Smith Business is published twice a year— spring and fall—by the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The Smith School has become one of the world’s leading business schools in transforming its curriculum to reflect the needs of leadership for a global economy powered by technology and entrepreneurship. Smith students learn how to apply information technology to create innovation and drive business growth, while the school’s world-renowned faculty create new management knowledge and identify leading business practices for today’s networked world.

The Smith School’s strengths in both academics and research are reflected in its rankings and other accolades. The school is ranked #5 in the world for research by the Financial Times, which also ranks the school’s full-time MBA program #17 in the U.S. The school’s part-time MBA program is also ranked among the nation’s best and is annually rated No. 1 in the Washington, D.C. – Baltimore region by U.S. News & World Report.

Download Smith Business Magazine, Spring 2007

PDF format, 6.4MB, 36Pages.

CHIPPING AWAY AT THE COMPETITION
Al Carey BSOS’74 leads snack foods giant Frito-Lay to new heights.

When you think of products that demonstrate the way technology has changed the business world, computer chips immediately leap to mind. Corn chips? Not so much. But Frito-Lay North America, a division of PepsiCo, is a great example of an older and established company that has leapfrogged its competitors by savvy exploitation of the digital economy’s key drivers. With high-tech underpinnings, a global footprint and an entrepreneurial drive that any dot-com startup would envy, the company is adapting, thriving and taking a mega bite out of its snack-food competitors.

At the helm of this $11 billion global enterprise is Smith School Board of Visitors member Al Carey (BSOS ’74), who took the reins as president and chief executive officer of Frito-Lay last summer. Since then he’s been shuttling back and forth between PepsiCo’s headquarters in Purchase, NY, and Frito-Lay’s home office in Dallas, TX. “I’m running fast right now,” Carey admits. More than 47,000 people work for Frito-Lay. The company owns 15 brands worth more than $100 million, including Tostitos, Doritos and Cheetos, and generates 38 percent of PepsiCo’s profits.  ...

View Smith Business Magazine, Spring 2007

Editor’s Note:  Leaders for the Digital Economy

Leaders for the digital economy: they are the men and women who recognize the remarkable opportunity to engage with the forces of entrepreneurship and innovation, technology and globalization, and the power of these forces to transform the world in which we live and do business.

In this issue of Smith Business we showcase the many ways in which members of the Smith School community—our students, alumni, professors and friends—are harnessing the forces of the information age and, in the process, truly leading in the digital economy. From the president of Frito-Lay, leading innovation at the snack giant, to Smith professors using high-tech tools to develop best practices in management and marketing, to alumni mastering change in their careers and industries, this issue of Smith Business reveals what’s behind people and organizations who are seizing the opportunities of today’s digital world.

We invite your to share own thoughts and stories for inclusion in future issues of Smith Business on the eAlumni Network forum “Leaders for the Digital Economy.”

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