Special Events - The Spirit of Enterprise

Larry delivering the keynote address at the official opening of IT Sligo's Innovation Centre.

Niall McEvoy, Head of IT Sligo's Innovation Centre, Dr. Martin McGeough, a start-up entrepreneur with offices at the Centre's incubator, and Terri Scott, President of The Institute of Technology at Sligo with Larry at the gala opening.

Larry with Paul Richards, President of Mead Johnson Philippines and Michael Joseph, CEO of Performex.

Camille Caniza, Human Resources Manager of Mead Johnson Philippines with Larry.

We have numerous other clients and projects lined up for 2010 in the Philippines including Kraft Foods, the Association of Pharmaceutical Trainers, and two of the country's great universities:

UAP's top business and economics team at the recent lunch meeting with Larry.

Below: Dean Buenvieja (left) of Ateneo's Business School with Larry.

Right: Larry teaching at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business -- half the class were faculty members and half were medical students or doctors.

Right: The first Spirit Of Enterprise Seminar in Sofia, Bulgaria -- promoted and hosted by Ascent Group Bulgaria -- led by the husband and wife team of Katya Sotirova and Milen Ivanov -- shown above with Larry.

1. Ireland - Our Newest Affiliate In Europe: The Institute of Technology at Sligo, Republic of Ireland, is our newest Affiliate in Europe. Founded in 1970, with 6,000 students and 550 staff today, it is focused on preparing young Irish citizens for innovative and entrepreneurial careers in science, engineering, business and the humanities.

IT Sligo's dynamic new President, Terri Scott, who is a friend and former client from other organizations in both Northern Ireland and The Republic, has asked us to support their ambitious entrepreneurial efforts on a long term basis. More specifically, we are working directly with Niall McEvoy, brought in from the private sector to head IT Sligo's newly launched Innovation Centre, on entrepreneur development projects in Ireland -- as well as with other universities around the world. The Centre also manages an Entrepreneur Incubator facility, on campus, for local start-up companies. You can learn more about innovation and entrepreneurship at IT Sligo by clicking on their website at: www.ITSligo.ie.

2. The Philippines - Our Newest Affiliate In Our Oldest Asian Market: Performex, Inc., founded by Michael Joseph, is our new Affiliate for The Philippines. Manila was our very first overseas office way back in 1984 and we are pleased to continue and expand our presence there with Performex. We've known Mike Joseph since he was trained as a "Spirit Of Enterprise" instructor some eight years ago. You can contact Performex directly via their website: www.Performex-Asia.com. Mike was able to sign up his own client, Mead Johnson Nutrition (Philippines) as the first customer of the new Performex/Farrell partnership.

Mead Johnson has a wonderful history. It was founded in 1905 by Edward Mead Johnson, who had earlier founded Johnson & Johnson, with his two brothers, in 1886. Today, Mead Johnson worldwide, with revenues of $2.8 billion, net profits at $400 million, and a market valuation over $9 billion, is a Standard & Poor 500 company. In 2009 it successfully completed it's split-off from Bristol-Myers Squibb -- and is once again a fully independent public company. Perhaps not surprisingly it has adopted "corporate entrepreneurship" as one of its core values! The Philippines is the company's fourth largest market worldwide.

The top management team of Mead Johnson Philippines at The Spirit Of Enterprise Seminar.

A. University of Asia and the Pacific: UAP was founded by Harvard-educated and world-renowned economist Dr. Bernardo Villegas. Bernie, an early advisor to former President Cory Acquino and a huge advocate for corruption-free entrepreneurial enterprise, is a long-time friend to The Farrell Company. In fact several years ago UAP actually acted as our Affiliate for a period of time -- which was most helpful to us. In 2009 Larry addressed the faculty and student body and then re-grouped with UAP's top business and economics team to strategize a joint action plan for alleviating the country's chronic problems of joblessness and poverty -- via large scale, government funded projects to develop entrepreneurs and family owned businesses. These are issues close to Bernie Villegas' heart and we look forward to cooperating with UAP in this way.

Larry at the entrance to the University of Asia and the Pacific.

