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Scientific Sense ® by Gill Eapen: Prof. Prem Kumar is Professor of Information Technology in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and Professor of Physics and Astronomy in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. His current research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).Please subscribe to this channel:https://www.youtube.com/c/ScientificSense?sub_confirmation=1
Kendra Phillips and Joe Lynch discuss Ryder 2025 freight insights. Kendra is the VP of Global Transportation Management leading the managed transportation and brokerage divisions of Ryder System, Inc, a fortune 500 transportation and logistics company. About Kendra Phillips Kendra Phillips is the VP of Global Transportation Management leading the managed transportation and brokerage divisions of Ryder System, Inc, a Fortune 500 Transportation and Logistics company. Kendra is an accomplished and results-driven senior logistics & tech executive. She has proven success developing and implementing new tech products and leading large P&L driven organizations. Prior to leading Global Transportation Management at Ryder, Kendra was the Vice President of Service Delivery for Aurora Tech, a leading company in the autonomous vehicle sector. At Aurora, Kendra was responsible for designing, building, and implementing the services that compose Aurora's commercial product. This includes everything from Aurora's digital platform to its physical operations such as terminals and command center sites. Before joining Aurora, Kendra was fortunate to hold many different roles within Ryder, including Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of New Products. In that position she was responsible for overseeing the evaluation, development and deployment of new technologies and digital products for the Supply Chain and Dedicated Transportation businesses. Prior to CTO, she was Group Director of Southeast Operations for Dedicated Transportation Solutions for Ryder System, Inc. responsible for a $175M P&L and over 1,200 employees. Kendra earned her MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a Master's in Engineering Management from the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. Kendra holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Chemical Engineering with a specialization in Mathematics from Vanderbilt University. About Ryder Ryder System, Inc. (NYSE: R) is a leading logistics and transportation company. It provides supply chain, dedicated transportation, and fleet management solutions, including warehousing and distribution, e-commerce fulfillment, last-mile delivery, managed transportation, professional drivers, freight brokerage, full-service leasing, maintenance, commercial truck rental, and used vehicle sales to some of the world's most-recognized brands. Ryder provides services throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In addition, Ryder manages nearly 260,000 commercial vehicles and operates approximately 300 warehouses encompassing more than 95 million square feet. Ryder is regularly recognized for its industry-leading practices in third-party logistics, technology-driven innovations, commercial vehicle maintenance, environmental stewardship, corporate social responsibility, world-class safety and security programs, military veteran recruitment initiatives, and the hiring of a diverse workforce. Key Takeaways: Ryder 2025 Freight Insights Kendra Phillips and Joe Lynch discuss Ryder 2025 freight insights. Kendra is the VP of Global Transportation Management leading the managed transportation and brokerage divisions of Ryder System, Inc, a Fortune 500 transportation and logistics company. Kendra and Joe talk about the following topics: The state of the freight market Bid season trends Kendra's advice for shippers The increasing use of AI in logistics Cyber security The importance of selecting the right transportation partner Ryder System, Inc. is a Fortune 500 company specializing in transportation and logistics solutions. The company operates through three segments: Fleet Management Solutions, Supply Chain Solutions, and Dedicated Transportation Solutions. Ryder offers a range of services including full-service leasing, rental, maintenance, and used vehicle sales for commercial vehicles. The company also provides supply chain management services such as warehousing, distribution, and transportation management. Ryder operates a dedicated transportation network with drivers and equipment to meet specific customer needs. The company is committed to sustainability and has implemented initiatives to reduce its environmental impact. Ryder has a strong focus on technology and innovation to enhance its services and improve efficiency. Learn More About Ryder 2025 Freight Insights Kendra Phillips | Linkedin Ryder System, Inc. | Linkedin Ryder Ryder State of the Transportation Industry Automating the Warehouse with Gary Allen Ryder's Freight Market Update with Kevin Clonch Taming the Supply Chain Beast: Tech Solutions for Smoother Operations with Kendra Phillips The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube
Subscribe to Charles' Alpha Investor newsletter today: https://pro.banyanhill.com/m/2353545In this insightful episode of the Charles Mizrahi Show, we welcome back Mark Mills, a renowned energy expert and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Join us as we explore the intricate relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and energy consumption, and the significant impact this has on our future. Mark is also the author of The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s Mark shares his recent testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, providing a firsthand account of the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of AI and energy. We delve into the practical realities of electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy sources, discussing the hurdles that need to be overcome for a successful transition.The conversation also covers the massive energy demands of data centers, which are poised to grow even further with the advancement of AI technologies. Mark compares the current AI revolution to past technological advancements, offering valuable insights into the future growth and energy requirements of AI.For investors, this episode highlights promising opportunities in the energy and tech sectors, focusing on companies that stand to benefit from the AI boom. We also examine the role of government regulation in shaping the energy infrastructure and the need for policy reform to support sustainable growth.Tune in for a compelling discussion that blends energy expertise with forward-thinking perspectives on technology and investment. Mark Mills' deep understanding of the energy landscape and his vision for the future make this a must-listen episode for anyone interested in the evolving dynamics of AI and energy.Don't miss out on this engaging and informative episode that promises to broaden your understanding of one of the most critical issues of our time.Topics Discussed:● Introduction and Guest Welcome (00:00:00)● Discussion on Energy and AI (00:03:01)● Testimony Before the Senate (00:10:01)● The Reality of EVs and Renewable Energy (00:17:01)● Data Centers and Energy Consumption (00:25:01)● The Future of AI and Energy (00:35:01)● Comparison to Historical Technological Advances (00:45:01)● Implications for Investors (00:55:01)● The Role of Government and Regulation (1:05:01)● Closing Remarks and Future Outlook (1:15:01)Guest Bio:Mark Mills is a physicist, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. He was named “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society. He has written several award-winning books, including his latest The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. The Biden administration plans to eliminate fossil fuels as a form of energy generation in the U.S. by 2035. Not so, says Mark. Resources Mentioned:The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s Follow me on Social Media! X: https://www.x.com/CharlesMizrahi Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CharlesMizrahiAlpha/Instagram:
Kendra Phillips and Joe Lynch discuss taming the supply chain beast. Kendra is the VP of Global Transportation Management leading the managed transportation and brokerage divisions of Ryder System, Inc, a Fortune 500 Transportation and Logistics company. About Kendra Phillips Kendra Phillips is the VP of Global Transportation Management leading the managed transportation and brokerage divisions of Ryder System, Inc, a Fortune 500 Transportation and Logistics company. Kendra is an accomplished and results-driven senior logistics & tech executive. She has proven success developing and implementing new tech products and leading large P&L driven organizations. Prior to leading Global Transportation Management at Ryder, Kendra was the Vice President of Service Delivery for Aurora Tech, a leading company in the autonomous vehicle sector. At Aurora, Kendra was responsible for designing, building, and implementing the services that compose Aurora's commercial product. This includes everything from Aurora's digital platform to its physical operations such as terminals and command center sites. Before joining Aurora, Kendra was fortunate to hold many different roles within Ryder, including Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of New Products. In that position she was responsible for overseeing the evaluation, development and deployment of new technologies and digital products for the Supply Chain and Dedicated Transportation businesses. Prior to CTO, she was Group Director of Southeast Operations for Dedicated Transportation Solutions for Ryder System, Inc. responsible for a $175M P&L and over 1,200 employees. Kendra earned her MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a Master's in Engineering Management from the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. Kendra holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Chemical Engineering with a specialization in Mathematics from Vanderbilt University. About Ryder Ryder System, Inc. (NYSE: R) is a leading logistics and transportation company. It provides supply chain, dedicated transportation, and fleet management solutions, including warehousing and distribution, e-commerce fulfillment, last-mile delivery, managed transportation, professional drivers, freight brokerage, full-service leasing, maintenance, commercial truck rental, and used vehicle sales to some of the world's most-recognized brands. Ryder provides services throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In addition, Ryder manages nearly 260,000 commercial vehicles and operates approximately 300 warehouses encompassing more than 95 million square feet. Ryder is regularly recognized for its industry-leading practices in third-party logistics, technology-driven innovations, commercial vehicle maintenance, environmental stewardship, corporate social responsibility, world-class safety and security programs, military veteran recruitment initiatives, and the hiring of a diverse workforce. Key Takeaways: Taming the Supply Chain Beast: Tech Solutions for Smoother Operations Kendra Phillips and Joe Lynch discuss taming the supply chain beast including the following topics: Technology Considerations: integration capabilities, visibility & tracking, data analytics & predictive insights, scalability & flexibility, customer support & training, cost effectiveness & ROI. RyderShare, a digital platform designed to improve supply chain visibility and collaboration. It's offered by Ryder, a transportation company, and acts as a central hub for all the parties involved in getting goods from one place to another. Ryder's TM Control Towers act as a central command center for your supply chain, offering real-time visibility, data-driven insights, and proactive management of your transportation network. Ryder tackles transportation evolution with a two-pronged approach: internal development and acquisitions. Internally, they invest in R&D for cutting-edge solutions (autonomous vehicles etc.) and develop software for real-time data and optimization. Via acquisitions, they partner with startups to stay informed and potentially acquire promising technologies. Ryder System is a one-stop shop for logistics and transportation: Ryder offers a wide range of services including warehousing, distribution, last-mile delivery, and fleet management solutions. Ryder has an extensive reach: Their services cover the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Large-scale operations: Ryder manages a significant fleet of nearly 260,000 commercial vehicles and operates a vast network of warehouses exceeding 95 million square feet. Industry leader: Ryder is recognized for their innovative approach in logistics, technology, sustainability, safety, and social responsibility. Diverse workforce: Ryder actively recruits veterans and fosters a diverse work environment. Learn More About Taming the Supply Chain Beast: Tech Solutions for Smoother Operations Kendra Phillips | Linkedin Ryder System, Inc. | Linkedin Ryder website State of the Transportation Industry | Ryder Logistics Automating the Warehouse with Gary Allen | The Logistics of Logistics Ryder's Freight Market Update with Kevin Clonch | The Logistics of Logistics The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube
Bridging the gap between the artistic aspects of marketing such as design and the harder skills like data analysis often feels scary and unnatural for creatives. But according to theater and improv student turned Cineverse SVP of Marketing, Lauren McCarthy, it's all about finding the story. In this episode of the podcast, she shares how tying all marketing activities back to storytelling and approaching persona research as character writing has enabled her to connect the dots across Cineverse's many diverse properties, from Bob Ross' “happy little” streaming channel to the most trafficked horror site on the web, Bloody Disgusting. Tune in to hear how Lauren's product marketing approach to branding and habit of saying “yes, and” enabled her and her lean, mean marketing team to successfully rebrand Cineverse and consistently power the future of entertainment.Key Takeaways: We discuss strategies for building a powerhouse marketing team from the ground up, including how to create a “team charter.”Ever wonder what improv and marketing have in common? Lauren's got your back…Lauren shares how going back to school to get her master's degree during the pandemic impacted her career.We dig into some of the craziest yet most successful ideas the Cineverse marketing team has said “yes” to recently.Guest Bio: As Senior Vice President of Marketing, Lauren is responsible for telling the story of Cineverse; overseeing the strategy and execution of all marketing, communication and creative initiatives for the company. Lauren and her customer-obsessed team build engaging and effective brand and consumer narratives – supporting revenue generators with measurable, data driven results. Lauren brings over 15 years of entertainment and technology experience to her work, including senior roles at SaaS startup Tangelo.ai, Broad Green Pictures along with various marketing, product, creative strategy and filmed entertainment positions. Additionally, Lauren is an advisor to the top-rated entrepreneurial course, “NUVention: Arts & Media” at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering.
