in the country:

“It was … the biggest marketing opportunity you will ever have that you get paid for. Every leader in the industry, the travel industry, was at this conference. Every government leader was at that conference. Every person in the world that we ever wanted to get in front of … and because of the nature of the conference and that we were producing it, we were interfacing with every one of those people on a direct level. So despite the fact that … we knew it was going to be the biggest nightmare of our lives to produce, [we wanted to do it].” (Donna)

While funding would not be an issue, as the client would cover all the costs if Fusion won the bid, Donna and her partners knew upfront that they did not have in-house all the human resources and equipment that they would need to produce a meeting of this size. However, they were confident that they could find ways to come up with the people they needed, especially since in the past they had already been in positions where they had to rely on the services of free-lancers and had cultivated good relationships with several of them.

More significant for the company was the realization that taking on this contract would mean not only a lot of work but also a big risk:

“Big opportunity, big, BIG risk. … You fail on C-Span in front of the President of the United States and let me tell you that’s a big risk.” (Donna)’

Yet they knew this was too good and too visible an opportunity to turn it down, and so they went full speed into preparing a proposal to bid for the contract by the set deadline.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

To bid for the contract they were required to prepare a written proposal following specific guidelines and then present it to the committee making the selection.

They realized soon that a good proposal would not be enough to win the contract; rather, they needed to include some innovative elements that would differentiate them from the other companies that were also bidding for this major contract. One way they thought they could accomplish this was by employing a new technology they had recently heard of, which allowed participants, from their seats, to vote on specific ideas and have those votes immediately tallied and reported back to the audience.

They realized that they were taking a big risk taking on such a new and untried technology. To minimize these risks, they contacted the technology developers to make sure that the technology really worked well and to request that the company be willing to partner with them if the contract was awarded. As the preliminary exploration of this technological innovation gave good results and the vendor agreed to partner with them, Fusion decided to include the new technology in their proposal. Yet they also decided to double the equipment and the personnel working the equipment at the conference in case something went wrong!

They knew upfront that this project would be so big that they would need to hire free-lancers as well as partner with other companies to pull it off. They were ready and prepared to enact these additional measures, and they were successful in soliciting and gathering the cooperation of these free-lancers and other companies.

“We knew we could do it with all the other contacts we had in the industry. … because we had been using peripheral folks for these other meetings that we’ve talked about before, so we knew we could pull those people in.” (Donna)

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

When they actually got the contract, Donna recalled that she and her partners looked at each other and said “and now HOW are we going to do it?” Indeed, a lot of planning and decisions still had to take place to make such a major conference a success.

Donna decided to take on the role of project manager for this initiative, given its significance and thus the importance of paying careful attention to myriad details in the implementation. This also allowed her to closely monitor the implementation and notice any possible need for modifications and immediately act, as necessary.

Producing the meeting included not only organizing and running the meeting per-se but also facilitating preliminary meetings in Washington to come up with the initiatives to be discussed at the conference. This process took a long time and required Donna to spend three or four days a week in Washington. During these planning sessions, Donna fully capitalized on her teaching experience, as she would walk in with clear goals in mind and share those goals with the participants. She would then facilitate the participants’ thinking by constantly asking questions and re-organizing contributed ideas into “chunks” using different visual aids.

“Here’s what I want to accomplish in this visit – but you didn’t do all of the telling, you asked questions, you got it from them and you helped them organize it so that at the end you had in your head the blocks and you plugged their information into blocks so I would do it in front of them so I would have a whole wall full of paper and I would have columns and when they would say things I would go to one and I would write it down and by the end of the day all of a sudden they would look up and they would have an initiative…they used to say ‘how did we do that, I didn’t know we got that far’.” (Donna)

As the conference took place, they also had to be able to continually troubleshoot and make changes in their plans as needed. For example, once during the conference, one of the key stakeholders challenged the decisions made for one session at the very last minute, and Donna had to change the wording and program arrangement half an hour before the meeting started – even though all prior scripts and prompts and plans had already been stored in the equipment used for conducting the in-the-moment polls. Their insight about doubling equipment and the personnel running it had paid off in this occasion!

Despite these occasional problems, in the end the conference was a great success.

Ensuring long-term sustainability and/or bigger impact

Producing the White House conference on Travel and Tourism was a one-time initiative, so the concepts of “long-term sustainability” and “growth” do not directly apply in this instance. Yet it is important to note that the success of this initiative brought forth several benefits for the company, that in turn affected its growth and impact:

Fusion Productions was freely advertised through the cover page story of this event in USA Today.

They got to work with very high-level staffs in different sectors, such as the head of American Express, government leaders, and even the U.S. president.

Throughout the process of preparing this conference, they discovered and utilized a powerful new technology that they could use for taking polls in other conferences of a similar scope.

