Vote McCombs for SXSW 2019
The University of Texas at Austin hopes to send business faculty and alumni experts as featured speakers — on everything from Blockchain and AI to ethics and entrepreneurship — to next year’s South by Southwest, and we need your support in the community voting process.
How to vote: Scroll down and click on the individual panels you’d like to see at SXSW 2019. You’ll be taken to the SXSW page for each entry where you can vote “up” on your favorites (on the left hand side of the page). If you don’t already have a SXSW profile, you’ll be prompted to create one. It takes just a minute.
Please cast your votes before the deadline of Aug. 30 and then share this page with colleagues, friends, and fellow alums so they can vote, too. All UT-affiliated speakers in bold.
BLOCKCHAIN & CRYPTOCURRENCY
1. Blockchain Deathmatch: Permission-ed vs -less
Cesare Fracassi (moderator), Associate Professor, Finance, McCombs School of Business; Christopher Ferris, Distinguished Engineer and CTO Open Technology in the IBM Digital Business Group; Neha Narula, Director of Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab; and Jimmy Song, Bitcoin Core Contributor and Venture Partner at Blockchain Capital
Cutting through the fog of blockchain and cryptocurrency hype, what is real and what is buzz in the world of blockchain? The technology has recently been divided into two main camps: Permissioned (private) blockchains, which primarily focus on bringing blockchain-based solutions to enterprises, and permissionless (public) blockchains, most notably Bitcoin, which aim to bring a fully decentralized cryptocurrency and distributed applications to the masses. Both camps have been hailed as world-altering breakthroughs, and accused of being worthless fads. Will the real blockchain please stand up?
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BRANDS & MARKETING
2. Ethical Shopping: Why Good Intentions Go Bad
Julie Irwin (moderator), Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor, Business, Government and Society, McCombs School of Business; Kyle Freund, Media Manager, Fairtrade America; and Danny Zane, Assistant Professor, Marketing, University of Miami Business School
Ethical consumerism — the marketing and purchasing of products that minimize harm to workers or the environment — is a popular value. Yet typical buyers don’t consume ethically. So if we care about other people and the environment, why don’t we shop like we do? Two behavioral economists will explain their research into the discrepancy between what shoppers say they want and what they actually buy, while a fair trade goods producer will give the marketers’ perspective.
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ENTREPRENEURSHIP & STARTUPS
3. Navigating Business Overseas Like a Seasoned Pro
Deirdre Mendez (moderator), Associate Director, Center for Global Business, McCombs School of Business; John Doggett, Senior Lecturer, Management, McCombs School of Business; and Executive Coach Terry Kahler
Success in global contexts requires businesspeople to recognize and respond to complex communication cues and cultural differences. John Doggett, Terry Kahler, and Deirdre Mendez will share their research and experience-based insights on intercultural business in an engaging discussion that involves audience input through online responses. The speakers will discuss how to recognize and manage culture-based tendencies and provide examples from a successful turnaround at Dell’s operation in Brazil.
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4. Entrepreneurial Mindset: Can It Be Cultivated?
Luis Martins, Department Chair, Management, and Director, Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship, Growth and Renewal, McCombs School of Business
It’s a golden time for entrepreneurship — not just launching startups, but also starting new projects within companies. Using the science of entrepreneurial mindset, top researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are creating an evidence-based approach to increasing the next generation of future founders, CEO’s and “intrapreneurs” within corporations. The CEO Project: Cultivating Entrepreneurial Orientation, leverages academic research and survey tools to help students gain insights into their entrepreneurial and innovative traits and tendencies, develop their knowledge and skills in innovation and entrepreneurship and increase their success as leaders in complex, dynamic environments.
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5. How Do You Show Up as an Authentic Leader?
Karen Landolt, Assistant Professor, Business, Government & Society, McCombs School of Business; and Solu Nwanze, MBA ’12, Director of Business Operations and Executive Coach, Zendesk
Your employees need someone to inspire them to be the best they can be. They crave personal and professional development — to flourish. In this workshop, Nwanze will ask attendees to examine how they infuse values into the things they do with themselves and their team and encourage them to observe their biggest challenges and roadblocks through a different lens. Then, Landolt will examine the same challenges utilizing strengths-based leadership principles.
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6. PitchTexas: Graduate Startup Pitch Competition
Roger Stewart, MBA ’19, Entrepreneur Society
In an opportunity of a lifetime, best-in-class student-led startups from across the United States will compete live on stage to win over entrepreneur & venture capitalist judges for cash prizes, bragging rights, and a chance to impress and inspire the SXSW crowd. Each team will pitch in front of the audience, field tough questions from the judges, and do their best to win PitchTexas 2019. Previous year’s contestants come from a wide variety of industries, including medical devices, fin-tech, and CPG. Startups are leveraging the cutting edge in terms of technology, offering solutions build with AI, block chain, and cloud computing.
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FUTURE WORKPLACE
7. People Analytics: HR’s New Tool to Compete and Win
Sekou Bermiss, Associate Professor, Management, McCombs School of Business; and Ethan Burris, Associate Professor, Management, McCombs School of Business
People Analytics is different from the “human resources” practices prevalent twenty years ago. Today it incorporates a data-driven, evidence-based approach to managing people at work. Those working in People Analytics strive to bring data and sophisticated analysis to bear on people-related issues, such as recruiting, performance evaluation, leadership, hiring and promotion, managing teams, and compensation. In this workhop, participants will engage with evidence suggesting that doing so sustains competitive advantage and improves firm performance (revenue, stock price, customer satisfaction, retention, and safety).