Dec 29, 2023 – In our last "best of Financial Sense Newshour" replay for 2023, we feature a must-listen interview with Mark Mills at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, who explains why...
Nov 10, 2023 – Mark Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Today, he explains why oil will remain foundational...
Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is also a strategic partner with Montrose Lane (an energy-tech venture fund). Previously, Mills cofounded Digital Power Capital, a boutique venture fund, and was chairman and CTO of ICx Technologies, helping take it public in 2007. Mills is author of the book The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s (Encounter Books, 2021), and host of the new podcast The Last Optimist. He is also author of Digital Cathedrals (2020), and Work in the Age of Robots (2018). Mills earlier coauthored (with Peter Huber) The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy (Basic Books, 2005). His articles have been published widely, including in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and Real Clear. Mills has appeared as a guest on CNN, Fox, NBC, PBS, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In 2016, Mills was named “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society. Earlier, Mills was a technology advisor for Bank of America Securities and coauthor of the Huber-Mills Digital Power Report, a tech investment newsletter. He has testified before Congress numerous times, and briefed state public-service commissions and legislators. Mills served in the White House Science Office under President Reagan and subsequently provided science and technology policy counsel to a variety of private-sector firms, the Department of Energy, and U.S. research laboratories, and prior to that began his career as an experimental physicist and development engineer in microprocessors and fiber optics. Early in his career, Mills was an experimental physicist and development engineer at Bell Northern Research (Canada's Bell Labs) and at the RCA David Sarnoff Research Center on microprocessors, fiber optics, missile guidance, earning several patents for his work. He holds a degree in physics from Queen's University, Ontario, Canada. Slides for this presentation: https://tomn.substack.com/p/grand-nexus-information-materials https://twitter.com/MarkPMills The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Revolution-Convergence-Technologies-Economic/dp/1641772301/ ========= About Tom Nelson: https://linktr.ee/tomanelson1 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL89cj_OtPeenLkWMmdwcT8Dt0DGMb8RGR Twitter: https://twitter.com/tan123 Substack: https://tomn.substack.com/ About Tom: https://tomn.substack.com/about
This episode is about the catastrophic dead ends we face if we plow blindly ahead with the promised “green energy”future. Powerful forces obsessed with CO2 and climate change are determined to replace hydrocarbon fuels with solar and wind energy and other yet to be invented technologies. It's a obsession fueled by a toxic mix of religious fervor, old fashioned greed and a “degrowth” agenda aimed at dismantling the modern global economy. But setting these agendas aside, has anyone anywhere adequately explained the physics and the economics of the so-called green utopia? My guest on this episode, Mark Mills, has thought it through and has a stark message for us, an inconvenient truth. “There won't be a world powered entirely by wind and solar or batteries. The reason I say that is because it is not possible. We don't have the materials and we can't afford it in either environmental or economic terms.” Mark Mills probably knows more about this than anyone. He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, focusing on science, technology, and energy issues. He's also faculty fellow at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern, where his focus is on future manufacturing technologies and a strategic partner in an energy software venture fund. This episode defies a brief description. Mark provides tour de force explanations that are well worth an hour of your time to understand. With them you will be equipped to properly understand and debate energy realities. If we are to push back against the dystopian future that a fully-realized climate change agenda guarantees, we need to be armed with informed arguments. Just a few of the highlights: “All energy systems used to deliver useful power to society require building machines, every energy system. So, what you really want to know is how much material does it take to build the machines to make windmills and solar panels. For wind turbines, the amount of concrete glass, polymers, plastics, and steel you need per unit of energy goes up tenfold per unit of energy produced compared to a gas turbine” “You'll have to increase the total supply of metals and minerals, copper, nickel, lithium, aluminum, molybdenum, neodymium, etc. Not by a little but by a lot, tenfold. We will need hundreds of new mines, not a few, hundreds of new mines.” “By one estimate, nearly 400 new giant mines … but at what price …environmentalists are broadly sweeping under the rug the consequences, the environmental, economic and human consequences” “Climate Change advocates have fundamentally thrown under the bus all of the environmental issues they used to care about. Everything. Land use, use of toxic chemicals, visual pollution, habitat destruction, species protection …because the quantity of materials you need to produce the same unit of energy by moving to wind and solar increases by at least 1,000%.” “If you multiply the number of mines we need for solar, for wind and also for batteries … it's hundreds and hundreds of mines … hundreds of thousands of square miles. We're going to be killing habitat and species all over the planet.” “The quantity of plastic in one small wind farm is greater than all the plastic used to make all the world's plastic straws.” “We import roughly 80 to 90% of the manufactured solar modules we use to make solar panels in America … from China.” “Wind turbines being built today are about the size of a Washington Monument, two to three megawatts each. So a field of 50 covering 100 square miles could power a small town of say 20,000 to 50,000 people … A single gas turbine whose gas pipe is bare and you can't see, the size of a tractor trailer, can provide the same amount of electricity.” Congress has appropriated trillions of dollars to what should now be properly called the Climate Change Industrial Complex which is growing richer by the day. “When you say, "Oh, we need to replace all hydrocarbons with wind, solar, and batteries," you're not making a small subsidy distortion. You're now saying, "I have to subsidize by definition, all American energy production.”” “The Inflation Reduction Act (aka the Green New Deal) included provisions intended to override local communities and state's objections to transmission lines. The climate agenda would not only change our energy systems, but also seek to make it yet another federal power.” “A Dutch government sponsored study concluded that Netherlands green ambitions alonewould consume a major share of all the world's minerals.” “The CO2 emitted to build the electric cars batteries and mine the materials will offset most, if not all, of the CO2 then not emitted by not burning gasoline in the first place. So you get nothing in CO2 terms or very, very little, for the price of exporting of jobs, geopolitical dependencies, and environmental impacts somewhere on the planet for no benefit.” “What they're essentially saying is that there is no possibility, and I agree with them, on cutting the planet's carbon dioxide emissions, absent, huge degrowth, which is a euphemism for massive global recession … they're overtly engineering a society in which you will be happy without economic growth.” Meanwhile, people are getting rich from the green agenda, and if you consider the vast worldwide habitat and species destruction that will be caused by substituting wind and solar for hydrocarbon energy … and all the other social and economic costs … the climate change agenda should be called villainous, not virtuous.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Mark Mills is a physicist and venture capitalist in the field of emerging energy technologies. Mark joined Rep. Crenshaw to discuss the physics-driven trade-offs of transitioning to wind, solar, and electric vehicles. How many miles do you need to drive an EV just to break even on the carbon emissions it took to make one battery? How did China in one month wipe out 15 years of Germany's carbon savings? Why do electricity rates continue to rise with the transition to “cheaper” green energy? We answer all these questions and much more as we look at how renewables rank against oil, gas, and nuclear in terms of costs, emissions, land-use impact, and net societal benefits. Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is the host of The Last Optimist podcast and the author of “The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s.” Follow him on Twitter @MarkPMills
Biden's Green Energy mandates have won over millions of Americans … but not Mark Mills. Mark's a physicist who was named “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society. He recently authored The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. And he runs a podcast called The Last Optimist, which features discussions with leading thinkers and innovators. I sat down with Mark to talk about the real-world science behind transitioning an entire national economy to new forms of fuel — and why even President Biden doesn't seem to believe his mandates are realistic. Topics Discussed: An Introduction to Mark Mills (00:00:31) Biden's State of the Union Slip-Up (00:01:42) Energy Mandates aren't Based in Science (00:10:42) The Myth of Zero-Emission Electric Vehicles (00:17:40) Massive Energy Needs for EV Mining (00:23:50) China's Toll on the Road to Renewable Resources (00:34:25) Cobalt Red and the Real-World Cost of EVs (00:40:15) The Rising Cost of EV Minerals (00:47:09) The Real Net Savings of Switching to EVs (00:53:27) Simple Math Points to Rising Oil Prices (1:00:00) Guest Bio: Mark Mills is a physicist, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. He was named “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society. He has written several award-winning books, including his latest The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. The Biden administration plans to eliminate fossil fuels as a form of energy generation in the U.S. by 2035. Not so, says Mark. Resources Mentioned: The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s. Transcript: https://charlesmizrahi.com/podcast/ Don't Forget To... • Subscribe to my podcast! • Download this episode to save for later • Liked this episode? Leave a kind review!
If you could design a drone specifically for public safety agencies, what would it look like? Blake Resnick is CEO and Founder of BRINC. BRINC designs, manufactures and sells sUAS systems to public safety departments worldwide. The company's flagship product, the LEMUR, employs innovative solutions designed specifically for public safety and emergency situations. Using lidar technology, the drone flies indoors with precision and unprecedented agility, and its two-way communication system allows first responders to hear and see through the drone. But this only scratches the surface of the drone's capabilities. Blake has the innate ability to define a problem, imagine a new approach and create a technology-based solution. He started taking college courses at the age of 14, and then attended Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering. Before launching BRINC, Blake worked at McLaren Automotive, Tesla Motors, and DJI. He's a member of the Thiel Fellowship's class of 2020. Under Blake's leadership, in just 2 ½ years, BRINC has become a leader of public safety UAS solutions worldwide. He is currently working on an sUAS mesh system designed to respond to gunshot detections and 911 calls within seconds. When not enveloped in product development, he actively engages in recruiting, strategy development, internal communication, and fundraising. In this episode of the Drone Radio Show, Blake talks about BRINC drones, in particular it's revolutionary LEMUR drone and he provides insights into how the company has become successful in supporting the mission of hundreds of public safety organizations around the world.
