Doggett on Business, Free Markets and the New CIA: China, India and America

“If we can’t figure out how to take advantage of this, we should be ashamed.”

I’ve written about John Doggett before [pictured here with wife Patty Tang]. Senior lecturer in the department of management at McCombs, Doggett is known for his penetrating gaze, sharply defined opinions, and forthright presentation style. Here are highlights of his recent remarks to alumni about the rise of China and what it means to business people in the United States.

Doggett’s Presentation Slides

Doggett’s Speech on Video

“We are in the eye of a strategic inflection point hurricane, and it is a category 7 hurricane,” he said on his first slide. “All hell is about to come together on top of your head. When the eye of the hurricane hits, it is going to hit you hard.”

Learning from History

Doggett started with a review of history, going back to the end of WWII, when most factories of our industrialized competitors had been destroyed. For a brief period, American manufacturing firms were the only game in town. “We started to believe that was because we were better than anyone else. We assumed that Third World Countries would always be dirt poor colonies, and would not be able to produce innovative products that could compete with our products. And the most dangerous word in the language is assume.”

One assumption was that there were a handful of countries that could never rise to our level, like China, India, and Brazil that would always be poor. Along the way, the U.S. actively told the world that our life was better than communism or socialism, and eventually they started to believe the message. Doggett classified that as a “Be careful what you wish for” scenario, because other societies decided to pursue the “American dream.” In 2001, Goldman Sachs predicted there were four countries that would be the Axis of the Future, Brazil, Russia, India and China (known today as the BRICs). All of these countries had serious economic problems, but they were all large-population countries, and they accounted for almost a quarter of global gross domestic product.

The Longhorn Athletics Brand: Lessons for Business

Monitor changes > Increase favorable associations > Leverage existing affect > Avoid distractions.

Ben Bentzin, lecturer in the McCombs department of marketing, spoke to gathered alumni at the 5th Annual Alumni Business Conference at the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center at The University of Texas at Austin. His topic, lessons learned from the success of the Longhorn athletics program over the past two decades. These are just the highlight notes. The full video presentation will be posted later.

• Over the past twelve years UT Austin athletics has grown from a $21 million annual budget in 1997 to $138 million today. One difference is that women’s sports, the Erwin Center and other program elements have been added into the budget since 1997.
• The Big 12 agreement was a better fit for Texas (relative to Southwest Conf.), in part because it provided a 50-50 split of TV revenues. Half is shared equally across the conference, and half is based on the individual team’s performance in attracting viewership. That was a better deal for Texas, which traditionally draws high interest nationally.

Digging Deeper on Social Media: Conversations Beyond the Basics

We have succumbed to the rat race of social media and forgotten its true purpose in our businesses – to build relationships.

Tim Hayden [right] of Blue Clover joined with a few social media colleagues, Chris Brogan, Jason Falls and Sam Decker, to host an “unofficial” SXSW conference at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, entitled Get Ready 2 Live (GR2L). Their goal was to carry the social media conversation to a deeper level than what they were finding at most of the SXSW sessions.

Everyone there seemed to share the same sentiment, that it is time to move beyond the “social media is great, everyone dive in” mentality, and explore the kinds of relationships we are trying to develop with others, and why those relationships are important.

Since I was too lazy to take notes, I’m delighted that Alicia Arenas of Sanera People Development Company prepared a very nice synopsis of the discussions.

Thanks Alicia for The Next Social Media Revolution. An excerpt here:

ProductCamp Austin is Returning March 27th: Un-Conference for Marketing and Product Management

Yes, it is free, but if it makes you feel better just pretend you had to pay $600 for registration. It’s that good.

All the discussion in Austin today is SXSW, but there is more good stuff heading our way, as ProductCamp Austin returns on Saturday, March 27th to one of my favorite venues in town, the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center.

Who should attend ProductCamp Austin? How about anybody with an interest in marketing, product management, branding, social media, and fill-my-head-with-cool-ideas. I almost hate to tell you that ProductCamp is free, because it sounds cheap and unworthy, and I found last August’s session to be immensely enjoyable and relevant. My recap of that session is here.

Yes, it is free, but if it makes you feel better just pretend you have to book a long flight to California and pay $600 for registration and another $400 for a hotel room. Now, go enjoy a great conference.

And by the way, the un-conference is free because everyone pitches in to make it work, including you. Perhaps you have a session you would like to propose? Or, you can help with publicity, or just spreading the word.

I’m signed up already, here is where you do the same. See you there?

While Entrepreneur Education Lags, UT Austin is Named One of Fortune’s “Five Schools for Entrepreneurs”

News of the Texas Venture Labs announcement has made its way to Shanghai.

This has been a head-spinning week for entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at Austin, capped off by this bit of icing on the cake, the listing of UT as one of Five Schools for Entrepreneurs by CNNMoney’s Fortune Website, which claims that “the spirit of Michael Dell still haunts the campus.” I don’t know about the haunting part, but Dell does maintain close contact with students and faculty members here, most recently as part of the VIP Distinguished Speaker Series.

Of course the week’s big news was Wednesday’s announcement of Texas Venture Labs. I just received a call from Cory Leahy (photo right, with husband Kevin), assistant director of communications at McCombs, who is in China with a group of MBA students. She tells me that news of the Texas Venture Labs announcement has made its way to Shanghai, where students were excitedly discussing the implications for E-ship and innovation at the b-school (which let us not forget is named after one of the great entrepreneurs in America).