Kerrin Myres is a woman who has found success through taking risks, making mistakes, getting up and trying again.
As the first graduate of the doctorate of business administration programme offered at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs), she has achieved an incredible goal and is excited for what lies ahead.
Myres’s thesis investigated entrepreneurship and new-venture creation in South Africa. Her body of research and findings has turned current thinking on its head.
As the daughter of an entrepreneur, Myres grew up with the topic and for many years was adamantly opposed to entering such a world of risk and instability.
“It’s not just financial risk that’s involved; it’s personal risk for you and your whole family,” she says. “You are essentially putting the livelihood of those you love most on the line. It’s hectic!”
She changed her tune in 1994 as the winds of change blew across South Africa. Those same winds made their way across to Australia, found Myres and shook her into a whole new direction. Armed with an MBA from Macquarie University and an energetic passion for the new South Africa, she and her husband returned home.
“The place was throbbing with optimism and opportunity. As the world opened its doors wide to us, the time was ripe for new ventures. I became an entrepreneur.”
It was a challenging time for Myres. Many people told her she was putting her family’s future at risk and she should rather get a “proper job”. Firmly believing in her idea, she pursued her own management consulting business but ignored some very good advice along the way.
“I was hearing stuff from all sides and couldn’t differentiate the good from the bad,” she says. “I made so many basic mistakes and eventually I was running a business that I had no interest in. It had morphed into something I didn’t believe in. It had to go.”
Not long after that, Myres paid a visit to a business associate at Gibs who introduced her to Professor John Verster, the director of the doctorate of business administration programme that was being developed.
“As soon as John started telling me about the programme, I knew it was for me. I knew I had to do it and badgered him to hurry up and get it going,” she says.
She applied, was accepted and spent the next five years immersed in a journey of learning and self-discovery. The doctorate of business administration offered by Gibs does require an MBA as a prerequisite and did re-expose Myres to those disciplines, but it is not, in her view, a progression from an MBA.
“An MBA is broad-base learning whereas the doctorate of business administration is incredibly topic-specific,” she says. “It sounds almost like a cliché to say, but you have to be passionate about learning to complete the DBA. It’s a process of extremes — five years of high highs and low lows. There are moments of incredible loneliness, excitement, self-indulgence and success. It won’t appeal to everyone.”
The Gibs DBA is best described as a research degree that requires original, empirical study that contributes both to the knowledge or theory as well as practice in the real world of business.
With supervision, Myres developed her thesis topic: “Venture Creation: Developing Theory from South African Case Studies”. From day one the “wow!” moments came fast, she says, and her views of the world she thought she knew were challenged and changed.
“We’ve always been told that to start a business you need to find the idea and then away you go. That’s what I did and that’s how the developing world does it. South Africans need to do it differently and our successful entrepreneurs already are. South Africa is a country full of ideas. It’s not ideas you need to find as an entrepreneur here, it’s resources. Take time to prepare and build capabilities and then bring in the idea.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg of all Myres’s research and evidence. This research, like all PhD work, is vital for South Africa as we aim for a bigger global identity.
The Gibs doctorate of business administration, the first of its kind in South Africa, “challenges one to focus on creating new knowledge, new approaches and new insights to enhance business decision-making”, says Michael Goldman, a senior lecturer at Gibs.
“Through rigorous and scientific research methods, we are equipped to investigate complex and unanswered questions in a way that makes the findings valid, relevant and applicable.”
The question now is what Myres plans on doing with her DBA.
There are plenty of opportunities: teaching, writing a book, further research and, of course, job offers.
Would she consider starting her own business again? With a smile she replies: “In a way a DBA graduate is similar to an entrepreneur in that he or she shares a desire to change the world. In other words, you never know.”
Nicola Wilson is communications manager at the Gordon Institute of Business Science