Bruce Mau has worked as a designer, innovator, educator and author on a broad spectrum of projects in collaboration with the world's leading brands, organizations, universities, governments, entrepreneurs, renowned artists, and fellow optimists. His most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. He is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a design consultancy based in the Chicago area. HOLOCENE Magazine + StoreBruce Mau IGRob Auchincloss IGSHOW NOTESsee more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
From geopolitical pressures to the shunning of fossil fuels, there is no question the current state of energy in the US and globally is a mess. One possible answer? An “all of the above” approach. . For candid insight into this topic, we sat down with Mark P. Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Mark served in the White House Science Office under President Reagan and subsequently provided science and technology policy counsel to a variety of private-sector firms, the Department of Energy, and U.S. research laboratories. He began his career as an experimental physicist and development engineer in microprocessors and fiber optics. . As part of this wide-ranging discussion, Mark shares his views on the need for hydrocarbon, the instability of the grid, energy's relationship to inflation, the US dependance on China, and why there should be a holistic approach to the world's energy needs. . Mark is author of the book The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s and host of the new podcast The Last Optimist. He is also author of Digital Cathedrals (2020), and Work in the Age of Robots (2018). His articles have been published widely, including in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and Real Clear. Mills has appeared as a guest on CNN, Fox, NBC, PBS, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He has testified before Congress numerous times, and briefed state public-service commissions and legislators. . We'd love to hear from you. Share your comments, questions and ideas for future topics and guests to podcast@sae.org. Don't forget to take a moment to follow SAE Tomorrow Today—a podcast where we discuss emerging technology and trends in mobility with the leaders, innovators and strategists making it all happen—and give us a review on your preferred podcasting platform. . Follow SAE on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Follow host Grayson Brulte on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
ABOUT BRUCE MAU:For press and event inquiries: info@massivechangenetwork.com INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS:Bruce Mau - https://www.instagram.com/realbrucemau/#Aiyemobisi Williams - https://www.instagram.com/aiyemobisi/Massive Change Network -https://www.instagram.com/massivechangenetwork/ LINKEDIN ACCOUNTS:Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer Bruce Mau -https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-mau/Co-founder, Chief Insights Officer Aiyemobisi “Bisi” Willia -https://www.linkedin.com/in/bisiwilliams/ Company Page Massive Change Network -https://www.linkedin.com/company/massive-change-network/about/WEBSITES:Massive Change Network -https://www.massivechangenetwork.comHealth 2049 Podcast -https://www.health2049.comMAILING LIST:https://massivechangeworkshops.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=edecf2a3075fbcc167f6019ec&id=592db25fb8 BRUCE'S BIO:Bruce Mau is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Massive Change Network (MCN), a global design consultancy based in the Chicago area. Across more than thirty years of design innovation, Bruce has worked as a designer, innovator, educator, and author on a broad spectrum of projects in collaboration with the world's leading brands, organizations, universities, governments, entrepreneurs, renowned artists, and fellow optimists. To create value and positive impact across global ecosystems and economies, Mau evolved a unique toolkit of 24 massive change design principles — MC24 — that can be applied in any field or environment at every scale. The MC24 principles underpin all Bruce's work — from designing carpets to cities, books to new media, global brands to cultural institutions, and social movements to business transformation – and they are the subject of his book,“Mau: MC24, Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work.” Books are central to Bruce's purpose of achieving and inspiring understanding, clarity, and alignment around visions of a better future. He is the author of“Massive Change”;“Life Style”; and“Mau: MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work”;– all published by Phaidon Press. Bruce's“The Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,”a forty-three-point statement on sustaining a creative practice, has been translated into more than fifteen languages and has been shared widely on the Internet for nearly twenty-five years. Bruce is also co-author of several books, including the landmark architecture book“S, M, L, XL”with Rem Koolhaas;“Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science,”with Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering;“The Third Teacher”with OWP/P Architects and VS Furniture; and“Spectacle”with David Rockwell.Bruce has collaborated with clients on the development and design of more than 200 books, including Art Gallery of Ontario, Claes Oldenburg, Douglas Gordon, Frank Gehry, Gagosian, Getty Research Institute, James Lahey, Mark Francis, and Zone Books. In these times of complex, interrelated challenges that are unlike any we've faced before, Bruce believes life-centered design offers a clear path towards identifying the full context of our problems and developing innovative, sustainable, and holistic solutions. Bruce's work and life story are the subject of the feature-length documentary, “MAU,” scheduled for North American theatrical release in May 2022.EP. 43 BRUCE MAU - SHOW INTROWhen I was a kid, my parents used to load my four brothers and I, along with our dog, into a station wagon, hook up a trailer and travel on summer vacation from Montreal to Winnipeg, effectively halfway across Canada, to visit my father's family. The trek would take us along the Trans Canada highway following a route around Lake Superior and passing through cites like Wawa, which had an enormous Canada goose statue, Dryden with the monumental statue of Max the Moose, and Sudbury Ontario with the Big nickel.The big nickel. It was enormous. This thing was a towering 30 feet tall and was said to be about 64 million times the size of the nickel you'd have in your pocket. In a time when penny candy stores were a big thing for a youngster in the late 60's, how much that nickel could buy at Ed's market, the candy store a walk from my parent's house, was beyond imagination. Sudbury was also one of the largest nickel mining areas on the planet. My memory of Sudbury at that time was that it was desolate. For miles around the nickel mines, Sudbury was gray. The landscape was just gray. There were no trees. There was no grass. It was the closest thing my young mind could have imagined when thinking about what the surface of the moon would have looked like. In those seemingly dead zones, it was stark and infertile.In 1971 and '72 NASA actually sent its astronauts to train there for the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, because it approximated what astronauts would encounter when they landed on the lunar surface.While I passed through as a tourist on vacation, there was another boy who lived there in the house at the end of a street beyond which there was only 200 miles of Boreal Forest. As an adult the boy who lived at the end of the street before the forest started would describe those years as ‘lawless' and like walking a Vaseline greased edge on which a misplaced step would send you careening into a chasm from which you would never climb out. Finding his way out of the Boreal Forest, it turns out, would also serve in later years as an apt metaphor for finding a way out of a childhood of adverse experiences to a career as one of the most successful designers of the last 50 years. The house of the end of the street was not the end of the road for Bruce Mau. At a young age, he had other plans to not slip and fall into the chasm, but to find his way out of the forest. To follow a path with an entrepreneurial spirit, of exploration and discovery, continually scanning the world for opportunity. Mau believes that “you need to be taught the entrepreneurial mindset of being lost in the forest and discovering a methodology for finding your way out. You need a compass. You need a way of actually navigating any forest not just the one in front of you.” That, he says, is a very different mindset and design is actually built to do it. That's what designers do…”Looking back, Mau now deeply appreciates how those decisions that he made when he was twelve set that in motion and kind of created the space for him to do what he does and to be who he is.Despite his extraordinary success, he understands that, whatever the kind of problem and no matter how right he believes his solution is, it is it's meaningless if he can't inspire people to do it.He explains that “..I have to show them what that means. I have to show them the destination and I have to take them there in their imagination. I've got to say, ‘look I know we're here now but we're going to go over there. I'm telling you over there is awesome and here's what's going to happen…”I was first exposed to Bruce's creative thinking process through his landmark architectural book “S, M, L, XL”with the world renowned architect Rem Koolhaas. SML XL is not a book you read cover to cover. It is something that you live with, explore and reference over and over again. Bruce is a lover of books and has collaborated with clients on the development and design of more than 200 titles. He says “I consider myself a ‘biblio-naire.' I'm not a billionaire but I am a biblio-naire.”One of these books, that I have read cover to cover, is MC24 “Mau: MC24, Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work.” This volume is more a manifesto or a unique toolkit of 24 massive change design principles that can be applied in any field or environment at every scale. These 24 principles underpin all of Bruce's work — from designing carpets to cities, books to new media, global brands to cultural institutions, and social movements to business transformation.Today Bruce has navigated the slippery line of life a long way from his childhood years in the liminal space where the road ends and the forest begins. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Massive Change Network (MCN), a global design consultancy based in the Chicago area. Across more than thirty years of design innovation, Bruce has worked as a designer, innovator, educator, and author on a broad spectrum of projects with some of world's leading brands, organizations, universities, governments, entrepreneurs, renowned artists, and fellow optimists. Bruce's work and life story are the subject of the feature-length documentary, “MAU,” that was released to North American theatres in May 2022. It is a captivating and candid look into Bruce Mau's life of ideas. I encourage all to see it. ************************************************************************************************************************************The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound. Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “dialogues on DATA: design architecture technology and the arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too. And remember you'll always find more information with links to content that we've discussed, contact information to our guests and more in the show notes for each episode. ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582bWebsites: https://www.davidkepron.com (personal website)vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645 (Blog)Email: david.kepron@NXTLVLexperiencedesign.comTwitter: DavidKepronPersonal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/Bio:David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why', ‘what's now' and ‘what's next'. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe. David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott's “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels. In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies. As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace. David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine's Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation's Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.He has held teaching positions at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore. In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.
Tom welcomes Mark P. Mills to the show. Mark is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a Faculty Fellow at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. Mark discusses the true costs of the green energy revolution. Most of the minerals and refining of ores used to make batteries are mined outside the United States and Canada. China represents 2/3rds of the market share of critical materials needed to make batteries and photovoltaic cells. The bottom line is that 500,000 pounds of rock is mined to produce an E.V. car battery. The total emissions involved is at least 15 tons of CO2. An efficient internal combustion vehicle will emit a similar amount of carbon over its lifetime. However, this doesn't account for the energy used to charge the battery of an electric vehicle. Mark notes that ore grades have been declining on average for centuries. More ore has to be processed for a given quantity of metals produced. Most of the green energy forecasts are not realistic, and we will need incredible amounts of copper to achieve these lofty targets. The world will need 200%-300% more copper than we have been producing annually for at least a couple of decades. We will need even more copper to improve the grid. We need to ask more questions, as there is no evidence that sufficient resource capacity will be coming online to meet these goals. Governments do not appear to notice that they aren't getting their subsidy bang for the buck. We've spent two decades transitioning from hydrocarbons and already spent five trillion dollars. That number is likely higher in terms of additional burdens on the economy. During these two decades, we've managed to drop the energy requirements from hydrocarbons by two percent. However, over this same period we've increased our total energy usage from hydrocarbons on the order of six Saudi Arabia's. Mark explains the difficulty in recycling battery materials and why it may remain cost prohibitive. Deindustrialzation in Europe and energy scarcity has shutdown two thirds of all fertilizer production, along with half of the metal refining industry. Should prices continue to escalate, most industry in the U.K. will shut down. Many industries are difficult to restart because they are designed to operate continuously. A lot of industry may decide to re-open in another, safer country. Lastly, he discusses the energy density and ability to surge hydrocarbon solutions in contrast to other much more expensive and impractical methods. Time Stamp References:0:00 - Introduction1:08 - EVs Export Emissions9:05 - Insane Copper Demands17:33 - Energy Costs & Subsidies22:23 - Green Technology Needs25:30 - Economics of Recycling32:10 - Good Green Applications37:47 - Rare Earth Sources42:22 - Deindustrialization46:26 - Stabilizing Energy49:29 - Energy Storage & Surges51:48 - Political Realities58:25 - Wrap Up Talking Points From This Week's Episode The true costs of the electric vehicle revolution.Why the world will need 500 percent more copper.What is needed to stabilize world energy. Guest Links:Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkPMillsWebsite: https://www.tech-pundit.com/Book: https://tinyurl.com/2s3js4he Mark P. Mills is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a Faculty Fellow at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. He is a co-founder and strategic partner in Montrose Lane, a software-centric energy-tech venture fund. He was formerly the co-founder and chief tech strategist for Digital Power Capital, a boutique venture fund, where co-founded and served as Chairman and CTO of ICx Technologies helping take it public in a 2007 IPO (later purchased by FLIR), and in addition served on numerous Boards, including as Chairman (and an interim CEO) of a lithium battery start-up. And for seven years prior to an acquisition in 2008 by HP, he was the independent Director on the Board of EYP Mission-Critic...
