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What do you think today's business students should understand about the insurance industry to make it appealing to them as a career option? In insurance, the issues you deal with and the thought processes you go through are similar to those of other kinds of business. Insurance can be as exciting and stimulating as investment banking. After all, we are major institutional investors. Insurance can be as exciting as doing research.We do some of our own crash and damageability assessment research. Insurance also follows demographics and market trends. If someone is coming out of business school and wants to deal with real challenges and issues, we've got our fair share in insurance. What factors do you think will shape the insur- ance industry in coming years? Some changes will be caused just by demographic shifts. As the younger generation comes along, we need to understand how they interact and what they expect in the way of prod- ucts and services. We need to understand how to adapt from the models that have served us so well for many years. That's one of the biggest challenges the insurance industry will face. In the broader field of financial services, we will be asking people, "Do you have a financial plan, and is it current?" Everybody needs to go through that process. We'll see baby boomers aging, families planning for the future, parents saving for college, and individuals looking toward retirement. People need to start financial planning earlier than they typically think they do. That's part of the change happening at State Farm. Now we're in a position to talk to people about planning for the future, setting asidemoney, and considering some options. What do you see specifically in State Farm's future? I'd like to continue to expand our leadership in markets we serve. To do that, we need to continually assess, adjust, and move. We all have old shoes that we keep going back to because they're comfortable, but they might not be the best things to wear at the moment. It's important to recognize when you have to make a change to position the organiza- tion to succeed tomorrow. If you were asked speak to a graduating class of MBAs for 2005, what advice would you give? Know that the person you look at in themirror everymorning has amore profound impact on your success than anyone else. Realize that learning will be a lifelong process. Find something that really lights your fire and thatmakes you passionate.When it's all said and done, that's what life is really all about. ■ z Say goodbye to shallow. SmealSearch pushes your research to new depths. Powered by the eBusiness Research Center, SmealSearch provides the tools to explore a vast database of scholarly business documents with detailed analysis for each. Read the abstract, find similar streams of research, instantly download any document in multiple formats, and submit your own work to be indexed. SmealSearch offers much more than any other library for academic business literature . . . including Google™ Scholar. ™ Go deeper LOG ON AT http://smealsearch.psu.edu Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce. U.Ed. BUS 05-74 MPC79295 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2005 23