The reward was also personal, as Donna felt that she did give something that added value to the nation and society. As a result, this high-profile conference gave Donna’s company a huge push and also gave them an identity that differentiated them from their competitors in the meeting industry. As Donna stated:

“It allowed the company to move to the next level…That propelled us to want to be an elite meeting design and production firm in the United States. That gave us…the entrée…American Express became a big client”. (Donna)

  3.1.6. Updates to Donna’s story

After many years of exciting challenges and successes building and growing Fusion, Donna unexpectedly had to sell out of the business for health reasons. Unfortunately, the company was not prepared for such an eventuality, which made it even more difficult on everyone. Despite these challenges, the company continued and has been thriving under the leadership of the other two partners until the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which caused the abrupt interruptions of meetings and conferences for several months. At that point, as the remaining partners were also close to retirement, they decided to close the company.

Donna’s entrepreneurial spirit and never-ending quest for “what’s next?” did not end with her departure from Fusion. As soon as her health had recovered, she began to be very involved with a number of non-profit organizations, including the local Ronald McDonald House and the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education.

“As I get older I think I’m a little more altruistic. … how do I leave my mark, you know, what am I going to leave behind that’s of value to society” (Donna)

In the late 2000’s, Donna also started a new business venture in education, partnering with Dave Miller in rethinking the company he had founded a few years earlier, Knowledge Athletes. With the help of a few Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants as well as the investment of some personal funds, this start-up company developed a prototype for an early Learning Management System, called Kajour, targeted toward supporting K-12 instruction. Donna pointed out many similarities between her work with Fusion and Knowledge Athletes.

“It’s actually in many ways so similar to when we started Fusion. When you look at what the world of education is today there are so many problems associated with it. Reading levels are down, kids don’t read anymore. … There’s a big problem in education and everybody is looking for a solution, just like with Fusion … [then] people were wasting millions of dollars on meetings and no one was getting anything out of it and that was the impetus … we kept looking at it and saying well there’s got to be an answer here. …Well, in looking at [the current situation] Knowledge Athletes says here’s an answer, here’s a way to help kids do the things they love to do through blogging, through communication on the Internet but around books, around ideas in books, around answering questions and to have teachers still be a part of it. That’s the exciting part for me… it’s not the only answer but this could be a huge answer, and that’s why I got so excited about it. That’s why I’m involved … I think this is going to be an incredible venture and it ties into so many of my interests, education, business, development, growth … it takes me full circle right back to the education world where I started.” (Donna)

While the development of Kajour had to be abandoned after the initial SBIR funding, due to a dearth of investors in the public education product space at the time, the value of this idea was eventually proven by the emergence of K-12 Learning Management Systems such as Schoology and Google Classroom– showing once again the power of Donna’s vision.

3.2. Analysis of selected aspects of Donna’s practice

  3.2.1. Donna’s practices about vision

Donna’s experience with Fusion was clearly driven by her vision that meetings, when appropriately organized, could provide powerful learning opportunities for adult professionals. As her story illuminates, this vision informed all the key decisions that she and her partners made – both transformational decisions, such as taking over their bankrupt company at the beginning and later re-inventing the company by embracing new technologies, and day-to-day decisions of the contracts to take on. Her vision about the power of technology to transform education is also what led to her decision to get involved in the Kajour project.

Another important element of the vision that Donna and her partners had for their company was to create an organization in which people trusted and genuinely cared about each other:

“It is what differentiates, I believe, great companies. It’s not a job, it’s a real passion and you know that doesn’t mean that we love each other all the time … but there is a respect and a caring that I think is an integral part of a successful company.” (Donna)

Their vision also influenced how they set goals and measured success. While every year Donna and her partners set clear financial goals for the business, they also developed other goals that connected with their vision and personal values, and they felt were equally important:

“The business answer is we measure [success] by setting financial goals and personal goals each year, and by the end of the year we looked to see if we made them. Now the financial goals were pretty easy. The personal goals would be things like [my partner] was very interested in the MPI, he really wanted to rise and launch with the MPI. … I think we also measured success by how well the people who worked for us were doing and how well we were servicing them as well as our clients.” (Donna)

Donna’s enthusiasm and commitment to her vision was evident not only in the actions reported in her story, but also in her words and voice, as she recounted her experience with Fusion in our interviews. She also explicitly mentioned how important it was for her to work toward something meaningful, something that would impact other people and society, as making money per-se was not enough for her:

“I can’t imagine putting that kind of energy and effort and stress into something day in and day out that I didn’t feel was valuable to people, and gave something to our clients that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.” (Donna)

It was also this passion that, according to her business partner, made other people buy into their vision of what meetings should be for and how they should be produced, whether they were staff or clients of Fusion.

