Category Archives: Zicklin Celebrates

 The Zicklin School of Business is turning a deeper shade of green as countless initiatives grow across the campus with issues of sustainability at the forefront. At the graduate level, Zicklin’s chapter of Net Impact (herein known as the Sustainable Business Club (SBC)) lies at the helm. Recently, the leadership of the SBC attended the national 2009 Net Impact conference at Cornell University along with 2,683 other participants and exhibitors representing numerous Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, professionals and academic institutions.

 Prior to the conference, Wal-Mart, an event sponsor, opened applications for their QuickPitch Challenge, giving a select group of entrepreneurs 90 seconds to pitch their sustainable product to a panel of Wal-Mart executives while at the conference. Ryan O’Connor, a Full-Time Honors student and Co-President of the Sustainable Business Club was among the few invited to enter the semi-final round, and was ultimately awarded status as a top-five finalist amongst prestigious competitors from top competing business schools. This is Ryan’s first-hand account of his experience during the challenge.

Looking at the list of corporate sponsors at this year’s Net Impact conference, I was pretty blown away. Free fair trade coffee and t-shirts from Starbucks and GAP, all the Honest Tea you could handle and a career expo that hosted the likes of Accenture, KPMG, Intel, FedEx, Microsoft and Morgan Stanley. All of these companies came to eye the future leaders of the business world because of a single commonality- we knew sustainability. We understood the triple bottom line and that put our talents at a premium.

Ryan O'Connor Semifinalist @ 2009 Net Impact Conference

Prior to the conference, I was preselected to participate in the Wal-Mart QuickPitch Challenge. I had spent the summer working for BagtheHabit.com, an amazing startup making chic-o-friendly tote and produce bags.  Their target market was unique and their value proposition was solid. I had worked with the two founders getting their house in order as a general management consultant focusing on pipelining wholesale deals. I knew if anyone was going to be receptive to the product, it would be Wal-Mart. So when they opened the call for entrants, you can bet your hybrid that I was going to take full advantage of the opportunity.

 90 seconds was all we were given. 90 seconds to tell them why they should invest in us. Think about every filler word you’ve ever used in a sentence. Every “like,” “uh,” or “um,” was now taking up prime real estate in the 90-second landscape that is known traditionally as the “elevator pitch.” These judges weren’t soft either. The nature of this competition was clear as the room filled with tension as the participants were picked out of a hat at random to make their case.

 The judges followed every initial pitch with 60 seconds of questions. They were fast and they were loaded. They had no time for hypothetical or half-baked ideas. This was not an “everyone gets a ribbon” kind of game and it showed after the first participant was cut off and excused. 

 I came prepared. I had the value proposition set, the competitive landscape down, and the market research fully analyzed. The best part?  It showed. I was forwarded on to the final round that consisted of five more minutes of the same rapid fire questioning. Finally, out of the initial 100 applicants, I was awarded a position in the top five. Not too shabby considering I was the only one representing a public institution and my performance outranked many others from top tier programs.

The experience reinforced a philosophy that I’ve carried with me since my first day here at Baruch. Business is not a question of what you know, but the practical application of what you can do. It’s a subtlety that all too often gets lost in translation. Put another way, if you graduate with a 4.0 but committed yourself to nothing else, you’re limiting your knowledge to academic exercises that are sterile at best. Business is messy. Deals are complicated and relationships drive success. Get out there and get involved. The dividends will come.

Ryan O’Connor
Co-President
Sustainable Business Club

Important Links

Zicklin Sustainable Business Club: www.sustainablebusinessclub.com
Net Impact: http://www.netimpact.org/

In its mission statement, the Zicklin School of Business is explicit about its commitment to scholarly research and knowledge creation.  Zicklin’s distinguished faculty are well noted for their contributions to the ever evolving global business environment.  One measurement of the Zicklin faculty’s success in this regard is the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) ranking of Top US Business Schools.   

The SSRN is a collection of scholarly work in each of the social sciences.  The SSRN eLibrary consists of hundreds of thousands of full-text documents submitted by the world’s leading journals and researchers.  These documents are accessible by academics, students, and practitioners from around the world. 

The SSRN tracks how many times each document is downloaded and associates that download with the document’s author(s) as well as the institution with which the author is associated.  This tracking process creates a measurement of importance for each document and ranks researchers and institutions in accordance to their level of scholarly importance. 

Baruch Zicklin ranks in SSRN's Top 25

Baruch Zicklin amongst the best in NYC

Each month, the SSRN publishes updated rankings of business schools and other social science institutions.  For business schools, the rankings are broken down by U.S.-based and international.  In total, 482 U.S.-based business schools are considered for the ranking each month.  For the third straight month, Baruch College Zicklin School of Business is ranked in the Top 25, placing it in the company of the world’s top research institutions.

In addition to institutional rankings, the SSRN ranks individual scholars.  10,000 authors, spanning business, economics, and law,  are included in this survey.  Two faculty members from Baruch College Zicklin School of Business are ranked amongst the top 200 authors, placing them in the top 2% in the world. 

Liuren Wu is a Professor of Economics and Finance.  His papers have been downloaded 5,359 times in the 12 months dating to November 2009.  This places him 123rd in the world.  In total, Professor Wu has 54 papers in SSRN’s eLibrary.  They have been downloaded a total of 28,590 times.  His most popular paper, Variance Risk Premia, which was co-authored by Peter Carr of NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, has been downloaded 1,924 times and recieved 53 citations, according to SSRN.

Turan Bali, also of Zicklin’s Finance and Economics faculty, placed 182nd in terms of the number of downloads over the last 12 months.  His 48 papers were downloaded 4,537 times this past year and 13,176 over their lifetime.  Professor Bali’s most popular paper Idiosyncratic Volatility and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns, co-authored by Fordham University’s Nusret Cakici, has been downloaded 1,476 times and cited 29 times.

Like other top-notch research institutions, Zicklin aggressively pursues knowledge creation and embraces its responsibility in preparing its community for success in the global economy.  As indicated by the SSRN ranking, the Zicklin faculty are recognized as leaders in business research.  Their work matters.  After all, the research being conducted by the Zicklin faculty not only affects scholarship, but resonates from Lexington Avenue, down Madison Avenue, and through Wall Street and beyond. 

Important Links:

Social Science Research Network:  http://www.ssrn.com
Professor Liuren Wu: http://faculty.baruch.cuny.edu/lwu/
Professor Turan Bali: http://faculty.baruch.cuny.edu/tbali/