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HEALTH & MED TECH
8. To Err Is Human. To Solve Is Necessary.
Edward Anderson, Wright Centennial Professor for the Management of Innovative Technology, Healthcare Innovation Initiative, McCombs School of Business; and Keegan Warren-Clem, Adjunct Professor, Business, Government and Law, McCombs School of Business, and founding director of Austin Medical-Legal Partnership
Deaths due to adverse events and mistakes in hospitals is now the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States. In 1999, when ‘To Err Is Human’ was published, at least 100,000 people were dying needlessly each year. That number has more than doubled — even while hospitals have attempted to improve. If a 777 Jumbo Jet fell out of the sky every day, we’d hold the airlines accountable. What’s missing in health care?
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9. The Role of AI in Disease Detection and Prevention
Maytal Saar-Tsechansky, Associate Professor, Information, Risk, and Operations Mgmt., McCombs School of Business
Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digitized medical data are transforming healthcare as we know it. The talk will discuss key challenges and how they are being addressed by innovative AI technologies, and facilitate two key transformations in healthcare: early detection and prevention. We will review the key challenges and how AI opens opportunities to offer effective, scalable, and personalized coaching on diet, exercise, and behavior modification.
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INTELLIGENT FUTURE
10. Getting Smarter about Smartphones
Adrian Ward, Assistant Professor, Marketing, McCombs School of Business; and Kaiwei Tang, CEO of Light
In the last 10 years, smartphones have rapidly — and radically — transformed the way we connect with information, entertainment, and each other. At the same time, these devices have come to dominate our attention. They put the world at our fingertips, and rarely leave our sides. But at what cost? In this session, learn about the science of smartphones and cognition from a psychologist and marketing professor who has spent the last decade investigating how smartphones affect attention, memory, and happiness. Then, hear about how tech companies are exploring new approaches to mobile technology, including The Light Phone — a device that is “designed to be used as little as possible.”
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11. Big Ideas in AI: Solving Problems… Since 1696
James Scott, Associate Professor, Information, Risk, and Operations Mgmt., McCombs School of Business
Artificial intelligence seems new on the scene. But most of the big ideas in AI are decades or even centuries old. Do you have an Amazon Echo? If so, you can thank Grace Hopper: the first person ever to talk to a computer in English (1955). Excited about AI in health care? You can learn a lot from Florence Nightingale, who started the first data-science revolution in medicine (1854). Keen on AI for Smart Cities? Look no further than Isaac Newton’s second career, as Master of the Royal Mint (1696). No matter where you look in AI, you’ll find an idea that people have been kicking around for a long time. In this talk by a data scientist and co-author of AIQ: How People and Machines are Smarter Together, we’ll explore the deep history behind the key AI technologies of the future.
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SOCIAL IMPACT
12. Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions
Cara Biasucci, Creator & Program Director, Ethics Unwrapped, and Robert Prentice, Professor and Chair, Business, Government & Society, McCombs School of Business
This workshop introduces behavioral ethics — the scientific study of how and why people make the ethical (and unethical) decisions that they do. Leaders have special vulnerabilities that they should be aware of in order to guard against them. A filmmaker and a behavioral ethicist will lead attendees through an interactive demonstration of the award-winning Ethics Unwrapped program, housed at UT Austin and used by hundreds of companies and more than 1,000 colleges and universities worldwide, and learn how to tailor these free resources to fit their organization’s needs.
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13. Impact Investing: Can We Do Good Well?
Meeta Kothare, Managing Director, Social Innovation Initiative, McCombs School of Business; Rakesh Apte (BHP ’07), Investment Director, Global Innovation Fund; and Dan Hanson, Head of Impact Investing, Jana Partners
Impact or sustainable investing, the use of private capital to pursue financial, social and environmental goals simultaneously, has gained extraordinary momentum in recent years. As resources become more scarce and our global population continues to increase, the need for innovative solutions that help our planet is reaching fever pitch. More and more investors are looking to channel their dollars into companies and initiatives that help responsibly grow our planet and meeting the diverse needs of people, communities and business. But is it working? Are these investments paying off, in terms of both performance and doing good? Can impact investing live up to the hype and reshape financial markets? Can investors do good for society and the planet while doing well for themselves?
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STYLE & RETAIL
14. Operation Retail: How IoT Leads to In-Store Success
Ioannis (Yannis) Stamatopoulos, Assistant Professor, Information, Risk, and Operations Mgmt., McCombs School of Business, and Erik McMillan, CEO of Shelfbucks (BBA ’03)
Brick and mortar retail is struggling to compete with Amazon and other online retailers. One of the most popular and successful tools to create engagement and incremental sales in-store is the point of purchase display; however, execution of these displays has been a challenge for retailers and brands. Researchers at Texas McCombs have teamed up with Austin-based Shelfbucks to study a solution to the problem. The team is working on understanding what drives store manager behavior in this context and whether their actions can be predicted, whether and how store managers respond to these alerts, and, most important, measuring the financial impact of improving in-store display execution.