“Donna’s strength is to have people buy in.” (Donna’s business partner)

Indeed, we have personally seen Donna talking to people about initiatives she is now involved in and passionate about, and thus can attest to her contagious enthusiasm. She was also a master at using storytelling to paint a compelling picture of both past successes and proposed developments, which caught people’s attention.

  3.2.2. Donna’s practices about opportunities

Donna was always on the look-out for opportunities to pursue her vision, and she was ready to seize them. In the context of Fusion, this meant proactively looking for new and more effective ways to create meetings that would provide learning opportunities for the participants, as well as ways to improve Fusion as an organization so as to more effectively pursue its mission. Keeping her eyes open for opportunities was natural for Donna:

“I can see an opportunity. You can see a way to change something, you can see a way to make something better, you can see that that application is going to have an impact somewhere on someone … and you can see that there is a need for it.” (Donna)

Each of the major initiatives featured in her story (i.e., buying and turning around the original company, the technology transformation of Fusion, and producing the White House Conference) were all connected with opportunities, although in somewhat different ways. Donna explicitly told us that she and her partner never thought of the possibility of buying and transforming the company they were working for, until they learned that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Yet it was a brilliant move on their part to recognize this as an opportunity to take on the company with its current debt and refocus it on producing meetings – something that only the two of them could have done, given their prior experiences and vision about meetings, as well as their willingness to take on the risks involved in such an enterprise. Being invited to bid to produce the White House Conference was also an opportunity that presented itself unexpectedly to Donna and her partner, although in this case everyone in their position would have easily recognized it as an opportunity. What was more unique in this case was their decision to pursue that opportunity while recognizing upfront that they did not have all the needed resources in house to pull it off. Also, it is interesting to note that while this opportunity was unexpected, Donna and her partners had proactively worked for years to gain visibility for Fusion and they had strategically developed a long-term relationship with MPI. And it was this long-term relationship that led MPI to recommend them, when asked to name some companies that should be invited to bid for producing this major conference. In contrast, Donna and her first partner had been considering for a while the need to better capitalize on new technologies; because of their limited background in technology, they had also already realized the need to find a person that could lead this initiative. Yet the technology transformation of the company became a reality only when they recognized and seized the opportunity presented by a desirable candidate, who was dissatisfied with his current job and was looking for an alternative. Once again, they were able to do what it took to seize that opportunity, which meant offering him a full partnership in the company.

Donna reported that she often uncovered new ideas and opportunities from reading. For example, she learned of the compensation scheme that they devised for Fusion’s employees based on an article she had read. This voracious approach to reading books and journals spanning many different fields has proved highly informative and valuable for her. Even more importantly, Donna’s knack for making connections between the things she would read and her practice continually added to her idea generation. As she pointed out:

“I’m a big reader … I read a lot of different things and then it seems as though they synthesize down into ideas.” (Donna)

She was also quite attentive to what the competition was doing. Differentiating her company from the competition was a constant driving force for Donna, and she was consistently looking for opportunities to do that.

“You always ask yourself … what’s going to make you different from anybody else who comes along as doing the same service?” (Donna)

At the same time, Donna was always proactively observing and actively listening to her clients to find opportunities. By identifying unmet needs that could potentially suggest new approaches, Donna believed they could keep their company at the cutting edge and stand out from the rest. Indeed, Donna often turned a problem or challenge into an opportunity. For example, Fusion’s clients were not satisfied with the practice of having her and her partner visit a new client for the initial negotiation of a project, only to then be assign a different project manager to execute the contract. By that time the contract was negotiated and then finalized, the client had bonded with the two partners, and the client wanted to continue to work directly with them. Assigning a project manager introduced a new variable for the client and presented a tension that was counter-productive as the company kept growing. The solution they eventually hit on was having the prospective project manager participate with them in the initial visit. This turned out not only to solve the original problem, but it also became a way to train their project managers to assume some of the partners’ roles and thus eventually free up the partners for other more critical tasks as the company grew.

“So that’s one example of a problem that provided us with a tremendous opportunity once we got the right solution because it helped our people to grow and develop … and it didn’t take any more of our time than it would have anyway because they just watched, observed, and then on the plane ride home we’d talk about what it was they observed.” (Donna)

Talking with others – whether they were clients, colleagues, friends, experts in the field, or community members – was another way Donna found out about new opportunities or was able to recognize something that nobody else may have noticed before:

“New ideas come through playing off of other people’s ideas and discussions and sometimes … rousing arguments. … It stimulates new ways to think about things.” (Donna)

In addition to her practice of recognizing and seizing opportunities, Donna also devoted much attention to looking at where the field was going. This helped her recognize possible future trends and needs and prepared her company to respond to these trends. This was demonstrated most significantly in the original vision of the new role that meetings would play when she bought the company, the initial decision to expand their portfolio of clients to include professional associations was a way to counter times of recession, and the analysis of new technologies allowed them to revolutionize the ways in which meetings were run.