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Welcome to an episode with an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University, Julio Mario Ottino. Get Julio's book here: https://amzn.to/3spt2Nn Individuals and organizations face complex problems and challenges today that demand a new way of thinking to grasp underlying solutions and opportunities. In this episode, Julio shares the beauty of the coexistence of art, science, and technology – rather than being separate disciplines – to navigate the complex world. Julio was born in Argentina and grew up with twin interests in physical sciences and visual arts, finding beauty in math and art, and seeing creativity as being one thing, rather than something that lives in compartments. Art provided a cathartic means of expression while he grew up in turbulent times. He managed to create a solo art exhibit while drafted as an officer in the Argentinian Navy. When he moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate, his research achievements followed. Most of the early attention Ottino received stemmed from pioneering work in chaos theory and a combination of scientific insight and visualization. His research work has been featured on the covers of Nature, Science, Scientific American, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and other publications. He has supervised more than 65 Ph.D. theses, written over 250 papers and two books, and has given invited presentations at over 200 universities in the United States and around the world, as well as at organizations such as Accenture, Boeing, Google, 3M, and Unilever. An academic entrepreneur, Ottino was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and educational and research initiatives in design, entrepreneurship, and energy and sustainability. As dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, he founded educational and research partnerships with Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Medill School of Journalism, Feinberg School of Medicine, School of Communication, and School of Education and Social Policy, as well as with external partners ranging from the Art Institute of Chicago to Argonne National Lab. In 2008, he was selected by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers as one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era.” In 2017, Ottino was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering for the concept of whole-brain engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Get Julio's book here: The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World–The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Julio Mario Ottino. https://amzn.to/3spt2Nn Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
In this week's release of Season 3, Episode 2 (31-minute podcast) of the Future Construct Podcast, our host Amy Peck (@AmyPeckXR) is thrilled to be joined by Dr. Burcin Kaplanoglu, the Vice President of Innovation and Oracle Industry Lab at Oracle.Join our host, Amy Peck, to learn from Burcin about Oracle's work providing computing infrastructure and how that will help the AEC Industry become more innovative and efficient. Dr. Burcin Kaplanoglu is a recognized industry technologist, innovator, thought leader, and keynote speaker. He is leading innovation and Oracle Industry Lab as co-founder. LinkedIn's Chief Editor recognized him as one of the “5 content creators to follow” on LinkedIn in 2022. Also in 2022, he received the prestigious James B. Porter, Jr. Award for Technology Leadership by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) in recognition for his contributions, innovation and dedication to the construction and engineering industry. He has been Chair of the Board Committee at AI in Construction Institute (planning funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) and Discovery Partners Institute) since 2020. He was recognized as one of the “BuiltWorlds 2020 Mavericks” in the Technologists category and one of the 7 “AEC Innovators” by @BD+C magazine. He received CEGBU “Let's build” award in 2020. He was named one of Engineering News Record (ENR)'s "Top 20 Under 40" in 2016. He is also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering.Oracle is a cloud technology company that provides organizations worldwide with computing infrastructure and software to help them innovate, unlock efficiencies and become more effective. From nonprofits to companies of all sizes, millions of people use their tools to streamline supply chains, make HR more human, quickly pivot to a new financial plan, and connect data and people worldwide. Highlights of Burcin's interview with host Amy Peck (@AmyPeckXR) include:The methodology behind technological experimentation at Oracle and how much customers play into that processHow Burcin sees technology and information becoming more broadly adopted within the industry in the futureSome of the challenges we face with integrating permit technology and other forms of advancement and how much we should trust themHow advanced full digital twin landscapes are, and what impact does that have on streamlining constructionSHOW NOTES0:12 - Amy Peck introduces Burcin Kaplanoglu, the Vice President of Innovation and Oracle Industry Lab at Oracle.1:26 - Amy: "In terms of how you experiment, is driven a lot by customers, or do you have a plan of we're going to work on all of these technologies this year and it just organically leads from project to project?"6:08 - Amy: "How do you see technology or even just information getting out there and beginning to permeate where it becomes more broadly adopted in the industry?"13:49 - Amy: "Do you see a point where we can start to have a baseline of interpretation of what a permit requirement is that is done automatically? What are some of the challenges of adopting that type of technology, and can we trust it?"17:10 - Amy: "Can we talk a little bit about simulating some of the work that you're doing in the [Oracle Industry Lab], where we can build entire digital twins even before one brick is laid on the construction site? How advanced is that today, and how much is that streamlining the construction process?"28:03 - Amy: "If you could project yourself 20 to 25 years into the future, which you do daily, and you could have any product or service that would just make you personally happy or make your life better in some way, what would it be and what would it do?"
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."I'm very, very concerned that we are already in a time of being lost, that a lot of people feel lost, and they feel like the world has kind of moved out from under them, and that they have lost their bearings. They've lost their anchor, and they don't have what it takes to actually navigate.And in that kind of environment, it's a very rich environment for fascism and for the worst kind of political movement, for the worst kind of political actors to take advantage of that feeling of powerlessness and fear and disconnection. Design is a methodology that is an empowering methodology within a condition of being unmoored.So when you don't know what to do, design is a methodology of figuring out what to do, and it's why we're doing a project that we call Massive Action, which is to really give people the tools of empowerment to give them the power to design their life because over the coming couple of decades people are going to see a level of turmoil and change that has not happened in human history. The foundation of any culture is energy, and we have to change fundamentally our source of energy, which is going to change everything else. And I really worry that it's going to be a time – and we're already seeing it - it's going to be a time where the forces of autocracy and totalitarianism and fascism will find fertile ground if we don't actually help people navigate those conditions."www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."I'm very, very concerned that we are already in a time of being lost, that a lot of people feel lost, and they feel like the world has kind of moved out from under them, and that they have lost their bearings. They've lost their anchor, and they don't have what it takes to actually navigate.And in that kind of environment, it's a very rich environment for fascism and for the worst kind of political movement, for the worst kind of political actors to take advantage of that feeling of powerlessness and fear and disconnection. Design is a methodology that is an empowering methodology within a condition of being unmoored.So when you don't know what to do, design is a methodology of figuring out what to do, and it's why we're doing a project that we call Massive Action, which is to really give people the tools of empowerment to give them the power to design their life because over the coming couple of decades people are going to see a level of turmoil and change that has not happened in human history. The foundation of any culture is energy, and we have to change fundamentally our source of energy, which is going to change everything else. And I really worry that it's going to be a time – and we're already seeing it - it's going to be a time where the forces of autocracy and totalitarianism and fascism will find fertile ground if we don't actually help people navigate those conditions."www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
"You really need to think about it holistically. We've disconnected ourselves from the living world, and we have this beautiful quotation from David Orr, he's an environmentalist and teacher, and he said, 'Can we imagine education that doesn't dominate nature?' And I think, the jury is out. We have to actually reconceive it. We have to think about a living world that we're part of. And [through my work at the McEwen school] I discovered that the Indigenous folks have a different cosmology. They don't put humans at the center. They put life at the center, and one of the guys said, 'We think that we are related to the rocks and the grasses,' which is actually what E.O. Wilson said, 'Rock is slow life, and life is fast rock.' So here you have the greatest life scientist in the last half-century saying the same thing as the Indigenous cosmologist. When I realized that I thought–Wow, this is just an incredible, incredible situation that you have science and spirituality coming to the same place.”Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."You really need to think about it holistically. We've disconnected ourselves from the living world, and we have this beautiful quotation from David Orr, he's an environmentalist and teacher, and he said, 'Can we imagine education that doesn't dominate nature?' And I think, the jury is out. We have to actually reconceive it. We have to think about a living world that we're part of. And [through my work at the McEwen school] I discovered that the Indigenous folks have a different cosmology. They don't put humans at the center. They put life at the center, and one of the guys said, 'We think that we are related to the rocks and the grasses,' which is actually what E.O. Wilson said, 'Rock is slow life, and life is fast rock.' So here you have the greatest life scientist in the last half-century saying the same thing as the Indigenous cosmologist. When I realized that I thought–Wow, this is just an incredible, incredible situation that you have science and spirituality coming to the same place.”www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
"I'm very, very concerned that we are already in a time of being lost, that a lot of people feel lost, and they feel like the world has kind of moved out from under them, and that they have lost their bearings. They've lost their anchor, and they don't have what it takes to actually navigate.And in that kind of environment, it's a very rich environment for fascism and for the worst kind of political movement, for the worst kind of political actors to take advantage of that feeling of powerlessness and fear and disconnection. Design is a methodology that is an empowering methodology within a condition of being unmoored.So when you don't know what to do, design is a methodology of figuring out what to do, and it's why we're doing a project that we call Massive Action, which is to really give people the tools of empowerment to give them the power to design their life because over the coming couple of decades people are going to see a level of turmoil and change that has not happened in human history. The foundation of any culture is energy, and we have to change fundamentally our source of energy, which is going to change everything else. And I really worry that it's going to be a time – and we're already seeing it - it's going to be a time where the forces of autocracy and totalitarianism and fascism will find fertile ground if we don't actually help people navigate those conditions."Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."I'm very, very concerned that we are already in a time of being lost, that a lot of people feel lost, and they feel like the world has kind of moved out from under them, and that they have lost their bearings. They've lost their anchor, and they don't have what it takes to actually navigate.And in that kind of environment, it's a very rich environment for fascism and for the worst kind of political movement, for the worst kind of political actors to take advantage of that feeling of powerlessness and fear and disconnection. Design is a methodology that is an empowering methodology within a condition of being unmoored.So when you don't know what to do, design is a methodology of figuring out what to do, and it's why we're doing a project that we call Massive Action, which is to really give people the tools of empowerment to give them the power to design their life because over the coming couple of decades people are going to see a level of turmoil and change that has not happened in human history. The foundation of any culture is energy, and we have to change fundamentally our source of energy, which is going to change everything else. And I really worry that it's going to be a time – and we're already seeing it - it's going to be a time where the forces of autocracy and totalitarianism and fascism will find fertile ground if we don't actually help people navigate those conditions."www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."You really need to think about it holistically. We've disconnected ourselves from the living world, and we have this beautiful quotation from David Orr, he's an environmentalist and teacher, and he said, 'Can we imagine education that doesn't dominate nature?' And I think, the jury is out. We have to actually reconceive it. We have to think about a living world that we're part of. And [through my work at the McEwen school] I discovered that the Indigenous folks have a different cosmology. They don't put humans at the center. They put life at the center, and one of the guys said, 'We think that we are related to the rocks and the grasses,' which is actually what E.O. Wilson said, 'Rock is slow life, and life is fast rock.' So here you have the greatest life scientist in the last half-century saying the same thing as the Indigenous cosmologist. When I realized that I thought–Wow, this is just an incredible, incredible situation that you have science and spirituality coming to the same place.”www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
