Repost: Why Liberals Shouldn't Be Afraid of Big Money

Jessica Church, one of the members of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute where I volunteer, recently penned this short and sweet piece that summarizes my back to business school logic at the Energy Collective:

By Jessica Church 

Liberals everywhere: It is time for a different kind of climate legislation. 

In order for the U.S. energy economy to power itself into the future, it must develop new relationships with Wall Street. This idea may not appeal to the populist column of renewables advocates, but there are good reasons why anyone interested in avoiding climate disaster needs to be open to this idea. 

For some context: When it comes to Congress, 2013 was a year of conflict and inaction. As a result, the American people faced a sixteen-day government shutdown, SNAP cuts, reductions in unemployment insurance, and partisan gridlock. The Federal government lacks the capacity to function, much less affect sweeping regulatory environmental legislation. 

At the same time, the top five Wall Street firms have collectively invested $50 billion in solar, wind and energy efficiency over the last three years. They’ve lobbied Congress for extensions of key renewable energy policies. And they’ve worked to make the biggest investment portfolios in the world cleaner. 

In 2013, Exxon Mobil spent over $13 million lobbying Congress. By contrast, SolarWorld, America’s largest solar manufacturer since 1975, spent only $257,000. Bolstering the efforts of renewable companies with Wall Street capital will help even the playing field in the halls of Washington. 

So even though it doesn’t appear that Congress is anywhere near passing comprehensive regulatory legislation, they might be able to come together and pass more laws that incentivize private and corporate investment in renewables, efficiency, and public transportation. As it currently stands, this type of legislation tends to inspire less partisan gridlock and fewer insults aimed at environmentalists. Why? Because it has the backing of a diverse coalition that includes both pro-renewable populists and Wall Street. 

And if the government cannot or will not pass the kind of regulatory legislation, it is imperative that climate concerned Americans seek out and promote other options. The hard truth is that transforming the U.S. economy from its current state into a green economy will require massive monetary investments, and that may require a change in thinking from the dedicated, creative minds of liberal environmentalists. 

Do you feel a little bit dirty? Like you’re compromising your principles… sliding over to the other side? Don’t. This is one of the most effective ways of ensuring that the United States economy will transform itself into a green economy. And that is something everybody, kombucha drinking–thrift store shopping–bike riding-environmentalists included, can get excited about. 

Incentivizing private investment with investment tax credits, production tax credits, and other mechanisms that work within the existing market will be the quickest and most effective way to ensure that the United States’ energy economy doesn’t get left behind.

Doing Well and Doing Good: The Business for Good Summit

LBJ's Baine's report has coverage of our McCombs Business for Good Summit here. Re-printing their article in its entirety below:

The McCombs School of Business Net Impact Chapter is hosting its 6th annual summit on business and social impact. Formerly called the Sustainable Business Summit, The Business for Good Summit has broadened its scope to address some of the more meaningful questions about how business can be used as a platform to affect social and environmental change. Panelists at the Summit will discuss topics such as the role of technology in education, energy innovation and climate change, sustainable and responsible investment, and the role of entrepreneurship in international economic development.

The Summit comes at a time when those involved in international development are asking questions about how the private sector can be more involved in projects typical to governments and NGOs. Proponents of private sector involvement in social welfare projects feel that harnessing business and investment funds has the opportunity for great benefits. Government organizations, such as USAID, and NGOs are no longer solely responsible in addressing social and environmental wealth issues—businesses and investors have just as much at stake in a global environment that continues to embrace greater economic interconnectivity.

This trend signifies a shift in private sector perceptions and what their consumers and shareholders expect of them. With the advent of open source data and increased transparency, consumers and shareholders hold companies more accountable. There is heightened emphasis on not just shareholder value, but also the social value of company shares. Furthermore, as B4G Summit leader Sean Pool points out, there are new business opportunities for companies on board with these new norms.

“Take for example the micro-finance work that the Whole Planet Foundation is funding,” says Pool. “By providing credit to small business owners and entrepreneurs, the Whole Planet Foundation is injecting capital into parts of the world that desperately need it, and the result is a blossoming of businesses, job creation, and economic development. But these are loans, not aid. Which means the Foundation can re-invests this capital again and again”. Joy Stoddard, a Director of WPF, will be speaking on this and other topics at the Summit.