Given all the opportunities that Donna uncovered with these practices, it is of interest to know how she decided which ones to actually pursue. While Donna typically had a hard time saying no to an opportunity, she also realized that not all opportunities are equally good, nor could all be followed up at the same time – as demonstrated when she and her partner decided not to hire a certain person who could have helped them significantly grow the company but perhaps not move it in the right direction. This evaluative approach was key when deciding whether to pursue an opportunity.

If we look at the opportunities connected with the key initiatives featured in Donna’s story, we can infer that Donna and her partners always seemed to evaluate first and foremost the potential benefits that could result from taking on an opportunity vis-à-vis their vision. Once an opportunity passed this most critical test, then they would consider their capacity to take it on and the risks involved in doing so, including an analysis of forecasted revenues and expenses. They then balanced risks and benefits, usually weighing “missing the boat” risks much higher than “sinking the boat” risks – as shown across their decisions to buy the company, get a new technology partner, and write a proposal for producing the White House Conference. Having all the needed resources in house was an element they considered as part of this process, but this did not necessarily constitute a “project stopper”; if their analysis deemed a project worthwhile, they were confident they would be able to find a way to come up with the needed resources. This was illustrated in both the technology initiative and the White House Conference.

“We knew we didn’t have the people, we didn’t have the time, but it was just too good to pass up!” (Donna)

This decision-making approach mirrored the one the company explicitly followed whenever the opportunity for a new contract came along, as reported earlier in the story.

Donna and her collaborators were also always very aware that there was usually only a limited time for making a decision about an opportunity – make the decision, or the decision will be made for you!

“You see, in a crisis you have to make decisions … there’s not a lot you can do … if you stop and dither about it, the opportunity is gone.” (Donna)

While this reality hit them most dramatically at the time that they had to decide whether to make an offer to take over their bankrupt company, when they had only a week to make that decision, their success throughout depended on making these types of decisions timely and then acting without delay.

  3.2.3. Donna’s practices about risk

Donna’s story provides clear evidence that she was willing to take considerable risks and could handle risk well. Assuming a debt of $500,000 when buying the company would be considered a big risk by many. However, Donna did not look at it this way, as made clear by the following comments:

“What’s the worst thing that could happen? The worst thing that could happen is that we don’t succeed, and then what? Okay, we go get a job someplace else … it’s not like you’re going to hurt somebody.” (Donna)

“[When we took on the business] I saw an opportunity to save a business that I had put an awful lot of energy into, and the people, and to do something that had not really been done that way before. That was what fascinated me.” (Donna)

“I think some people are comfortable with risk, and we were comfortable with the risk. We had a strong belief that it would succeed. I honestly can’t tell you that we thought about failure. We really didn’t … it wasn’t … it just wasn’t there.” (Donna)

These comments suggest that Donna did not take on the risk of a large debt without careful thought, yet her evaluation of this risk was unusual. While she clearly considered the probability and consequences of a worst-case scenario (i.e., failing), she also weighted the elements of a worst-case scenario against potential outcomes. The worst-case scenario was that they might not succeed and would have to search for new employment. Yet another potential outcome was keeping a job for her and her partner and others who would stay on with them in the new venture (who would all lose their job otherwise). Furthermore, a third potential outcome was that they could be very successful and earn much more than before, as well as gaining deep personal satisfaction. In making this evaluation, Donna’s confidence in their ability to succeed played an important role. She also clearly gave greater importance to “missing the boat” risks (i.e., missing the opportunity to turn-over a company and have greater impact in the meeting planning market) versus “sinking the boat” risks (i.e., having the new company fail and being left with a huge debt to be repaid).

Donna’s attitude toward mistakes and failure as an inevitable part of the process, as well as a potential learning experience, was also an important part of her risk-taking mindset and practices.

“First of all, I don’t think you should be afraid to make a mistake. You don’t want to make a stupid mistake, but if you’ve done your due diligence and you’ve thought about something and you’ve gone ahead – I think many people are afraid to make a mistake and they’re so afraid to make a mistake that they don’t do anything” (Donna)

Consistent with this belief, Donna was also very tolerant of people in her organization making a mistake, as long as it was an isolated event. However, if she recognized a “mistake pattern” (i.e., if the same mistake was repeated often), she felt that it called for some intervention, so as to promote the needed changes in behavior.

