Today’s entrepreneurs define success on their own terms

The American landscape is rich with legends of entrepreneurship. Driven by a spirit of adventure and a restless imagination, pioneers like Henry Ford, Estee Lauder, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates catapulted into the lore of 20th century enterprise.

Now, introducing a few entrepreneurs for the 21st century: Jaime Mautz, Cari Enayati, Prabakar Mahalingam. If they currently lack the cachet of a Gates or an Oprah, they aren’t concerned. Define them as creative, resourceful, networked, Web savvy and globally minded. Define them as San Diego State University alums.

Entrepreneurship is a hot topic in academia these days. A recent New York Times report said more than 1,600 colleges now offer courses in the subject, up from a meager 300 in the 1980s when SDSU’s Entrepreneurial Management Center opened its doors.

College entrepreneurship programs are now evaluated by national magazines. US News & World Report this year ranked SDSU’s program 22nd in “America’s Best Graduate Schools” and Entrepreneur magazine included SDSU in a 2005 list of the 100 best entrepreneurship programs in the country.

But while the academic focus on entrepreneurship is recent, it reflects centuries of profound change in the global economy, said Michael Cunningham, SDSU clinical professor of entrepreneurship and a veteran entrepreneur himself.

Cunningham is founder, CEO and president of Cunningham Graphics International (CGII), a business he grew from a one-press operation with 11 employees to a $185 million company with 1700 employees and 18 production facilities around the world. It was acquired in 2000 by Automatic Data Processing Corporation.

“By definition, entrepreneurship is a function of opportunities,” Cunningham said. “The hierarchical organizations of yesterday are giving way to flatter, more ad hoc companies that foster innovation. This has created a feeling of empowerment among young people eager to exploit the opportunities in today’s information-centric economy.”

Born for business

San Diego State, with its well-established College of Business Administration, MBA and EMBA programs, has produced thousands of entrepreneurs. In March, the college honored 10 alums with the 2006 Charles Lamden Rising Stars of Business Awards.

Among the honorees were: John Crisafulli, whose Behind the Scenes catering business served broadcasters at 19 venues during the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin; Kirk Imamura, who turned a faltering recording studio operation into the profitable Avatar Studios with Eric Clapton and Sheryl Crow as clients; Mike Erwin, the San Diego County Commercial Association of Realtors’ 2002 “Industrial Deal Maker of the Year,” with more than 600 real estate transactions completed since 1999; and Jaime Mautz, who built a million dollar business from a great idea and a great deal of hard work.

SDSU MBA students helped create EnviroBinz.

Mautz personifies the “born entrepreneur.” As a young girl, she created knick-knacks and sold them in the neighborhood. She recalls setting up her own shop in competition with the school snack bar. Her decision to enroll in SDSU’s MBA program was no surprise to friends and family.

A month before Mautz received her degree in May 2000, she established Pacific Ink with her husband, Alex, and brother, Kyle Smith. Originally run out of the Mautz’s home, Pacific Ink offers same day shipping of inkjet, fax and laser toner cartridges.

So far, the company has doubled sales annually, offering more than 2,000 products from locations in San Diego and the Midwest. But even with the company’s growth, Mautz and her husband continue to job share as they’ve done from the beginning. One of them is always at home with their two young children, a priority for the couple.

In 2002, Mautz was a finalist for the San Diego Business Journal’s “Women Who Mean Business” award. She, her husband and brother are currently developing an idea for a second company to systematically recycle empty ink cartridges. Their business plan calls for hiring developmentally disabled employees to handle portions of daily operations.

"We’ve spent the last six years building our lives, and our company, taking one possibility, one opportunity at a time, while creating a little history,” Mautz said. “In the end, we want to be philanthropists. We want our business to serve our passion, which is to help people.”

Going for the green

A similar philanthropic theme runs through 34-year-old Prabakar Mahalingam’s entrepreneurial career. And, like Mautz, he put his SDSU education to work before the MBA was in hand. The proverbial light bulb sparked one evening, while in the Gaslamp district with friends, when Mahalingam couldn’t find a place to recycle his empty beverage container.

Prabakar Mahalingam

“Every bin was a concrete garbage container,” he recalled. “Finally, I had to toss it in a garbage bin with lots of other plastic bottles. It occurred to us that there were no recycling bins in high traffic places like Hillcrest, North Park, PB and the Gaslamp.”

The problem roused Mahalingam’s innovative instincts. With another MBA student, Cari Enayati, and her husband, Shahin, he developed the concept of a recycling container with aesthetic merit – Envirobinz.

And by selling advertising space on the bins, the Enyatis and Mahalingam could provide them to the city at no cost.

In early 2006, with 25 bins on the streets of National City, the partners took their business plan to Venture Challenge, an annual competition sponsored by SDSU’s Entrepreneurial Management Center. The contest is a forum for graduate students from around the world to present new business plans to a panel of prominent industry executives. Winners receive advice from the experts and $15,000 in seed money to jumpstart their company. In2006, the EnviroBinz team won first prize.

Cari Enayati

But there’s more than winning at stake for Mahalingam and the Enayatis. They’re proud of the 30 percent reduction in trash accumulation along National City Boulevard since installation of the recycling containers. The civic-minded EnviroBinz partners also plow 10 percent of profits into community development.

“If you don’t have compelling reasons for starting a business, you won’t make it through the hard times,” Mahalingam said. “Our ideals and values for this company come from our principles and faith, the Baha'i faith, which emphasizes social entrepreneurship, self-sustaining solutions and giving back to the community. Business has to empower everyone in the community.”

The ethical entrepreneur

Mautz and Mahalingam are typical of young CEOs who view success through a lens of social responsibility. Disillusioned by corporate malfeasance at former industry titans like Enron and Tyco, many up-and-coming entrepreneurs deliberately incorporate green initiatives, philanthropic conventions and a strict code of ethics into their business plans.

SDSU students seeking a framework for corporate responsibility need look no further than the campus’ Corporate Governance Institute (CGI), run by Lori Ryan, associate professor of management in SDSU’s College of Business Administration.

Ryan’s research and teaching focus on the intersection of ethics and corporate governance, and both her graduate and undergraduate classes are informed by unique academic credentials – a master’s degree in philosophy and a Ph.D. in management.

As director of the CGI, Ryan is positioning the institute to become a dominant center for the study and application of responsible corporate governance principles with a board of advisors that includes San Diego’s business leaders.

“Our students have access to the most current research in the field and to a premier group of experts and guest speakers,” Ryan said. “Having the institute on campus puts us on the cutting edge of corporate governance education.”

And on the cutting edge is where these aspiring entrepreneurs will have to stay in order to compete in the 21st century.

Related information

• College of Business Administration
• Entrepreneurial Management Center
• Venture Challenge
• Corporate Governance Institute

Credits

• Story by Coleen L. Geraghty
• Photographs by Tom Farrington, Instructional Technology Services
• Graphics by John Signer

This story originally appeared in 360: The Magazine of San Diego State University