As policymakers and business leaders embark on new challenges in economic development, these challenges also beg new innovations and solutions. A smart and innovative company will run towards these challenges. Additionally, they could be rewarded by profit and the feel good sentiment of adding real value to the world.

Pool also notes that these business model shifts are significant to NGOs and governments as well. While old models of economic development depended on aid from donors, there is now a real opportunity to create new models that emphasize economic self-sustainability and continued growth, despite cuts in funding. This could mean that NGOs modify their models individually, or enter into partnerships with like-minded businesses and entrepreneurs.

As the private sector increases its role in social welfare impact, there undoubtedly will be new challenges obstructing clear progress. When asked about the challenges that businesses and investors face by embracing social impact strategies, Pool answered that this is why he and his colleagues are so excited about the Summit. Many of the panelists of the event have confronted these obstacles and will discuss their setbacks, experiences, and best practices in business based social impact.

The Business for Good Summit represents private and public sector convergence in social and economic development. Globalization has forced policymakers and business leaders to think critically about their missions and business models. Leaders that can think critically and creatively will lead this shift towards responsible investment and innovation, and hopefully, will lead the international community to a brighter future.

The Summit will take place between 2pm and 6pm on Tuesday February 25th at the McCombs School of Business. For more information and to register to attend, please visit the Summit website: http://www.utsummit.org/.

Investing for Impact

So, as everyone knows, I am very interested in how we put the vast amounts of private capital sloshing around in the market to productive and positive use for society. In particular, I'm intrigued by the possibility that there are potentially trillions of dollars out there to fund things like environmental sustainability, community revitalization, education, better governance, and other social causes. 

On February 25th, I'm going to be helping to host a panel on this topic as part of the UT Business for Good Summit. Here's the quick description: 

Investing for Impact

With $3.74 trillion invested in sustainable and responsible investment funds in the United States, we are rapidly approaching an era where even mainstream investors need to take into account the social, environmental, and community impacts of their investment decisions.

And the conversation no longer about “values” versus “value” in investing. In fact, the evidence is mounting that sustainable and responsible investing strategies actually can yield higher returns than strategies that ignore these factors. According to a 2012 Harvard Business School study, $1 invested in a portfolio comprised of “high sustainability” companies in 1993 would have been worth $22.60 by 2010. The same $1 invested in a control group would have only grown to $15.40.

In this dynamic and evolving space, large financial institutions are beginning to look beyond simple “responsible” investing metrics to create impact with their investments. Goldman Sachs recently announced the closing of deals around two new investment vehicles, “social impact bonds,” in which returns are explicitly linked to social justice or educational goals attainment.

This bodes well for those of us trying to use business for good.

Making R&D Count

This summer we saw big news out from the Bureau of Economic Analysis: Corporate research and development accounts are henceforth to be counted toward "investment" in the calculation of the GDP, rather than as expenses. This has big implications for technology companies, and for innovation policy.

Innovation-driven companies like Apple, GE, Samsung, Space-X and First Solar depend on investments in research and development to stay cutting edge. If they aren't on the cutting edge, they won't stay in business long (case-in-point, look at the recent decline in Apple's market valuation, driven not by any tangible problems with its balance sheet, but rather by the fear that its innovative edge on major money making devices is starting slip relative to its competitors).

But despite the value of R&D and the product and process improvement is leads to for companies that deal in innovation, under the old GDP accounting rules R&D could not be counted as an "investment" in something of future value. Only as an "expense," money gone and never to return.

This is cognitively wrong, since it is clear that investments in new technology can be incredibly lucrative, if uncertain. The explanation for this has of course been the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is a notoriously conservative entity, and to allow companies to book "investments" in the uncertain future value of innovation would be too risky. Thus, they have always been counted as expenses, and where such expenses have resulted in a better product, the value is later booked as profit. Part of why Apple exploded into the place of most valuable company in the world in 2011 was because of years and decades of investments in R&D that led to better technology.