At the same time, Donna’s risk-taking was calculated, and she purposefully worked at minimizing risk in a few complementary ways. Far from ignoring the possibility of negative events and outcomes, Donna tried to forecast possible problems so that she could always, as much as possible, be prepared to face those problems. This was illustrated by her decision to double the equipment and staff in the case of the White House Conference. Part of her confidence also came from the expectation that she would carefully monitor the implementation of each major new initiative, as by doing so she could make adjustments as needed. She also always tried to reduce start-up costs and, thus, financial risks, through a number of bootstrapping strategies as well as refraining from making long-terms investments in new personnel. The initial decision to diversify Fusions’ client portfolio to include companies and associations can also be seen as a strategy to reduce risk. Finally, Donna often started small, to try out new ideas without great financial consequences, to mitigate potential unknowns and, thus, risk. This was demonstrated in the gradual growth of the technology side of the business.

  3.2.4. Donna’s practices about resources

Donna did not consider finances her strong suit, and she relied on her first partner for this aspect of the business. Yet she certainly had a good understanding of the economic drivers of her company, which allowed her to actively participate in all key financial decisions of the business. Along with her partners, she was willing to give up some immediate gains to finance worthwhile innovations, and she recognized the critical importance of doing so. Donna was well aware of the importance of watching the cash flow and establishing realistic financial goals each year, carefully monitoring that these goals were achieved.

“We watched our bottom line so carefully, that even at the end no bill was paid that either my partner or I didn’t sign off on it, because we watched cash flow.” (Donna)

She also recognized the importance of always watching costs by utilizing bootstrapping strategies, and this became a consistent approach across time. At the beginning, when they were trying to get out of debt, bootstrapping was clearly essential. However, even after they achieved that goal, they continued to do things by themselves as much as possible rather than hiring help or consultants, and maintained a very lean staff, hiring new employees only after they had secured a consistent stream of contracts that warranted a new hire.

“That is always the challenge with small businesses. You can’t ramp up with staff until you have the contract, but sometimes you can’t get the contract until you have the people to do it. …that’s why I keep saying we bootstrapped, that’s what I mean, it’s a pay as you go, you get the contract … you do not get out for seed money, you manage it within.” (Donna)

It is also worth noting that the compensation scheme they implemented for their employees had been specifically motivated by their awareness that, in order to succeed, everyone in the company had to feel ownership in financial success of the company – and this included all employees keeping a keen eye on costs. Both Donna and her partner explicitly identify this compensation structure as “one of the things that really made us work and work really well”, although it also had some unexpected repercussion when the company grew:

“It was a very important piece. … Number one, I think it showed people … we’re all in this together. Number two, it created an award system that allowed somebody who was in the administrative secretarial position … to participate in as much as Donna or I or anybody else, so their value increased, their loyalty increased, their focus increased, their passion increased. By the same token I would say that … as we grew, … that forced management to really justify why we would want to bring in [new] people.” (Donna’s business partner)

While Donna and her partners made all the financial decisions, as mentioned earlier, they thought it was very important to be transparent with their employees about those decisions and the company’s financial situation – especially as the employees would be directly affected by those decisions in their paychecks through their gain sharing!

“We always made sure that [our employees] knew where we were in terms of our profit margins. We always let them know for sure what was happening financially. If we didn’t get a big contract, they understood the ramifications.” (Donna)

As mentioned earlier, Donna and her partner did not hesitate occasionally to embark on worthwhile initiatives, even if they did not have all the resources upfront. They were confident that they would be able to secure those resources, and indeed they were always able to do so through a combination of using internal resources (for example, reducing gainsharing to fund specific initiatives, as in the case of technology, or securing new contracts) and partnering with other organizations or individuals (i.e., by hiring free-lancers or entering into formal partnerships with other companies as in the case of the White House Conference). It is important to note that these partnerships, while critical, did not come without risks or costs, as in each case they had to give up some control and autonomy as well as some of the profits.

Donna was well aware of the importance of hiring the right people and putting them in the right place in the organization. As mentioned in Donna’s story, at the time of buying the business, she and her partner carefully selected the staff they were going to ask to stay with them – and they did so based not only on their skillsets but also on their attitudes and alignment with their vision. As they hired people over time, they very purposefully tried to achieve the same balance, although Donna recognizes that it is very hard to make this judgment:

“Always the hardest challenge is picking the right people. … The more I did it, the more I learned to go with my guts as opposed to fancy resumes and an impressive list of accomplishments.” (Donna)

Although she got better at it over time, she did not always get it right. When she did not get it right, though, she did not hesitate to take quick action:

“Sometimes when we hired somebody it worked, we would pick the right person, sometimes we didn’t, sometimes it was clear that we had picked the wrong person and usually that became obvious within a couple of months, and we were able to sit with that person and say, you know what, this isn’t for you, it isn’t for everybody.” (Donna)

Another important decision in terms of human resources had to happen any time they got a new contract. For this, a team and a project manager had to be selected to work on it. The decision of who would work on the project was usually made by the partners. The partners would select the project manager, making sure his/her skillset and personality were a fit and would promote successful outcomes for that specific project. For any project that required a team, the project manager would then select the team members. On those rare occasions when they did not have sufficient in-house talent to take on a new contract that they had pursued, they either partnered with other organizations (as in the case of the White House Conference), or they pulled together free-lancers they knew well. In these instances, Donna or her partner would lead these externally-sourced teams.