B. Ateneo De Manila University: Founded in 1859 by Spanish Jesuits, Ateneo is The Philippines oldest and perhaps best know university. Today it boasts some 12,000 students and over 1,100 staff. Albert Buenvieja, Dean of the Graduate School of Business is determined to make Ateneo a world-class center of entrepreneurial education and recently invited Larry to address his faculty and students. Afterward the Dean and Larry agreed that the School of Business and The Farrell Company will begin cooperating on a wide range of entrepreneurial programs and activities. This will include using our Getting Entrepreneurial! Seminar curriculum in the MBA program, Larry personally delivering our Spirit Of Enterprise Seminar on corporate entrepreneurship in the school's Executive Education programs, and jointly exploring strategies to help The Philippine government create a more entrepreneurial economy across the entire country. Under the Dean's leadership, Ateneo has already embarked on an ambitious effort to provide entrepreneurial training to all university students regardless of their discipline -- be it medicine, science, the arts, or whatever.

3. The 'Spirit Of Enterprise' Arrives In Bulgaria:

Ascent Group, our Affiliate for Southeast Europe, held the first ever Spirit Of Enterprise Seminar in Bulgaria. It was a public session designed to introduce our entrepreneurship training to the corporate and government markets of Bulgaria. As the picture below illustrates, the seminar was overflowing with participants. We especially want to thank Managing Director Katya Sotirova for the successful marketing of this first event. The session even had two participants from Global HR, a human resources magazine in neighboring Macedonia -- where we are now planning a similar public seminar for 2010!

4. Transforming Business At Cambridge University: As reported in our last newsletter, Larry has joined the Board of Advisors at the prestigious 800-year-old British university's Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning department and agreed to lend his expertise to the "Enterprise Solutions to Poverty" and "International Journal of Enterprise Solutions to Poverty" projects, respectively.

Dr. Peter Heslam, Director of Transforming Business at Cambridge and in charge of the aforementioned programs, recently asked Larry to help edit his important new booklet titled: Transforming Capitalism: Entrepreneurship and the Renewal of Thrift. To learn more about these exciting new initiatives at Cambridge, or to obtain a copy of Peter's latest booklet, please visit: transformingBusiness.net.

5. Harvard Business School - In The 'Other' Cambridge: The December 2009 issue of HBS Alumni printed a nice update on Larry's post-Harvard Business School career accomplishments. Says Larry: "It's quite a nice coincidence to now have some connection with both Cambridges across the big pond - Cambridge, UK and of course Cambridge, MA!"

6. India - The New Entrepreneurial Paradise: With 1.2 billion smart and energetic people, the World's 2nd-largest country has become the new frontier of global entrepreneurship! India is simply brimming over with entrepreneurial fervor. The official host for our late 2009 trip was the visionary group of entrepreneurs and academics building India's newest --and most unique -- business school located in Cochin, Kerala. We recently signed a three year Memo Of Understanding with Kerala International Business School (KiBS) to help them build a world-class entrepreneurship center within the business school. Larry went to India to begin that work, which included some public appearances and press interviews -- all of which started a blizzard of requests for more presentations, press interviews, and numerous offers to partner with local organizations in setting up entrepreneur training and consulting businesses. One exciting connection and request came from the just-started Entrepreneur magazine of India -- an affiliate of the well established Entrepreneur magazine in the US. Bipin Chandran, the Editor-In-Chief, flew from Mumbai to Cochin to hear Larry speak and immediately asked him to be its regular 'International Columnist.' Larry accepted on the spot and his first column will appear in the February issue.

7. The (New) Entrepreneurial Age Book: We are pleased to announce that we have reached agreement with Allworth Press, the publisher of The Entrepreneurial Age, for a reversion of rights to the book. Larry's literary agent, Bob Diforio, handled the negotiations with Tad Crawford, the Publisher of Allworth Press. Our objective in securing the commercial rights to the book, first published in 2001, is that we want to update and expand this important text, and get it re-published this year as a new edition.

And finally, speaking of Larry's books, he and Sylvia recently had dinner in Hong Kong with two of his favorite entrepreneurs, who were interviewed for, and featured in, The Entrepreneurial Age. Po Chung is today the Chairman Emeritus of DHL Asia -- and was a co-founder of that great company. It should be noted that DHL Worldwide was The Farrell Company's first large scale client, using our training for all divisions of the company and ultimately training about 1,000 DHL managers around the world. Victor Fung is a unique type of Chinese entrepreneur, who graduated from MIT and the Harvard Business School, and then taught at HBS -- only to return to his Hong Kong roots and assume the leadership of his family's 100 year old company, Li and Fung, the largest Chinese trading company in Hong Kong -- and guiding it through several decades of remarkable growth. His classic quote in the book rings more true today than ever: "Companies should be about 80% entrepreneurial and 20% managerial. Unfortunately most large corporations have that ratio in reverse!"