When Jeffrey D. Dunn ’77 needs advice about how to run a major television network, he turns to his 12 year old.

A few weeks ago, Nickelodeon, the children’s cable network where Dunn is the Chief Operating Officer and deals with strategy and finances, aired a much-hyped half-hour episode of its “SpongeBob” show.

His son Rob watched the show alongside Dunn. When it was finished, he turned to his father and said, “You oversold that.”

“He was right,” says Dunn, who is 47. “Kids are incredibly savvy media consumers.”

When Dunn was about to become a father, he realized that having a full-time job would be a difficult commitment to balance with the responsibilities of family life. So he did the only logical thing he could think of and turned his career into one that would involve frequent interaction with children.

“If you’ve got to work, there are few things better to do than work in a kid’s business,” he says.

Where Credit Is Due

As an undergraduate, Dunn worked at Harvard Student Agencies (HSA), which he says helped him conclude that business was a better career for him than his previous interests—journalism and law.

“The intellectual challenge was there,” he says, “but it was also an opportunity to work with people in a way that I thought probably wasn’t present in those other two professions. I came to believe that you…could probably impact more people in a company than you could in a lot of other professions.”

Dunn attributes to Harvard both his interest in business and much of his success.

At HSA, he managed the custodial divisions, which he calls an “amazing experience.”

And so after graduating from Harvard in 1977, Dunn applied to Harvard Business School.

But before beginning his studies, Dunn took two years working at Time Magazine in the marketing department. There he began to notice the strong influence television was having on the print media market.