  3.2.5. Donna’s practices about growth

As is often the case with a successful start-up company, Fusion grew significantly after Donna and her partner took over the company in 1989. By the time she left in 2003, they had increased their staff and revenues by almost tenfold. Indeed, there was an explicit drive to grow the company, especially at the beginning, as reflected in a continuous increase in the financial goals they set for themselves each year:

“Our immediate vision was to have a nice little business that would allow these four people and my partner and I to make a good living and to enjoy our job. … but, see, what happens is your vision grows, at least with us, and as we became better at what we did, we began to see that we could have a bigger impact. So we began to grow the vision … with every one of those benchmarks in terms of dollars comes a huge change.” (Donna)

“It never occurred to us that you didn’t want to grow.” (Donna)

At the time, growing the business just seemed the obvious thing to do. Reflecting on this point during one of our interviews, Donna articulated the following complementary reasons for such a drive to growth: (a) their belief in the quality of their product led them to the desire to influence as many people as possible; (b) the bigger the company, the more successful you felt; and, (c) the success of a company requires that you do not remain static, as not growing may actually be more risky, and potentially lead to failure. In Donna’s own words:

“I think part of it is if you’re really committed to what you’re doing and you really feel you’ve got a wonderful service or product, or whatever it is you’re offering people, you want to grow because you want more people to have that. I think there’s a part of it that is also ego … I think it is “look what I built” … look at how big this is … its not showing off, its not that, but it’s the feeling that what you’re doing has built something that is lasting, that’s important, and that has been able to help people … and then there’s also that generative process that if you’re not growing, well, what are you doing? Plateauing doesn’t sound too cool, you’re dying … I don’t know about other cultures, … but in America I think there is a cultural predisposition to feel that growth is good … I’ve never known anyone who was an entrepreneur who said gee, we have a nice little $5M business lets keep it that way.” (Donna)

At the same time, Donna also pointed out that “It shouldn’t be growth at all costs”. She identified a couple of occasions when they decided against pursuing an opportunity that had the potential to move them to the next level, because it would come at costs that they were not willing to take.

Yet growth never came without a cost, as a number of things changed as the company grew. As already mentioned in the “story” component of this chapter, the expansion into technology meant hiring several new and quite different employees from the “tech world”. With that came the risk of losing the culture they had been so careful to create.

“You have people who are working in the technology group, you have people working in the meeting area … their whole set of skills is very, very different, their personality type is very, very different, and so what you wind up doing is trying to find ways to motivate two very different sets of people.” (Donna)

Moving from a staff of 4 to over 30 also changed the dynamics of the working place and working relations at Fusion, leading to more differentiated responsibilities and less collaboration. Certain things did not work as well as before, like gainsharing and bonuses in particular. Even more importantly, the growth that the company was experiencing meant big changes in the co-owners’ roles and responsibilities. At first, Donna was working in the trenches alongside with the other employees and being directly involved in the production of meetings; yet later she had to learn to teach others how to do what she had been doing and develop explicit systems for what she had naturally engaged in. This allowed others to take on roles that she had played, so she could move to different things. Developing leadership within the organization beyond the partners was also a key element, as illustrated by the example about the training of the project managers, discussed earlier in the Opportunities section.

The drive for growth that is typical of entrepreneurs sometimes is not limited to growing the size and scope of the company but may also involve growing the impact of one’s ideas and products. This was certainly true for Fusion, as they recognized early on that they could not, and did not want to, be the only ones that could support productive meetings. So they began to offer professional development to other companies in the same business, by presenting at conferences and providing workshops. When asked why they would want to help the competition, Donna replied that this was actually an important strategy for them to gain visibility and recognition in the field for being at the cutting edge, and thus, market their company. She also noted that oftentimes, as the participants in their training sessions learned what was needed to organize good meetings, they realized they were not able to put that into practice themselves – so Fusion ended up being contracted to provide support in running some of the meetings organized by other meeting businesses.

