By Kerri Pepoy,Staff Writer

HEBRON – It was a college art class that unlocked the entrepreneurial spirit in Michael Zane.

“I wanted to create an art form,” said the entrepreneur who launched U-lock technology and frustrated bicycle thieves. “If I did an art form, there was no way this art form could not succeed in the world,” he told Hebron Academy students Wednesday

And lest anyone snicker that a lock is not an art form, they might ask New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, which gave Zane’s U-lock a permanent home in its design collection.

Zane, a 1966 Hebron graduate, told students that they can also be successful entrepreneurs, as long as they’re willing to work hard to market and communicate a good idea. “Bottom line is, we’re all entrepreneurs,” he said. “The question is how far do you want to take it.”

That’s the attitude that a pilot program at the school, titled “Leadership and Entrepreneurship” aims to instill. Zane, who lives on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, was part of a lineup of Hebron alumni who spoke to upper-school students this fall about business and entrepreneurial skills as part of the program.

Zane launched his company, Kryptonite Corp., in 1971, traveling across the country in a Volkswagen van to hawk his ultra-strong steel U-lock to bike dealerships, guaranteeing it would thwart bike theft.

The lock was street-tested in New York City twice, when Zane secured it to expensive bikes in high-theft neighborhoods and watched from nearby as droves of thieves tried in vain to break it.

Kryptonite Corp. eventually landed large customers, including NASA and the military, and its sales reached $27 million in 2000. The company was purchased in 2001 by Ingersoll-Rand Co., which made the lock a flagship brand in its portable security business unit.

The pilot program at Hebron was launched by a donation from Gene Whitman, a 1954 Hebron graduate. Whitman attended Brown University and became a successful investment banker, but his liberal arts education didn’t quite prepare him for the real world, he said.

He wants Hebron students to have a keener understanding of economics and entrepreneurship.

“I became successful but it was by accident, because I made the decision that I was going to work three times as hard as anyone else,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday. “At a liberal arts school, we didn’t have a clue as to what the world was about. I had some ideas about what the school should do to teach kids about what life would be like when they had to go out and earn a dollar.”

Whitman wouldn’t comment on the donation amount, but said he gave it to Hebron with the condition that the school offer entrepreneurial studies. “Why not go out and take a shot if you’ve got some ideas? I feel it’s an obligation of an educational institution to give the kids a grounding on this,” he said.

Other program speakers this fall included Ed Stebbins, a 1981 graduate who is co-owner and brewmaster of Gritty McDuff’s; and John Schiavi, a 1958 graduate who owns Schiavi Enterprises in Oxford. Financial manager Bert Babcock, a 1961 graduate, will speak at a future date.

Brian Cheek, the program’s director and Hebron’s annual fund director, said students also will participate in business planning workshops in the winter trimester that he will co-lead with Michael Gordon, a Babson College business professor who helped develop the program. The school also may arrange internship opportunities for students at local businesses in the spring.

He said so far, the feedback about the program from students, parents, and faculty has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I’d love to see this become part of the curriculum,” he said. “The true basis of our economy is ideas, innovation, and opportunity. That’s what our country was built on and that is still the case today.”