The Business of People

STORY BY: ANNIE KREIGHBAUM
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: BRIAN FITZSIMMONS

With century-old institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia on the same playing field, the 7-year-old Acton School of Business might be considered the underdog in a merciless world of commerce. Founded in 2002 by four University of Texas professors-turned-institutors, Acton has always gone by a different game plan, forfeiting some of the techniques and ideals set in place by its predecessors to create a more streamlined Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program for the few students qualified to gain admission. Since its endowment, the burgeoning school has received top honors from the likes of Entrepreneur magazine and has even outranked its Ivy-league counterparts in the Princeton Review thanks to its founders’ fresh approach. So what exactly is the Acton difference? According to Executive Director Georgia Thomsen, it’s all about the teachers.

“We believe if you’re going to learn how to fly a plane,” Thomsen says, “you want to train with someone who has actually been in the cockpit.” It is this reasoning that requires all professors to hold jobs outside of the classroom. But not just any job - each professor must have started, grown, and continue to harvest a business in order to teach at Acton.

This industrialist mentality serves as the basis for the school’s entire MBA program, as Acton solely offers MBA’s in Entrepreneurship. The one-year accelerated program is a focused degree formed from the founders’ dissatisfaction with the more traditional two-year program. Students of the latter were more interested in job-hunting than attending class as their load became lighter during their second year of study. So, when forming their own plan of action for the Acton School, the founders decided to nix the fluff that traditional MBA schools offered and to focus on entrepreneurship alone. They knew that by staying highly centralized, teaching only those things necessary to entrepreneurship, that Acton’s in-depth program could be completed in less than a year. Accordingly, they expect that same concentration and drive from their students.

“If they’re willing to work an 80-90 hour week, they can get in and they can get out without losing too much time or money,” notes Thomsen. During those many hours per week spent in group study sessions, classes, workshops, factory tours, and good old-fashioned hitting the books, students are also required to take a Life of Meaning course.
Thomsen explains that the course, unique to Acton, encourages students to “do a lot of research and really discover what they’re good at, what they’re passionate about, and what it is that the world needs. When they find the place that those three things intersect, that’s going to be their calling.”

Students learn that it’s not all about making the big bucks. One of the exercises in the Life of Meaning course involves writing a letter to someone that has sacrificed something in their life to aid the student in theirs. Afterward, the student must call that person and read the letter aloud, in hopes that upon graduation, Acton students will sacrifice for others as well. Another requires students to interview 10 business professionals in different stages of life in order to gain perspective on life in the business world. Thomsen has observed time and time again that after interviewing older entrepreneurs, students come to find that it’s not about money or success but, “how they gave back that was most important.”

Don’t be fooled by the sentimental tactics used in the Life of Meaning course- Acton students maintain quite the aggressive edge. In fact, the Princeton Review has honored Acton students as the third most competitive, beating out Harvard, SMU, and Rutgers to name a few. This healthy competition just comes with the territory at Acton, with most of its selectively small body of students having seven years of work experience under their belts before admittance. These hard-working, driven individuals find a common bond in surviving the rigorous course load, building tight-knit relationships over their ten months spent together. Acton fosters this sense of community through mandatory study groups, which started earlier this year, thanks to Skype sessions during the summer months so they come prepared to dive into major studies later.

Lord Acton, the 19th century scholar for whom the school was named after, once said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” His namesake’s attention to unity rather than autonomy is what makes Acton so extraordinary. It’s a school that nurtures entrepreneurs in the business of people, not in padding their pocketbooks for shallow causes. Far too often have we seen industry bigwigs fall hard without morals to sustain them, and it’s those morals, along with the experienced staff and handpicked classmates, that keep Acton students a cut above the rest.

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