3.3. Other interesting elements of Donna’s case

The unique challenges and opportunities of starting a new business

While a main theme of this book is highlighting the similarities between starting a new business and other types of innovations, it is also important to recognize that there are some unique elements that operate when starting a new business – or taking over and turning around a failing business, as Donna did. First of all, the entrepreneur in this case is operating with no “safety nets”; there is no larger and established organization that can back up the new venture and absorb temporary cash shortages or help in unlucky circumstances. This creates a sense of urgency and risk that is unique to the situation. At the same time, with a start-up there is also relatively less to lose than in an established organization, and while some mistakes can mean death for the start-up, failing fast may be more acceptable and less costly. Indeed, it is interesting that Donna reported her perception that the decision to embrace the new technology and take on a third party was actually harder to make than deciding to take over the bankrupt company in the first place.

Starting a new organization also presents unique opportunities in terms of creating expectations and systems that are conducive to innovation and entrepreneurial behavior. Developing a true entrepreneurial culture within Fusion was indeed an explicit goal for Donna and her partner from the very beginning. This cultural framework led them to devise their compensation plan to include bonuses and gainsharing as incentives for employees to be cost-conscious as well as take initiative for projects that would move the company forward. In addition to incorporating this compensation plan into their company’s culture, Donna and her partners established a number of structures and other practices to affect the culture of their organization in entrepreneurial and productive ways, including open communication about the company’s financial position and the rationale for key decisions the partners made for the company. These practices provided employees with multiple opportunities for input in key decisions and also served as a system for gathering new ideas and developing leadership within the organization.

They also communicated their expectations to employees by modeling these expectations themselves, and by carefully hiring people that shared the same vision and philosophy. Another element that was very important for Donna and her partners was to create an organization in which people trusted and genuinely cared about each other. As a result, most of Fusion’s employees shared the same drive to be the best in their field and provide the highest quality meetings for their clients.

Dealing with a disruptive innovation

This case study is also the only example in this e-book where we find an organization dealing successfully with a “disruptive innovation” in the sense of Christensen (e.g., Christensen, & Raynor, 1997; Christensen, 2013). Donna and her original partner were able to recognize that the advent of the Internet along with software such as PowerPoint were not just new sustaining technology; and that is, something that would help them do their current job better. Instead, they realized that these and other forthcoming technologies would radically change the ways in which meetings could and would be conducted. For example, presenters would no longer need external companies like Fusion to produce slides for presentations, an activity that at the time was an important revenue generator, as now PowerPoint would easily allow clients to put together their own presentations and make changes even at the last minute. Donna also recognized that websites could enable virtual activities to take place before and after the actual meeting. Taking on these new technologies required Donna’s company to totally rethink its practices and priorities, which was especially hard to do when they were experiencing considerable growth and success. Yet they recognized that not reinventing their practices and priorities would have meant the demise of their company over the next few years. Christensen and Raynor (1997) points out how difficult it is indeed for established companies to take such a step, and the authors provide evidence that very few established companies have been able to do so successfully.

What enabled Fusion to navigate disruption and transition successfully? Although established, Fusion still could be considered close to a start-up company in terms of size. Being small, they had a flexibility that allowed them to change practices and look for a different type of client. They also recognized the importance of taking on a new partner and new staff that could devote attention uniquely to developing the disruptive innovation, while other staff could maintain core, and proven, revenue-generating activities – at least until there was a market and enough clients for the new initiatives. This is one of the successful strategies identified by Christensen and colleagues.

The limited and contextualized role of business plans

Learning entrepreneurial skills is often associated with learning to develop and write business plans. It is interesting to note, though, that even in the business context of this case study, business plans played a rather minor role. Donna and her first partner never had the time to do a typical business plan when they decided to take over their company and restructure it, although obviously a lot of planning took place at that point. They also did not write a business plan at the other most critical points in their company’s development, when they decided to embrace the new technology and acquired a new partner to lead that initiative. The initiatives that called for a written plan, instead, tended to be those in which external funding was needed and those who would be providing the external funding needed to see a compelling plan to give their support. This was the case with their bid for the White House Conference as well as other major contracts to produce specific meetings. At the same time, even when they did not produce formal written plans, they always put considerable thought and planning into their key decisions.

Shared leadership at the top

Donna was the only one of our subjects that shared her top position in the organization with one or more partners. She explicitly mentioned that she would not have ever considered buying and operating a company if she had had to do it by herself.

“I know for a fact that I would have never … bought the business on my own. It was buying it with [my business partner], it was having the relationship with somebody that we would go through this together and we would be able to share all of that.” (Donna)

Interestingly, this happened not only with Fusion but also when later she started a new venture, Collaboration seemed indeed an essential way of operating for Donna:

“I learn by discussing, by sharing ideas, by debating; everything synthesizes and becomes clearer through that process. So for me, collaboration is absolutely critical and I like it. … I do my best work when I do it collaboratively.” (Donna)

As confirmed by her first partner, as well as Donna herself, they had a very close relationship – as trusted friends as well as business partners, and they complemented each other well because of their different strengths:

“[He] spent a lot of his time on sales, I spent a lot of my time in the design, the operation – working the teams … We were equal in terms of our authority … [but] we did different things and that was the strength, actually. [He] was better at the finance side than I was. I’m much better at the creative, design, development, people side of meetings … so we were a great balance” (GS1, 610-615)

The three partners at Fusion Productions made all the big decisions together. While they usually were in agreement, this did not happen all the time, and so they developed some rules about how to deal with conflicts as well as the expectation that everyone had to be willing to give up sometimes.