The advanced technology they developed for iPod, iPhone, and iPad (3 key pillars of Apple's success) were kept off the books, written down as "expenses," rather than being carried appropriately as intellectual assets.

While FASB's Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) still have not changed, the Bureau of Economic Analysis's latest GDP estimate set a new precedent this week by treating past investments in R&D as they should be: as investments in intellectual assets—rather than as expenses. In Europe, such accounting is already commonplace, and fully legal under European accounting rules. But the restrictive US-dominated GAAP system has yet to accept the importance of R&D and intellectual property to value creation.

The BEA's move will have the immediate impact of increasing the US GDP this year, and every past year going back to 1929. And it makes complete sense.

Companies carry "intangible assets" on their balance sheets all the time. Coca-Cola company for example, carries a roughly $70 billion "goodwill" asset that simply represents the "goodwill" that global consumers have toward their brand.

If goodwill is allowed on balance sheets, shouldn't investments in intellectual property, innovation, and R&D be counted as assets? This week, the BEA showed that it thinks they should, and that's a great step. But while this will be great for macoeconomic innovation policy, there is much further to go. I have written a lot (see the innovation chapter in Progressive Growth) about how to accelerate innovation in the economy, but this accounting realization adds this potentially potent tool to the toolbelt:

If the FASB would revise GAAP to count R&D as investments in assets rather than as expenses, it would go a long way toward incentivizing companies to spend more on R&D, a net social positive. When companies have a bad year, short-sighted CEOs being evaluated on their stock price often look for the longest term spending to cut first. Because R&D is accounted for as spending, rather than investments in assets, it is often first to the chopping block, much to the detriment of our national innovation economy and national prosperity.

Changing the GAAP rules to be more permissible of accounting for R&D and intellectual property as assets could go a long way toward encouraging companies to invest in innovation. Even better: unlike the R&D tax credit, this change would be virtually free to the taxpayer, and would start yielding economic returns almost immediately.

"Think [Very] Different:" An Ambitious Strategy to Turn Around Apple's Growth Prospects

Much reporting has been flowing through the business press about what to do with the more $140 billion mountain of cash that is figuratively sitting in Apple's treasure chest in Cupertino. One prominent investor who recently bought $1.5 billion of Apple stock has come forward advocating for a massive equity buy-back as one option to push the value back up, while others say Apple must invest in its own future if it is to ever grow again. Despite continued earnings growth, the company's share price is still 25% off its peak above $700. Why? 

Underlying most analyses are a widespread fear that Apple no longer has what it takes to innovate without Jobs. Essentially, the market had priced in a very high share price based on future growth opportunities viewed to be limitless so long as Steve Jobs's creative brain was at the helm. The release of the iPad three years ago and the ensuing opening up of an entire new industry of e-readers—products that consumers didn’t know the needed—propelled Apple’s stock to stratospheric highs. Investors were convinced that Apple’s wizards could continue to out-innovate everyone, and were rewarded by soaring stock values.

Now, three years later, Apple’s stock sags under the weight of heavy expectations. To be fair, it has only been 3 years since apple revolutionized the e-reader and possibly the laptop business with the ipad. Since then, incremental advances and improvements have carried them along reinforced their position of dominance. But, copy-cats have eaten away at their market share. Android has leapt to the front of the pack, and all indications suggest that they have more room to grow. Windows phone like-wise has slowly but surely eaten its way into the market. Kindle Fire and HD are now credible and cheap alternatives to the ipad, slowly displacing market share.

Meanwhile, Apple is building a multi billion dollar facility in California to serve as its global headquarters. As an investor, I usually get suspicious when companies start spending their excess cash on massive extravagant homages to themselves, instead of innovation to stay ahead of the game. 

Investors have punished Apple, and rightly so. Its products are no longer unique in a marketplace devoid of competitors. Indeed, Apple’s competitive advantage in existing markets seems less certain than ever. Investors who are buying Apple at its recent low of $400 are hoping that its market cap and fundamental will carry it, or else that its next product, the iWatch, or a new and improved iTV will do again for their respective industry what the iPad did for e-reader: convince consumers to shell out hundreds of dollars for entirely re-imagined products they never knew they needed.