"You really need to think about it holistically. We've disconnected ourselves from the living world, and we have this beautiful quotation from David Orr, he's an environmentalist and teacher, and he said, 'Can we imagine education that doesn't dominate nature?' And I think, the jury is out. We have to actually reconceive it. We have to think about a living world that we're part of. And [through my work at the McEwen school] I discovered that the Indigenous folks have a different cosmology. They don't put humans at the center. They put life at the center, and one of the guys said, 'We think that we are related to the rocks and the grasses,' which is actually what E.O. Wilson said, 'Rock is slow life, and life is fast rock.' So here you have the greatest life scientist in the last half-century saying the same thing as the Indigenous cosmologist. When I realized that I thought–Wow, this is just an incredible, incredible situation that you have science and spirituality coming to the same place.”Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
"When we were working in Panama with E.O. Wilson on the Panama Museum of Biodiversity for the world's first museum of biodiversity, we went into the jungle with E.O. Wilson, and he explained that there's only one thing on the planet and that's life. And life has an experiment going in form. We are one of those forms, and over 99% of all the experiments have gone extinct. So less than 1% of all the forms that ever existed now exist. And we're living through another one of the mass extinctions. Many of those are going to go extinct. We may be one of those, and life goes on. Life will go on. And he said, 'Rock is slow. Life and life is fast rock.' That you are rock animated with electricity, and when we turn that electricity off, you go back to rock. You return to the Earth. And that's all it is.There's an endless cycle, and the sooner that we get that concept into our way of thinking, into our cosmology, into our way of understanding the universe, into our way of working, the sooner that we'll start to actually do things that have a plausible future. The way we are working now, we're just drawing down our future. We're drawing down the resources of the Earth."Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
“I would like them to know that, you know, in my own case, that I did as much as I possibly could have. I can't say that say the same for my generation. We made a lot of mistakes, but in a way more importantly, I would like them to know just how powerful they are, that they have the power to shape the world. At some point, I realized that the world is produced. The world is designed and produced, and since we designed and produced it, we can redesign it. And you can play a part in designing it. You can play a part in that production. It doesn't have to happen to you. And I think, for too many people, too much power and too much control is concentrated in too few hands. People need to have the power to control and design their own life.”Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.“I would like them to know that, you know, in my own case, that I did as much as I possibly could have. I can't say that say the same for my generation. We made a lot of mistakes, but in a way more importantly, I would like them to know just how powerful they are, that they have the power to shape the world. At some point, I realized that the world is produced. The world is designed and produced, and since we designed and produced it, we can redesign it. And you can play a part in designing it. You can play a part in that production. It doesn't have to happen to you. And I think, for too many people, too much power and too much control is concentrated in too few hands. People need to have the power to control and design their own life.”www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."When we were working in Panama with E.O. Wilson on the Panama Museum of Biodiversity for the world's first museum of biodiversity, we went into the jungle with E.O. Wilson, and he explained that there's only one thing on the planet and that's life. And life has an experiment going in form. We are one of those forms, and over 99% of all the experiments have gone extinct. So less than 1% of all the forms that ever existed now exist. And we're living through another one of the mass extinctions. Many of those are going to go extinct. We may be one of those, and life goes on. Life will go on. And he said, 'Rock is slow. Life and life is fast rock.' That you are rock animated with electricity, and when we turn that electricity off, you go back to rock. You return to the Earth. And that's all it is.There's an endless cycle, and the sooner that we get that concept into our way of thinking, into our cosmology, into our way of understanding the universe, into our way of working, the sooner that we'll start to actually do things that have a plausible future. The way we are working now, we're just drawing down our future. We're drawing down the resources of the Earth."www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."I'm very, very concerned that we are already in a time of being lost, that a lot of people feel lost, and they feel like the world has kind of moved out from under them, and that they have lost their bearings. They've lost their anchor, and they don't have what it takes to actually navigate.And in that kind of environment, it's a very rich environment for fascism and for the worst kind of political movement, for the worst kind of political actors to take advantage of that feeling of powerlessness and fear and disconnection. Design is a methodology that is an empowering methodology within a condition of being unmoored.So when you don't know what to do, design is a methodology of figuring out what to do, and it's why we're doing a project that we call Massive Action, which is to really give people the tools of empowerment to give them the power to design their life because over the coming couple of decades people are going to see a level of turmoil and change that has not happened in human history. The foundation of any culture is energy, and we have to change fundamentally our source of energy, which is going to change everything else. And I really worry that it's going to be a time – and we're already seeing it - it's going to be a time where the forces of autocracy and totalitarianism and fascism will find fertile ground if we don't actually help people navigate those conditions."www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."I'm very, very concerned that we are already in a time of being lost, that a lot of people feel lost, and they feel like the world has kind of moved out from under them, and that they have lost their bearings. They've lost their anchor, and they don't have what it takes to actually navigate.And in that kind of environment, it's a very rich environment for fascism and for the worst kind of political movement, for the worst kind of political actors to take advantage of that feeling of powerlessness and fear and disconnection. Design is a methodology that is an empowering methodology within a condition of being unmoored.So when you don't know what to do, design is a methodology of figuring out what to do, and it's why we're doing a project that we call Massive Action, which is to really give people the tools of empowerment to give them the power to design their life because over the coming couple of decades people are going to see a level of turmoil and change that has not happened in human history. The foundation of any culture is energy, and we have to change fundamentally our source of energy, which is going to change everything else. And I really worry that it's going to be a time – and we're already seeing it - it's going to be a time where the forces of autocracy and totalitarianism and fascism will find fertile ground if we don't actually help people navigate those conditions."www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
The Creative Process in 10 minutes or less · Arts, Culture & Society
"I'm very, very concerned that we are already in a time of being lost, that a lot of people feel lost, and they feel like the world has kind of moved out from under them, and that they have lost their bearings. They've lost their anchor, and they don't have what it takes to actually navigate.And in that kind of environment, it's a very rich environment for fascism and for the worst kind of political movement, for the worst kind of political actors to take advantage of that feeling of powerlessness and fear and disconnection. Design is a methodology that is an empowering methodology within a condition of being unmoored.So when you don't know what to do, design is a methodology of figuring out what to do, and it's why we're doing a project that we call Massive Action, which is to really give people the tools of empowerment to give them the power to design their life because over the coming couple of decades people are going to see a level of turmoil and change that has not happened in human history. The foundation of any culture is energy, and we have to change fundamentally our source of energy, which is going to change everything else. And I really worry that it's going to be a time – and we're already seeing it - it's going to be a time where the forces of autocracy and totalitarianism and fascism will find fertile ground if we don't actually help people navigate those conditions."Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."Cities are certainly a great place to start because the way that we do them - you can see it if you go up in an airplane and look down - you can see that they're built against nature. You can see it in the color of the city. It's interesting. We reflect it in our maps. Cities are gray, and the rest of the world is green. We build them against the natural world, and the way that we do it - concrete - is one of the worst environmental materials we could use, and we have no intention, at the moment, of changing that.And we're going to add roughly two more billion people, almost all of whom will live in cities. The scale of that problem is absolutely staggering, and we intend to put them in buildings. No one I've found is willing to say, No, actually you've got to stay outside. No, we're going to put them in buildings. And we're going to build about half the world again to accommodate it. So all of that has to change, and the good news is that there's huge effort being made, huge innovation projects all over the world."www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
"Cities are certainly a great place to start because the way that we do them - you can see it if you go up in an airplane and look down - you can see that they're built against nature. You can see it in the color of the city. It's interesting. We reflect it in our maps. Cities are gray, and the rest of the world is green. We build them against the natural world, and the way that we do it - concrete - is one of the worst environmental materials we could use, and we have no intention, at the moment, of changing that.And we're going to add roughly two more billion people, almost all of whom will live in cities. The scale of that problem is absolutely staggering, and we intend to put them in buildings. No one I've found is willing to say, No, actually you've got to stay outside. No, we're going to put them in buildings. And we're going to build about half the world again to accommodate it. So all of that has to change, and the good news is that there's huge effort being made, huge innovation projects all over the world."Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."Cities are certainly a great place to start because the way that we do them - you can see it if you go up in an airplane and look down - you can see that they're built against nature. You can see it in the color of the city. It's interesting. We reflect it in our maps. Cities are gray, and the rest of the world is green. We build them against the natural world, and the way that we do it - concrete - is one of the worst environmental materials we could use, and we have no intention, at the moment, of changing that.And we're going to add roughly two more billion people, almost all of whom will live in cities. The scale of that problem is absolutely staggering, and we intend to put them in buildings. No one I've found is willing to say, No, actually you've got to stay outside. No, we're going to put them in buildings. And we're going to build about half the world again to accommodate it. So all of that has to change, and the good news is that there's huge effort being made, huge innovation projects all over the world."www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
"Cities are certainly a great place to start because the way that we do them - you can see it if you go up in an airplane and look down - you can see that they're built against nature. You can see it in the color of the city. It's interesting. We reflect it in our maps. Cities are gray, and the rest of the world is green. We build them against the natural world, and the way that we do it - concrete - is one of the worst environmental materials we could use, and we have no intention, at the moment, of changing that.And we're going to add roughly two more billion people, almost all of whom will live in cities. The scale of that problem is absolutely staggering, and we intend to put them in buildings. No one I've found is willing to say, No, actually you've got to stay outside. No, we're going to put them in buildings. And we're going to build about half the world again to accommodate it. So all of that has to change, and the good news is that there's huge effort being made, huge innovation projects all over the world."Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
"You really need to think about it holistically. We've disconnected ourselves from the living world, and we have this beautiful quotation from David Orr, he's an environmentalist and teacher, and he said, 'Can we imagine education that doesn't dominate nature?' And I think, the jury is out. We have to actually reconceive it. We have to think about a living world that we're part of. And [through my work at the McEwen school] I discovered that the Indigenous folks have a different cosmology. They don't put humans at the center. They put life at the center, and one of the guys said, 'We think that we are related to the rocks and the grasses,' which is actually what E.O. Wilson said, 'Rock is slow life, and life is fast rock.' So here you have the greatest life scientist in the last half-century saying the same thing as the Indigenous cosmologist. When I realized that I thought–Wow, this is just an incredible, incredible situation that you have science and spirituality coming to the same place.”Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he's collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas, and his most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author, Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area."You really need to think about it holistically. We've disconnected ourselves from the living world, and we have this beautiful quotation from David Orr, he's an environmentalist and teacher, and he said, 'Can we imagine education that doesn't dominate nature?' And I think, the jury is out. We have to actually reconceive it. We have to think about a living world that we're part of. And [through my work at the McEwen school] I discovered that the Indigenous folks have a different cosmology. They don't put humans at the center. They put life at the center, and one of the guys said, 'We think that we are related to the rocks and the grasses,' which is actually what E.O. Wilson said, 'Rock is slow life, and life is fast rock.' So here you have the greatest life scientist in the last half-century saying the same thing as the Indigenous cosmologist. When I realized that I thought–Wow, this is just an incredible, incredible situation that you have science and spirituality coming to the same place.”www.massivechangenetwork.comwww.Brucemaustudio.comMau MC24The NexusImage Courtesy of Massive Change Networkwww.creativeprocess.infowww.oneplanetpodcast.org
Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 263, an episode with an artist, researcher, author, and educator at Northwestern University, Julio Mario Ottino. Get Julio's book here: https://amzn.to/3b4390g Individuals and organizations face complex problems and challenges today that demand a new way of thinking to grasp underlying solutions and opportunities. In this episode, Julio shares the beauty of the coexistence of art, science, and technology – rather than being separate disciplines – to navigate the complex world. Julio was born in Argentina and grew up with twin interests in physical sciences and visual arts, finding beauty in math and art, and seeing creativity as being one thing, rather than something that lives in compartments. Art provided a cathartic means of expression while he grew up in turbulent times. He managed to create a solo art exhibit while drafted as an officer in the Argentinian Navy. When he moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate, his research achievements followed. Most of the early attention Ottino received stemmed from pioneering work in chaos theory and a combination of scientific insight and visualization. His research work has been featured on the covers of Nature, Science, Scientific American, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and other publications. He has supervised more than 65 Ph.D. theses, written over 250 papers and two books, and has given invited presentations at over 200 universities in the United States and around the world, as well as at organizations such as Accenture, Boeing, Google, 3M, and Unilever. An academic entrepreneur, Ottino was the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and educational and research initiatives in design, entrepreneurship, and energy and sustainability. As dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, he founded educational and research partnerships with Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, Pritzker School of Law, Medill School of Journalism, Feinberg School of Medicine, School of Communication, and School of Education and Social Policy, as well as with external partners ranging from the Art Institute of Chicago to Argonne National Lab. In 2008, he was selected by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers as one of the “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era.” In 2017, Ottino was awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering for the concept of whole-brain engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Get Julio's book here: The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World–The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Julio Mario Ottino. https://amzn.to/3b4390g Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
Bill spoke with Mark Mills about the prospects of America "going green" regarding energy policy. Mark Mills is a physicist, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. His latest book is "The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s." You can view Bill's piece for Fox News, as mentioned in the first segment, by clicking here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bill spoke with Mark Mills about the prospects of America “going green” regarding energy policy. Mark Mills is a physicist, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering. His latest book is “The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next […]
Middle Market Mergers and Acquisitions by Colonnade Advisors
Before you sell your company, even the odds. This episode features guests Mark Achler and Mert Iseri, authors of the recent book, Exit Right: How to Sell Your Startup, Maximize Your Return and Build Your Legacy. Exit Right demystifies how to conclude the startup journey, a perfect complement to our podcast, which focuses more on the exits of larger middle-market companies. As Brad Feld states in the Foreword, “Mert and Mark set the roadmap for how entrepreneurs and business owners can proactively manage the process of getting to a successful exit along the way”. As Jeff says at the start of the interview: Mark and Mert cover so many great informative topics in the book. There is a wealth of tips to guide business owners through what can be a tumultuous process, getting through the exit. There are also so many topics we align with: relationships matter most, planning for wealth, time kills all deals, and the importance of following a best-practice process. In this podcast episode, we focus on three topics with a lot of meat to each: FAIR, Mert and Mark's framework for a successful exit, (3:00) The“Exit Talk” and how we suggest that all companies adopt this practice with their board (15:00), and Who is involved in the Exit Talk and why? (28:00) What is FAIR? Why does it lead to the best transactions? (3:00) Mert: What we realized as we started to gather stories and experiences from M&A bankers, lawyers, serial entrepreneurs, etc is that the real question isn't, “Let's find out who's going to pay the most.” The real question is, “What's the right home for this business? What's the right home for my people? What's the right home for the vision? Who is going to serve our customers the best?” Our view of an exit went from being a short-term transaction to a long-term partnership. The term “exit” is a poor word choice. You're not really exiting anything. If anything, it's the beginning of a brand new relationship. So when we ask ourselves, “What makes a great home for a startup?” we focus on these four elements that make exits great. FAIR. Fit, Alignment, Integration, and Rationale. If you have all four of those, it just so happens that you've also found the person who's willing to pay the most for your business, because they will realize the long-term value and they'll price the deal accordingly. Fit is the cultural fit between the two companies. Amazon and Zappos are a great fit. Time Warner and AOL, are probably not a great fit. It's easily described. Can you sit next to this person for four hours and not want to kill them by the end of the meeting? Can you actually make decisions without written rules? Are cultural values aligned? Are the DNAs sort of similar, cousins to each other between those two companies? Alignment is about being aligned with your co-founders, board, and shareholders in terms of the direction of where you want to go. The acquiring company also must be aligned. We almost always dismiss the alignment that we need from all sides of the table. This isn't two sides looking at each other. This is two sides looking in the same direction. Integration has to do with the plan for how these two companies will come together. We've seen so many examples of this plan of integration being done as an afterthought. It's not just product and sales integration but people integration, finance integration; many, many layers. And all of these stakeholders have different agendas that need to be individually managed. Rationale. Can you explain to your grandmother why this acquisition makes sense? How are we going to deliver more value to our customers as a result of this partnership? How is two plus two equal to 100 in this context? Mark: There are profound financial implications to the FAIR framework. Let's take Integration. Integration is the ugly stepchild. People always say, “Oh yeah, we'll deal with integration afterward.” Turns out that in many transactions, it's not always 100% cash. Sometimes there's an earn-out for future performance. If you're not integrated well (you don't have the resources you need to execute your plan), there are some significant financial implications to the earn-out. Then there are the financial implications to Rationale. Transactions are typically based on looking backward using a multiple. When you create a rationale that says one plus one equals a hundred, if it's a strategic investment, you take your product and we plug it into the larger company's sales force or the larger company's customer base. What could we do inside the larger company? What's the impact of your product on the larger company? The way to maximize value is not looking backward as a multiple, but looking forward using the rationale. Strategically, why is the combination so valuable? If you can get everybody aligned around the rationale and the financial implications of that rationale, that's how you're going to drive a better price for an exit. Mert: No one's going to just sit down and tell you, “This is our rationale.” You uncover it. You unearth it over years. That's why we urge entrepreneurs to put their party dresses on. Talk to many competitors. Talk to strategics. Get out the door. You need to build this trusted relationship over time with fundamental questions. How can I help? How can I help you push your agenda forward? How can I help my customers? This is what great partnerships really look like. We're not saying go share your financials with your competitors or give away all your IP to a larger strategy, but you need to be that trusted partner that advances the mission on all sides and creates a situation where everybody wins. Mark: We wrote the book about exits, but it turns out that the decisions that entrepreneurs make at the beginning of their journey have an outsized impact at the end of the journey. Even though this book is really about the exit, there is really good advice there about the beginning of the journey as well. Jeff: That's exactly right. This book is really about the journey. All of the steps on the journey influence the end. There's so much wisdom in the book and insights about all the things that you can do to proactively get to the right end. Management meetings are oftentimes the first time that business owners meet their potential acquirers, whether they're competitors or strategics, or investors. But the longer that relationship can be developed, the more that you can uncover in terms of the shared common goal of what can we do together. And the best valuation and the best terms will just naturally evolve. What is an “Exit Talk”? How can founders use it to reach alignment in their boardrooms? (15:00) Jeff: The Exit Talk really struck a chord with me. Let's encourage clients and future clients to have these discussions and this thought process through the FAIR framework to really think ahead. Sometimes we as investment bankers get brought in late in the game. But most of our transactions and our best relationships really span years. We get to know the business, the goals, and importantly the people involved, the operators, the owners, the founders, and the investors. Some of these relationships for us span a decade or more. We give them advice on how to grow their companies. This concept of an exit talk is missing from my perspective. Exit discussions are often secretive or clouded in secrecy. It is a very small universe of folks within a company that knows that a transaction is imminent. It's rarely discussed openly among the senior leadership team until late in the game. What you guys propose is proactive. Through your work and sharing your work with my future clients, I'd like them to embrace this philosophy. I love this quote that you said, “Instead of fueling the awkwardness of the exit topic by staying silent, we are putting forward a new norm that we believe the entire industry should adopt, which is the Exit Talk.” Mark: This is one of our favorite topics. But before we dive into the Exit Talk: We are such big believers in trust. Every deal has its ups and downs. It has its emotional turbulence, it's the journey. Trust is the lubrication that gets deals done through to the conclusion. I just wanted to put a fine point on that topic of trust because it permeates everything we do. The Exit Talk. It turns out that there's a stigma to talking about exits. CEOs are afraid. They're afraid that if they bring up the topic of an exit that their board and their investors are going to think their heart's not in it. They've lost hope. They've lost faith. In the Venture Capital or Private Equity world, we have a time horizon. When you take our capital, you take our agenda, and you take our time horizon. We're looking for X return over Y timeframe. And if you're in year one of a fund, we've got plenty of time. Let's go build and grow. If you're in year 10 of a fund, we've got to start returning capital back to our LPs. With the Exit Talk, what we're proposing is that once a year, maybe your first board meeting of the year, you have a regularly scheduled annual talk where the CEO, without fear of being perceived as their heart's not in it, can talk about the exit. The reason it's so incredibly helpful is that you have the luxury of time. If you had 18 months or two years, you have the luxury of saying, “Who's going to be the most likely acquirer? Is it going to be a strategic acquirer? And why? Who is it and why would they want to acquire us? Or is it going to be a financial buyer and what are they looking for? Are they looking for top-line revenue?” If we're going to sell to somebody who really cares about growth, we may invest a little bit more heavily in sales and marketing. If it's somebody who is more financially oriented and really cares about EBITDA, we might tighten the ship and focus on profitability. It gives you the luxury of time to get your intellectual property in order, make sure that every single employee has a signed agreement, and make sure that trademarks and patents are filed appropriately. Get your data room pristine. If you have the luxury of time, you can optimize and present your business. And you could take the time to find the best bankers and attorneys who really are going to represent you well. Mert: An outcome of this talk doesn't necessarily have to be “we're ready to sell, or we're not ready to sell”. It can also be an opportunity to start prototyping some of the theories around how you add more value to your customers. This is a great centerpiece for what we believe an exit should be reasoned around. This will help our customers faster/better than what we could do on our own by just raising more money or gathering more capital or resources. For instance, if you are going to have a strategic alignment with a larger company like Google, but you're not ready to sell, it's still an opportunity to start a relationship. Maybe we work on a mutual customer together. Maybe we create some content together where we tell our stories and we share our wisdom with theirs. You want to start charging up that trust battery over time. When you are ready, you are a known entity. The reality is these M&A (Corporate Development) leaders want to buy companies from trusted entities. They don't want an egg on their face either. They want to know the company that they're investing in. They're not viewing this as an acquisition, they're really viewing it as an investment. They want to know they can trust you. They want to know that you can go the distance. It's a really difficult thing to do to create that kind of trust. You're not going to rush through trust. You're going to build it incrementally over years. Even the identification of a strategic partner when you're not ready to sell is extremely valuable because that's an opportunity to generate a relationship. Find out what their priorities are. See if your solution helps move those numbers forward. Mark: We're big believers in empathy. We have an empathy framework. There are three rules of empathy: 1) It's not about you. It's always about the person sitting across the table from you. 2) Do your homework. Deeply and truly understand what's important. Mert just said, “Go listen to the quarterly earnings report.” They're going to tell you what they care about. 