Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Bob Organ visited the AIM Class of 2016 and talked about 'disruptive innovation'


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Bob Organ, Director, Northwestern Mutual Capital, (Marquette University alumnus) gave a lecture in the AIM program on “Digitialization and its Disruptive Potential” during class on September 2, 2015.  He talked about how digitalization is increasing at an exponential pace and is creating a path for disruptive innovations (e.g. Uber, Telsa). Mr. Organ also presented a fundamental framework for understanding this phenomenon and some of the potential effects on consumers and businesses. He noted that disruptive innovation helps create new markets and eventually disrupts an existing market - displacing earlier technologies.
After hearing the lecture the students are required to scour various sources of information (i.e. Bloomberg, FactSet, Wall Street Journal Business and Technology, The Economist, etc.) to find stories about a business or technology that they see as having a future ‘disruptive potential’ impact on their industry sector. Here are some examples of disruptive technologies that were discussed both during and after Mr. Organ’s visit:
·       Robots and Drones

·       Crowdsourcing

·       Outer-Space/Asteroid Mining

·       Hybrid Electricity Generation and Storage

·       Big Data

·       Machine Learning (Artificial Intelligence)

·       Virtual Reality

·       Digital Currency

·       Internet of Things

·       Genetic Engineering / Cloning

 
2105 AIM alumnus, Mike Stankovsky, Analyst at Northwestern Mutual Capital, also visited with the AIM students. He talked about his experiences at NMC and career track opportunities in the area of private equity.  

Dr. Krause, AIM Director, commented on the lecture, “This was a great way to start the semester since Bob and Mike talked about the implications of disruptive innovation from the perspective of the financial analyst. They gave the students ideas about how to identify which businesses and industries that are most susceptible to disruptive moments; how potentially disruptive technologies can be valued; how to evaluate the disrupted businesses; and how to avoid missing the key inflation points.”
 
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