But many are not so optimistic. And this puts pressure on Apple. If it can not deliver another market-revolutionizing product, investors may forever take their money elsewhere, keeping its stock firmly tethered to earth for the foreseeable. On the other hand, if it tries and fails, things could be much worse. With all eyes on Apple, what’s a company to do?

Maybe the Solution is on the Roof

Why not move to an adjacency in consumer electronics: solar panels. They are consumer electronics, that just happen to go on your rooftop. And the industry is presently in a moment of supreme existential reevaluation.

Recently news broke that Apple would be building its second solar-powered data facility in the Nevada desert. But while media outlets like Reuters and Cleantechnia gave the company the obligatory pat on the back for good implementation of its environmental policy, no one asked the real question:

With the energy sector in such need of revolution, and Apple such an expert industry revolutionizer, couldn't Apple play a larger role as not just customer, but creator of clean tech?

Given the ambivalence of both the media and markets toward Apple’s potential for future innovation (it's stock has slid nearly 40 percent since its high of $702 last fall), a bold move toward innovation in an industry where innovation is sorely needed could do more than just save the planet. It could save Apple.

1. Apple needs to 'Think Different'

Apple is facing an interesting conundrum that only the second richest company in the world could face: It has too much money than it knows how to spend on its core business. Faced with this, Apple's leadership has opted to take what for any other company would be a safe move: paying off their shareholders with dividends and stock buybacks.

‘Safe,’ that is, for anyone but Apple. For the world's preeminent innovation role model, breaking a long-standing tradition of keeping revenues for reinvestment in future growth shows weakness, not strength. Instead of signaling to investors that Apple was a great bet on value, Apple's little bribes to its investors signaled that the company was out of game-changing ideas to invest in.

It has only been 3 years since Apple revolutionized e-readers, home computing, and possibly reading itself, with the iPad; 5 years since it changed how humans interact with each other and with the internet with the iPhone; and 12 since the iPod put the music industry finally and firmly on the path of digitization. But since then, Apple’s output has plateaued. Android has leapt to the front of the pack in smart phones operating systems, and all indications suggest that it has more room to grow. Windows phone similarly has slowly but surely eaten its way into the market. Kindle Fire and HD are now credible and cheap alternatives to the ipad, slowly displacing market share, even as the industry overall continues to grow.

Being on top makes you a big target, and just about every major device maker in the world has Apple in its sights. If Apple is going to regain its position as the world's preeminent authority in all things innovation, it's going to need to take its own advice, and "think different."

2. The Energy Industry is Ripe for Disruption

First of all, climate change is scary.

Second of all, energy is one of the largest and yet least innovative industries in the world. Roughly one out of every ten dollars spent globally is spent on energy, and 8 of the top 10 largest companies on Fortune's 500 list of biggest global companies make either oil, cars, or engines (the only two companies in the top-10 who don't are Apple and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway).

But despite being one of the biggest industries globally, energy companies are remarkably lazy when it comes to research and development, spending  just 0.42 percent of revenue on average on new technology, according to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, or EERE. This is compared to an average of 7.9 percent in the electronics industry, and 20 percent in pharmaceuticals

This means that the transmission infrastructure technologies we use in many parts of the country hasn't really been updated since the 1950s. Power plants we have running today were built in the 1960s. And despite the rapid growth of data-enabled smart devices, our electricity storage, metering, appliances, heating, cooling, and transportation systems have for the most part remained unchanged for decades.

This dearth of innovation makes energy a sitting duck, and a substantial market opportunity for a well-resourced and ruthless innovator like Apple. We all saw that iTunes did to the then-teetering record publishing industry in 2001. Imagine Apple bringing that same innovative force to bear on the now-teetering fossil fuels industry. 

3. Apple has the financial capital

The pittance of capital trickling into energy R&D means would-be innovators are hungry for cash. And Apple has cash. Mountains of cash.

Just for a sense of scale: What Apple spends on R&D on OS X, iOS, hardware, and its other products in one year ($4 billion is projected for FY 2013) would run the federal government's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E comfortably for eight years. With the $140 billion Apple had sitting idle in the bank at the beginning of this year, it could have funded ARPA-E at its current funding level for 500 years.