A master at networking

While networking was a skill many of our subjects demonstrated to a high level, nobody was such a master at it as Donna. She very spontaneously would talk with anyone about her business and what they were trying to accomplish, while at the same time trying to learn as much as possible about the other person’s interests. Having seen her “in action”, we can attest that she did this in a way that was both purposeful and genuine, and as a result she often uncovered many new connections and possibilities for partnership. Truly listening to other people to understand what they are passionate about and ensuring that her suggestions for collaboration will benefit both parties, were key elements of her very successful approach. Equally important, she was very good at following up on the possibilities thus uncovered, taking the lead for the next steps and doing what it took to make those next steps happen. Over time, she developed a powerful network of individuals, both locally and nationally, that she could tap into. Yet she also had no hesitation to pick up the phone or e-mail people she did not know but whom she thought could be helpful to her organization or could provide her with valuable information and advice about a specific initiative.

Interestingly, this behavior was so natural to Donna that she never spontaneously mentioned it in our interviews, nor was she able to describe or analyze what she does so well – even when explicitly asked about it.

3.4. Concluding thoughts about Donna’s case-study

As illustrated throughout her story, Donna’s entrepreneurial spirit and never-ending quest for “what’s next?”, led her to continuously engage in new initiatives and innovations – in addition to buying and transforming a bankrupt company, which many would consider one of the most typical examples of entrepreneurship. She truly could “transform ideas into enterprises that added value” (Green’s definition of entrepreneurship – see Figure 2.1) for her company and the clients it served, and she did so in a few complementary ways. Besides starting and growing the company, Donna also constantly looked for innovations that would differentiate the company from its competitors and keep it at the cutting edge – the technology initiative being the most significant and transformative example. A characteristic of these innovations is that they were not a one-time event, but were, at the outset, intended to be sustained over time. In contrast, initiatives such as the production of the White House Conference were something that happened only once and had a clear beginning and end; yet, such high-risk/high-rewards initiatives could also be transformative for the company and have a long-term effect.

When taken together, what was the “value-added” that Donna’s initiatives contributed? Probably the most obvious one is avoiding a bankruptcy and significantly growing the worth of an almost defunct business. But these economic gains were not the only, nor perhaps the most important ones, that Donna’s entrepreneurial activity produced. Because of Donna’s actions and foresight, both partners and employees were able to benefit personally from participating in a business they believed in, while making a living doing it.

“I think we enhanced the lives of the people that worked for us. … they have better business life than they would otherwise, and frankly they’ve made a lot more money than they would have anyplace else because of the way we shared [gains].” (Donna)

Just as important for Donna, her clients were able to have their objectives better met from the ways in which meetings were constructed. And meeting participants also benefited as they learned more and did not waste precious time.

“We added value because our clients accomplished what they wanted to do with training and education. In other words, clients were able to really effect change in people because of the techniques we brought to running the meeting, that was very neat. The attendees … valued the whole experience of the meeting and the relationships they were able to forge because of the technology we put into place.” (Donna)

We chose to start with Donna’s case-study as she is the subject closest to the prototypical example of an entrepreneur – i.e., someone who starts a new business, and thus we believed she could concretely illustrate many of the key ideas and findings from the literature on entrepreneurship that we introduced in Chapter 2. And this is indeed the case, as her story documents and provides a concrete illustration of how:

• Even business entrepreneurs are driven by a vision that is not limited to making money.
• Entrepreneurs are opportunity-driven, and opportunities play a key role in many of the initiatives they engage in.
• Entrepreneurs often need to make quick decisions so as not to miss a window of opportunity, and they do not hesitate to do so.
• Entrepreneurs are willing to pursue worthwhile opportunities, even if they do not have all the resources in hand.
• Entrepreneurs are very aware of the need to deal with scarce resources, and they develop creative ways to use those resources most effectively.
• Entrepreneurs do not ignore risk, but rather they evaluate it in unique ways based on their knowledge of the situation, ability to uniquely connect ideas and concepts, and self-efficacy.
• Entrepreneurs must be able to address creatively the many problems encountered as they engage in innovations.
• Entrepreneurs are driven to grow their organizations and/or the impact of their ideas.

As it will become evident in the other case-studies included in this collection, many of these statements were also true for other entrepreneurial educators working in more traditional educational settings and roles.