For the dean of a prestigious business school, Roger Martin has a surprising attitude towards money. Rather than 'making the world go around' as the conventional wisdom goes, cash, says Mr Martin, is only a by-product of what the true vocation of the good business person should be: serving customers and making good-quality products and services.
The 52-year-old dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is no academic in an ivory tower. The former co-head of international strategic consulting company Monitor Group was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top seven 'innovation gurus' and one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. He was in Hong Kong in April as a guest speaker at the Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre's Thought Leaders Forum: The Innovation Imperative.
His attitude to the world of business was hewed in a small rural community of Mennonites in Canada where his father founded a successful stock feed business. His elder brother still runs the company. Traditional Mennonites - a Christian faith that dates back 500 years - do not believe in modern-day conveniences such as the car and instead rely on horse and cart. The young Roger got an early introduction to real customer service because his family was one of the few in town to own a vehicle.
'I lost count of the number of times I was awoken by a horse and buggy in the front yard and there would be someone from the community - perhaps a young woman in labour or an injured farm hand,' he remembers. 'It would have taken them three hours to get to the hospital in their horse and buggy, so my father bundled them into his car and took them - a journey of about 15 minutes. He did this because he loved his customers, not because he wanted to make money.
'He went on to make a good deal of money out of his business, but that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was taking care of his customers.'
His Mennonite upbringing may have something to do with the look of distaste that appears on his face when our conversation turns to one of the hot topics of the day: the bonuses paid to the former high-flying financiers partly responsible for the current global financial crisis.
