No ivory tower for Dolan

PHIL Dolan has a message for any of his former Sydney colleagues who might think Perth is just a provincial mining town.

“That’s a perception that some people probably do have, but I think it’s outdated,” he says.

“People who think that haven’t been here recently.

“Western Australia is the place to be, it’s on the right side of the economic cycle, and on the right side of history in some sense.”

Professor Dolan, who completed a PhD at Stanford University in San Francisco, goes a step further, saying Perth and his new university have a world-class opportunity.

“One of the things that struck me at Stanford, which is right in the middle of Silicon Valley, was how well connected and what a good job the university did in leveraging off its contacts in the IT industry,” he says.

“Perth and UWA have that same kind of locational advantage.

“We’ve got world leaders just down the road; we’ve got the biggest and best-run resource companies in the world right here.”

Against that backdrop, one of the opportunities he wants to explore is the establishment of an executive course in resource company management.

It’s one of many ideas that Professor Dolan floats in his interview with WA Business News, during his first week in his new job.

Sitting in the UWA Business School’s two-year old, $50 million building overlooking the Swan River, Professor Dolan acknowledges the achievements of his predecessor, Tracey Horton.

“Tracey has done a fabulous job building very strong industry links and a great team of people, and the physical infrastructure is great,” he says.

Professor Dolan also appreciates the calibre of the business school board, which is chaired by company director Mark Barnaba.

“One of the things going for us is that we have a board made up of very senior people from industry,” he says.

“Having people like that involved in the school makes a huge difference.

“They are all very good friends of the business school, and they are well connected downtown, so they are able to keep us on the straight and narrow in terms of not going into esoteric research ideas that have no practical application.”

However, Professor Dolan has his own firm ideas on the role of the business school, and won’t need a board to stop him straying.

“The one thing you wouldn’t say is that the school is an ivory tower, disconnected from the real world,” he said.

“I’m very conscious that universities are funded by taxpayers’ money and you don’t want to go off and do things that are self-indulgent.”

Having said that, Professor Dolan does see opportunities for academics, who don’t have the same pressure as business executives to meet annual or even quarterly targets.

“We have the luxury of being able to step back and focus on research that might have a longer-term pay-off.”

Professor Dolan’s professional background is in the finance sector in Sydney.

A mathematics graduate from Macquarie University, he has also completed an MBA at the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of NSW in addition to his PhD at Stanford.

He describes his time at Stanford as “a fabulous experience”.

“It’s a very strong, research intensive university.”

Professor Dolan completed his PhD working under the supervision of Bill Sharpe, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics at the time.

Professor Dolan noted that a global ranking of universities released this week had Stanford at number two, behind Harvard.

The top Australian institution was the University of Melbourne at number 60, while UWA was ranked in the 102-150 band, making it Australia’s fifth best.

After completing his PhD, Professor Dolan joined Macquarie Group (formerly Macquarie Bank) in 1990 in its asset management division, where he rose to be a division director and head of investment research and development.

“I had a strong quantitative background. I was very confident with numbers and formulas and so that was a logical place to end up,” he said.

“It was a good experience in terms of learning the practicalities of the funds management industry.”

During his 13 years at Macquarie Group, Professor Dolan also worked as a guest lecturer at Macquarie University, “just to keep my hand in, and to stay up to date with the research”.

His next career move, in 2003, took him to Macquarie University in a full-time capacity, as director of its Applied Finance Centre.

With 1,200 students, he said the centre is the largest of its kind in Australia, and has run courses not just in Sydney but also Melbourne, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and Perth.

“The program has been very successful; one of its features is its closeness to industry.”

Professor Dolan was promoted last year to head of the Department of Applied Finance and Actuarial Studies at Macquarie University, before agreeing to shift west to his new role.

He told WA Business News that one of his priorities was to showcase the talent at the business school.

For instance, he wants to post video clips of business school researchers on the school’s website.

While the traditional written profiles have a role, he prefers to “hear someone talk and register their enthusiasm”.

Another idea is an annual debate featuring top students, faculty members and business executives on a topical policy issue.

Building links with industry is another priority, for instance by getting faculty members to present lunchtime talks in the city at major companies.

“What you typically find is that those firms are so focused on the day to day, they don’t have time to step back and read the academic literature or reflect on things, whereas that’s what academics are paid to do, and that’s a way we can add value for our downtown contacts,” he says.