3) Bring a gift, add value. When I say bring a gift: what can you do? If you're an industry leader, provide some thought leadership about where the market's heading. Share new bits of technology. Not only can you gain knowledge about their strategic direction, you can also share knowledge and be thought of as a trusted thought leader. If you take those empathy rules and apply them to building relationships over time, that's how you're going to earn trust. Jeff: I love the idea of a trust battery and charging that up over time. You can't do that overnight. You can't do that in one management meeting. You can't do that in a really compressed timeframe. You really need to start early and think about what you can bring to the table. What can you bring as a gift to add value to somebody else so that they can see the value in what you are bringing? That's really the roadmap that you guys layout in your book: what steps can we take proactively to get to the best outcome. Who is involved in the Exit Talk, and why? (28:00) Mark: Let's separate out the annual exit talk from an actual transaction process. The exit talk is a board of directors-level conversation. Maybe you bring in one or two top lieutenants into that conversation, depending on the relationship between the CEO and maybe one or two C-suite members. But that's a board-level, strategic conversation that's not for the whole company. (For an actual transaction process), there are lots of different ways of handling it. My own personal opinion is that there is a dance that takes place starting as an aperture that broadens over time. One of the challenges with telling any employee about a transaction is human nature. “What's that mean to me? Am I going to have a job? Am I going to get fired? Am I going to become rich? What are my stock options worth?” One of the challenges is that not all deals happen; deals fall apart all the time. So the team has to have their eye on the ball. For the CEO, when they're going through a transaction, it can be all-consuming. We've seen instances where companies started slowing down, missing their numbers because the CEO was distracted and not focused on running their business. The way I think about it is starting with the CEO and the board, keeping a really tight circle of information. And then as the conversations start to broaden and deepen in a transaction, then people are going to start the due diligence process. Make sure your C-suite is involved and your executive team is involved. The people who are going to be part of the due diligence process, obviously you're going to have to inform them. I don't think it's a great thing to just wake up one morning and say to your entire employee base, “Hey, guess what? We just got sold.” There's a middle ground someplace in that continuum. Try to keep it confidential through most of the process. As you start to get to certainty you need to start opening it up so it's not a surprise to everybody. Mert: There's one major stakeholder that hasn't been discussed and I just want to bring that up, and that's your family. Most founders overlook that and think of this transaction as a business event. This is a life event. Your family is a humongous stakeholder. We want to highlight that this is a critical component of whether an exit happens or not. What's happening with your family is just as important as what is happening with your board and other stakeholders. Mark: I couldn't agree with you more. It's not just us, it's our families and our loved ones too that have a stake in this. Jeff: It goes for all key constituents, starting with the family and then moving down to the board members and the C-suite and figuring out what's the right communication style and method and frequency. These things are really critical decisions that most folks don't really spend the time thinking about. Mark: One of the questions we ask CEOs is: when you're done with the transaction, will your employees come back to work for you in the next company you start? Will your investors want to invest in you in the next company you start? Will the biz dev lead of the large company who goes on to the next company, are they going to want to buy your next company? I think what many entrepreneurs fail to understand is that the relationships you build and your legacy live on way past the deal and the transaction. We're big believers in servant leadership and that the best CEOs don't view life as a zero-sum game. They make sure that they take care of their customers, their employees, and their investors. They try to find the balance of supporting all relationships over time. ABOUT OUR GUESTS While a successful entrepreneur may exit a handful of companies in their lifetime, large buyers close deals all the time. Without decades of experience in mergers and acquisitions, founders don't have the tools they need to get the best results for themselves, their teams, or the new parent company. Through dozens of interviews with M&A leaders at the biggest Silicon Valley acquirers—as well as attorneys, bankers, and founders who have been through the trenches—Exit Right delivers the hard-earned lessons that lead to successful exits. From negotiation to valuation to breaking down a term sheet, managing legal costs, and handling emotional turbulence—this unparalleled guide covers every critical aspect of a technology startup sale. Learn where deals get into trouble, how to create alignment between negotiating parties, and what terms you should care about most. Above all, learn how to win in both the short and the long term, maximizing your price while positioning your company for a legacy you can be proud of. Author Biographies An early employee of Apple and Head of Innovation at Redbox, Mark Achler has been creating and investing in tech startups since 1986. Today, he is a founding partner of MATH Venture Partners, a technology venture capital fund, and an adjunct professor at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management. Mert Iseri co-founded SwipeSense, a healthcare technology company acquired by SC Johnson in 2020. Prior to that, he co-founded Design for America, a national network of students using design thinking to create social impact, now part of the IBM Watson Foundation. He is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence at MATH Venture Partners. Socials Mark Achler Mert Hilmi Iseri Book About the hosts Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. About the Middle Market Mergers & Acquisitions Podcast Get the insiders' take on mergers and acquisitions. M&A investment bankers Gina Cocking and Jeff Guylay of Colonnade Advisors discuss the technical aspects of and tactics used in middle market deals. This podcast offers actionable advice and strategies for selling your company and is aimed at owners of middle market companies in the financial services and business services sectors. Middle market companies are generally valued between $20 million and $500 million. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and consider leaving us a short review:
Solving the world's most complex problems, such as those the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals aim to tackle, requires new ways of thinking. In this episode, Julio M. Ottino, Dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University, discusses his new book “The Nexus,” which is a call to “augmenting” our knowledge in the face of complex global challenges, by bringing together the insights, and the conceptual moves, of art, technology, and science.
Middle Market Mergers and Acquisitions by Colonnade Advisors
This episode continues with our “industry spotlight series” where we focus on specific trends and opportunities in middle-market M&A transactions. Our previous episodes have covered four industries in which Colonnade has played a significant role as an M&A advisor to both buy-side and sell-side clients. We add F&I Agencies & Payment Plan Providers as industries where we deeply know the dynamics and players so as to provide exceptional service to clients who hire us to assist them in a transaction. Colonnade has studied the F&I Agencies and Payment Plan Provider markets for the last 20+ years. We have worked on nearly 30 M&A transactions on the buy-side and the sell-side. We have gotten to know the industry players and the buyers. We've identified some high-opportunity M&A plays that could help to drive even more value, scale, and customer satisfaction in the industry. Spotlight on F&I Agencies (1:00) In this first part of our episode, we answer the following questions: Where do F&I agencies sit in the F&I ecosystem? (1:00) What does a typical F&I agency look like? (7:00) What is going on in terms of M&A and what are the value drivers in the industry? (9:00) What is driving M&A transactions right now and what are some potential M&A plays? (12:00) Where do F&I agencies sit in the F&I ecosystem and what value do they provide? (1:00) Gina: Between the F&I administrators and the F&I office and the dealership, there are F&I agencies. They are independent agencies with independent agents. They are like insurance agents. They bring together the product administrators and the dealers. Gina: The agents have deep knowledge about the products they represent. They can train the F&I office on those products and how to sell the products. They also act as the middle man or the interface with the administrator. They are one distribution arm for the administrators, which makes them critical in the ecosystem. They are a valuable component of the overall F&I ecosystem. Jeff: The F&I agency is a particular point in the value chain. It's a differentiator. Some administrators sell to dealers through a direct sales force, others use F&I agents. Gina: There are administrators who go direct to dealers, but most administrators also use independent agents. They may have a direct sales force, but they have independent agents also. The only sector where that seems to not always be the case is selling into independent dealerships. You tend to see more direct agents that are employed by the administrators selling into the independent dealerships. Gina: An important component of what the agents do is help the dealership with reinsurance. Reinsurance is an important component of a dealership owner's profits. For every contract, every F&I product that is sold, there is a reserve set aside for future claims. F&I agents are usually very fluid and educated in talking about reinsurance and making sure that the dealership has the right reinsurance programs. So they deal with reinsurance, they do training on products, they do training on how to sell products. They sometimes help with staffing in the F&I office, and they'll help with some of the technology that is between the F&I office and the administrator. Gina: F&I represents a third of a dealership's profits. Everybody within the organization and affiliated with the organization is going to make sure that F&I runs smoothly. What does a typical F&I agency look like? (7:00) Gina: There are well over 100 independent agencies, and approximately 75%-80% of F&I agencies are less than 10 employees. There are very few large agencies. There are a few that are scaling, but there really aren't many. There is only one national agency that comes to mind and that's Vanguard (owned by Spectrum Automotive). Vanguard has been very acquisitive in building out its agent network. We also see Brown & Brown, which is a P&C insurance brokerage. They've been acquiring F&I agencies over the last few years. I don't know if they have a national footprint yet, but they're probably getting pretty close. And then you have acquired a lot of small agencies. Jeff: The Brown & Brown example is an interesting one that we've watched over the last five to six years as they've entered the industry. We've always thought their participation in the F&I agency world makes a lot of sense, given the parallels to the P&C distribution market. What is going on in terms of M&A and what are the value drivers in the industry? (9:00) Gina: We think that the M&A market for F&I agencies will continue to be hot in 2022. (See Gina's cover article in Agent Entrepreneur, 2022 M&A Predictions for F&I Agents) Agent value is driven by a couple of different factors. One is diversification. One of the challenges for these small agencies, just like any small company, is having all of their eggs in one basket. An F&I agency may have one dealership group that represents 40% of sales. That is a gating factor to trading and getting the highest possible value. Agencies that have significant concentration, which I call greater than 15%, trade at a lower multiple than agencies that have little concentration. Another value driver is size. We look at the number of W-2 employees (as well as financials). Jeff: Important when you go to sell these companies: Who owns the dealer relationships? And what's the risk of attrition in a transaction? Gina: A lot of diligence needs to be done in these transactions to really understand the nitty-gritty of who, not just on paper but in practice, owns the relationships. What is driving the M&A transactions right now and what are some potential M&A plays? (12:00) Jeff: It sounds like an industry that could be rolled up further. Following the playbook of the P&C insurance distribution market, you got a lot of mom and pops out there and a few large players. Gina: Both Brown & Brown and Vanguard Dealer Services (Spectrum Automotive) are rolling up agencies. The rest of M&A activity we see is not a roll up, but administrators buying agencies. National Autocare and Portfolio Group have been very inquisitive. There are many other administrators who bought one, two, three agencies, as they attempt to lock in their distribution channels. Gina: There should be another roll up of F&I agencies. There should be a private equity firm that's coming in here saying, “I'm going to put a hundred, $150 million to work and we're going to leverage it. And we're going to buy up 20 F&I agencies. We're going to make a super-agency with national coverage.” That could be uber-successful for everybody involved. It just hasn't happened yet. Jeff: The folks that are acquiring are paying pretty high multiples, and that's a challenge. Any new entrant would have to go in and go big pretty quickly. They'd have to find a platform that they can scale and put a lot of capital to work while holding their nose as they pay big prices upfront. Gina: A lot of the M&A activity we have seen is with an older generation that is retiring. There's also some leakage happening where the younger, talented, hungrier F&I agents are like, “I get it, I can do this.” They leave and go start their own agency. I think we'll see that next-generation starting to trade in about a year or two. Gina: I have one last point I want to cover about F&I agency M&A: what's driving the activity. First of all, there's a lot of money looking for deals. There are private equity firms backing administrators that need to grow inorganically. But we also see a lot of M&A activity at the dealership level. They're getting bigger. Big dealership groups are buying up other dealers, independent shops, and dealership groups. Every time one of those transactions happens, the agent that represents the target dealership is at risk of losing that client. Dealership M&A is driving F&I agency M&A. I think that this is the question that keeps a lot of agents up at night: Are they one or several M&A transactions away from losing a significant portion of their relationships and their livelihood? Spotlight on Payment Plan Providers (18:00) In this second part of our episode, we answer the following questions: How do payment plan providers add value to the auto F&I sector? (18:00) How big is the industry and who are the biggest players? (23:00) Why are payment plan providers a favorite industry of Colonnade? (25:00) What is going on in terms of M&A and what are the value drivers in the industry? (29:00) How do payment