Entrepreneurship | Entrepreneurial leadership in higher education: How leaders can drive change

yeah i had a bit of an unconventional ride or path to the presidency as at war i'm originally from plain old texas just north of dallas son of an army officer who served for five years i mentioned that because innovation is great entrepreneurship is great but having a sense of purpose and mission and having a life direction for me was wanting to serve my country like my dad did influenced a lot of what i did i went to the united states airport academy after i graduated there i was awarded a road scholarship So I spent a fair amount of time on the continent, spent three years over there, did my MPhil and my DPhil, which was my master's and my doctorate in politics, writing, ironically, about the U.S. Congress in times we've used military force in 1975 and 91.

It'd be a pretty short book these days, unfortunately.

But having said that, I did my doctorate.

I was still an Air Force officer at the time.

I went to flight school.

And, of course, exactly what you do after you get your doctorate is you go to flight school.

So I went to flight school.

Yeah.

I also became a chopper pilot, a helicopter pilot.

Did that for a short while and made a transition into the intelligence career field where I was selected after finishing the top of my class to go to Joint Special Operations Commander, JSOC.

So the Navy SEALs, Special Forces Rangers.

where I did intelligence operations and plans and then ran intelligence for the Air Force top tier special operations unit.

I know your listeners are going, what is this guy talking about? He's going to get into higher education soon.

I am, I promise you.

So I left the special operations command.

And I went into the corporate world.

I went to Bristol Myers Squibb, the large pharmaceutical company, rotated through this fast-tracked managerial program, sales, marketing, business development, strategic planning, finance, international project management.

And then I went to business school.

I went to Harvard Business School and arrived there right around September 11th while I was still in the Air Force Reserve.

Did my two years, including rewriting the Bristol Myers Squibb business plan in Africa between my first and second year.

Got called up.

At that point, as an Air Force reservist and went to Afghanistan to serve as an intelligence officer for most of the war and for that period, and also a little time over in the Philippines and Hawaii, mostly doing counterterrorism work.

Then I bumped into a guy named, whom we both know, Cameron, David Bourne.

I

was doing some work.