plan providers add value to the auto F&I sector? (18:00) Jeff: Payment plan companies came out of the ground around 20 years ago. They started as an offshoot of the insurance premium finance market, which we've talked about in a previous podcast. Fundamentally, this market is designed to help consumers purchase F&I products cost-effectively. Whether you're in a dealership (point of sale) and the F&I person says, “This VSC is going to cost you $3,000” or whether you get a piece of mail about an extended auto warranty (aftermarket), once you get sold on buying the coverage, the questions is always: Do you want to write a check for three grand or do you want to finance it over two or three years? In most cases, the VSC/extended auto warranty gets financed. That's where these payment plan companies come in. Jeff: At the dealership (point of sale), the payment for an F&I product typically gets rolled into the auto loan. It's just one of the line items in the auto loan, and you (as the consumer) pay it off as you go. There are some payment plan providers that focus on point of sale at the dealership, allowing a consumer to finance the product outside the auto loan. In the aftermarket, which is really where we see these payment plans flourish, it's a different dynamic. If you're on the phone with a direct marketer and you agree to buy the coverage, you can put 10% down and pay over 18 or 36 months, depending on the payment plan. Interestingly, they're interest-free and cancelable at any time. And as you continue to drive your car and assess the usefulness of the product, you can cancel it at any time. If you cancel it, all you do is call up the seller or the administrator and say, “I want to cancel my payment plan.” In that case, you get a portion of your money back (the unearned premium). It works in a similar way to the insurance premium finance market. The contract is earned over the life of the product. If it's a five-year product and you're one year into it, you might get 80% of the money back. The payment plan company is indifferent because it will just get their pro rata share back from the administrator and seller. The seller will sell the product to the consumer, and if they attach financing to it, the seller will collect the 10 or 15% down payment. The payment plan company will insert themselves and front the rest of the money to the administrator and to the seller. The administrator has to front some money to the CLIP (1) provider, but the revenue to the seller and the admin fee gets fronted by the payment plan company. Jeff: Our Industry Report on this sector goes into much more detail about the industry. How big is the industry and who are the biggest players (23:00) Jeff: We estimate this is about a $5 billion a year originations market. There's not good data. We've done a number of studies over the years and think that's the size of the market. It grows with auto sales and the adoption of products. It's grown considerably over the last several years. There are probably 10 independent players in the market. There are just a small handful of large players. The biggest players are PayLink, which is owned by Fortress and Milestone. Walco is the next biggest, and they're growing nicely. This is the Walder team that previously ran Mepco and Omnisure, and they've started up a new finance company that's growing quite rapidly. Mepco is a large player, they're top three, that's owned by Seabury. There are other smaller players like Budco, Line 5. Service Payment Plan is a big company in the dealer space, again different dynamics but similar product offering. PayLink, Omnisure, and Mepco really dominate the aftermarket space. Folks like Service Payment Plan dominate the dealer (point of sale) channel. Why are payment plan providers a favorite industry of Colonnade? (25:00) Gina: I love the payment plan business because it is so low-risk. What the payment plan companies do is hold a cash reserve on each funding in case the underlying consumer cancels. And that happens. There are a lot of cancellations in the direct consumer marketing of vehicle service contracts. As we've discussed before, it's not because the contracts are bad contracts, but it's because consumers actually have transparency. In the case of vehicle service contracts rolled into an auto loan, consumers don't get a breakout every month of the components of their auto loan that they're paying. They don't see that 80% of your auto loan payment is for the car, 10% is for the vehicle service contract, et cetera, cetera. But when a consumer is financing or using a payment plan for a vehicle service contract in the aftermarket, they have complete transparency as to what that cost is for. And if they decide as a household, they no longer need that product (they need to redeploy that payment to something else like their mortgage), they can cancel. The payment plan businesses have a cash reserve for this. So it is a very low risk business and has great returns. Jeff: Some of these companies have several hundred million dollars of portfolio and each contract starts out at $3,000 and burns down. These are very granular portfolios. You're not going to take a big loss on any particular contract. Unlike the insurance premium finance industry, the incidence or likelihood of fraud is negligible, and the risk here is quite low given the granularity. We like the short duration of these assets. We like the low loss rates. Generally, these transactions are priced at a 15% to 20% unlevered return. They're very high-yield. There's no credit risk. We're not doing anything with consumer credit risk. We really don't care. We're just managing relationships with sellers and administrators. All those dynamics are favorable to this lending universe. I love this business. It's a niche industry, $5 billion is not the $50 billion commercial P&C market, but it's meaningful and growing. What is going on in terms of M&A and what are the value drivers in the industry? (29:00) Jeff: There really hasn't been much activity as there's a limited universe of players. Some of the administrators are vertically integrating and getting into the payment plan industry. We worked on the initial sale of Mepco to Independent Bank almost 20 years ago. We sold PayLink (which used to be called Warranty Finance Company) to Oxford Financial. It's now owned by Milestone and Fortress. Omnisure: Ed and Paul Walder started up that business from scratch and grew it to a couple hundred million dollars of receivables. We advised on the sale to Fortress. PayLink and Omnisure merged in 2017 and put together two leading players in the industry. The other important transaction to mention is Seabury's acquisition of Mepco out of Independent Bank in 2017. Most recently Walco has come out of the ground. Walco was started in early 2020 by Ed and Paul Walder again, starting up another competitor in the sector. They've grown considerably in recent years and are doing a great job building out that business. We don't see a ton of M&A activity per se, but it's a really interesting market. Part of the challenge from an M&A perspective is that there has not traditionally been a deep bank buyer universe of this product and that confounds me a bit. For all the reasons we mentioned, this is a really interesting, dynamic asset class. It's very similar to insurance premium finance, which has a number of large banks in the sector and a number that want to get into it. The collateral structure looks very similar, except that payment plan providers have higher yields, higher return on assets, and even lower losses. And there's no fraud. I think there's a real opportunity for forward-thinking banks to embrace this asset class and do quite well with very little risk. (1) A CLIP is a commercial liability insurance product that covers the contractual obligations of the insured. A full reimbursement CLIP would indemnify the insured commercial entity for all monies it expends to fulfill a contractual commitment. About the hosts Gina Cocking serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Colonnade Advisors. Gina began her career in investment banking at Kidder Peabody, was an analyst at Madison Dearborn Partners and an associate at J.P. Morgan & Co. She was the Chief Financial Officer of Cobalt Finance, a specialty finance company. She went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Healthcare Laundry Systems, a private equity-backed company for which she oversaw the successful sale to a strategic acquirer. Gina served as the Line of Business CFO – Consumer Banking and Lending at Discover Financial Services. Gina serves on the Board of Directors of CIB Marine Bancshares, Inc. Gina received her BA in Economics and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Jeff Guylay is a Managing Director of Colonnade Advisors. Prior to joining Colonnade in 2000, Jeff was an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions and Fixed Income Capital Markets groups in New York. He also spent several years in J.P. Morgan's Chicago office. Jeff has over 20 years of M&A and investment banking experience and has served as lead execution partner on over 25 M&A and financing transactions at Colonnade. Jeff received an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a Master of Engineering Management from the University's McCormick School of Engineering. Jeff received a BA from Dartmouth College and a BE from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering.
Neal Sáles-Griffin is an entrepreneur, teacher, and non-profit leader. He co-founded the first beginner-focused in-person coding bootcamp, and most recently ran for mayor of Chicago. He's currently the Managing Director of Techstars Chicago Powered by J.P. Morgan and the Techstars Chicago Accelerator, and is an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering where he teaches entrepreneurship. On this episode we speak about the color of entrepreneurship, investing in Black women, and other underrepresented founders.
Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine has put the dangers of European reliance on Russian oil and gas into sharp focus. The debate on energy policy in the West is, however, too often built on wishful thinking—particularly regarding our ability to make a transition to a carbon-neutral economy in the next few decades. According to Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and faculty fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, it simply is inconceivable that the world could move away from hydrocarbons on the time frame casually advanced by politicians in the West. Mills explains—from the vantages of science and economics—that attempting to do so would pad the coffers of the world's most dangerous regimes, like Putin's, without meaningfully reducing carbon emissions. Instead, Mills calls for a two-pronged strategy: In the short term, America and its allies should dramatically ramp up production of oil and gas to increase geopolitical strength. While doing so, we should be more ambitious with investment in R&D for better methods of production and extraction, more efficient consumption of energy, and new technologies.
Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine has put the dangers of European reliance on Russian oil and gas into sharp focus. The debate on energy policy in the West is, however, too often built on wishful thinking—particularly regarding our ability to make a transition to a carbon-neutral economy in the next few decades. According to Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and faculty fellow at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, it simply is inconceivable that the world could move away from hydrocarbons on the time frame casually advanced by politicians in the West. Mills explains—from the vantages of science and economics—that attempting to do so would pad the coffers of the world's most dangerous regimes, like Putin's, without meaningfully reducing carbon emissions. Instead, Mills calls for a two-pronged strategy: In the short term, America and its allies should dramatically ramp up production of oil and gas to increase geopolitical strength. While doing so, we should be more ambitious with investment in R&D for better methods of production and extraction, more efficient consumption of energy, and new technologies.
Listen to this interview of Dashun Wang, Professor at the Kellogg School of Management and McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, and also with Albert-László Barabási, Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science and Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University. We talk about their new book The Science of Science" (Cambridge UP, 2021) and science, squared. Albert-László Barabási : "There is, of course, the need that you grow professionally. If you're a mathematician, you need to perfect your math. If you're a physicist, you need to do your physics. If you're a biologist, you need to develop your lab techniques. But no matter the magnitude of any discovery you might make, it's not impactful unless you can actually communicate it. And I think that this is where science lacks significantly. I would even go so far as to say, there is a counter-selection: People who are not necessarily the best communicators tend to prefer science because there's the impression that that is not the skill that you need — you just need to be able to solve problems in a meaningful way. But if you're not able to write your ideas down, if you're not able to share your ideas with your community, then it's really as if you didn't have the ideas at all. And you know, I have experienced this in my own career. When I got interested in network science back in 1994/95, for the first few years my papers got rejected one after the other, and not because it wasn't good science (as I would later realize) — no, my papers were getting rejected because I could not communicate to the community at large and to my referees in particular why we should care about networks. And it took me about five years to find the way into people's minds, to learn how they write papers about networks. I needed to learn the hard way about how the community of scientists appreciated and did not appreciate research on networks. And it took me so long because I'd never been offered the opportunity to study the communication of science." Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at writeyourresearch@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Since 2016, Dashun Wang has been an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and McCormick School of Engineering. He has been the Founding Director of the Center for Science of Science and Innovation at Kellogg since 2019. What are Dashun's thoughts about Hot Streak? Does everyone ever experience this phenomenon? What are the factors that lead to it? How does his new Al help distinguish Hot Streak in art and work settings? Tune in to learn more! --------------------- The #1 challenge for organizations right now is how to attract and retain talent. Organizations are stuck in old ways of thinking about work and they are struggling! In my new PDF, I outline 7 ways the workforce is changing and what you and your organization need to do to adapt. The Great Resignation is The Great Opportunity if you are willing to take action! Click here to download the PDF. --------------------- Get the latest insights on the Future of Work, Leadership and employee experience through my daily newsletter at futureofworknewsletter.com Let's connect on social! Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobmorgan8 Instagram: https://instagram.com/jacobmorgan8 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jacobm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturistJacob
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