Even more ambitious, taking into account both ARPA-E and the Department of Energy’s larger, older, and more established applied clean energy research program run by the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, a roughly $2 billion research program in 2013—Apple could have run the entire federal clean energy technology research and development program at its current level for more than 50 years. Again, this is just with the cash Apple has today.

While it might not be wise to blow all of the company's cash on a clean technology research shopping spree, the astounding figures indicate that if Apple wanted to be a contender, it could be. Looking at the private sector instead of at the government, with the cash Apple has on hand, it could buy a commanding position in every single US-based clean tech company to receive venture funds in the last decade, and still have $100 billion left over.

4. Apple has the intellectual and physical capital

Of course, transforming the U.S. energy industry is not as simple as buying up patents, technologies, or companies wholesale. The right team with the right tools and the right vision is also needed, but there again Apple has assets to bring to bear.

Apple's existing supply chain relationships and size-based negotiating leverage, its research, development, prototyping, and manufacturing capabilities, and its formidable intellectual property portfolio all position Apple well to revolutionize clean energy. Apple’s existing patents on battery, charging, dynamic data management, and even solar technologies could serve a springboard for a broader foray away from powering their consumer devices and toward becoming a major innovator and supplier of clean technology components.

Whatever additional IP it needed, Apple could license, buy, or invent. Exactly what kind of clean tech devices Apple might want to make would be anyone's guess. They are, after all, the innovators.

Perhaps Apple would want to start small, sticking to what it knows with consumer-focused home clean energy and energy efficiency technologies, like smart thermostats. Apple could buy Nest, a zesty startup that is quietly doing to thermostats what the ipod did to music players. Or maybe Apple would want to create super user-friendly, easy-to-install solar panels to charge your appliances, power your home, or sell energy to the grid. Maybe Apple would develop smart meters that seamlessly send real-time home electrical consumption data to your iPhone or OS X dashboard, alert you when an appliance has been left on, and saves all data to your iCloud account. This would of course all be presented with the sleek, elegant, and simple design sensibilities that are Apple's calling card.

5. Apple has the human capital

The notion that Apple could revolutionize clean energy is not new. Greenpeace laid out a “Clean Energy Roadmap for Apple” last summer calling on the company to go coal free and power its data centers with 100 percent renewable energy. But where Greenpeace and other commentators leave off is exactly where Apple has the potential to pick up: Apple has the potential to be not just a consumer but a creator of disruptive clean technology innovations.

Apple's people are the best in the world at re-imagining and rapidly reinventing entire sectors of the economy. They introduced a step-change in the consumer experience of personal computing in the late 90's, then music in the early 2000's, phones in the mid 2000's, and now books, games, movies and our entire digital experience with the iPad in 2009. With nearly infinite resources at their disposal, and the ability to bring on new expertise as needed, there is no reason to doubt that the company's innovative ethos couldn't apply to energy as it has to personal computing, communications, and media.

The notion that a company with such a keen focus on one industry (consumer electronics) could branch out into something so seemingly different may seem at first counterintuitive. But then, look at the history of corporate entities. Google got its start in search, but now makes mobile operating systems, email, maps, calendars, glasses, and self-driving cars. IMB got its start in mainframes, then made personal computers, and now has a successful global B2B technology solutions consulting business. Nokia was founded as a paper mill in the late 1800s and now is a major wireless carrier. And 3M, the company that makes Scotch Tape, among thousands of other brands, was founded in 1902 as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, and sold a popular chemical to grinding wheel manufacturers.

Perhaps most iconic, the presence of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group in more than a dozen unrelated consumer-facing industries proves that corporate evolution into new markets is neither new nor unusual. And it may be time for Apple to evolve, or descend into irrelevance as it is slowly consumed by competition from its own copy-cats.

Apple is at the height of its power, wealth, and brilliance. In this moment, Tim Cook has a decision to make: whether Apple will count its blessings, spend its cash on stock buybacks and dividends that do not advance innovation or open new longterm growth trajectories, and settle in for a slow decline as competitors slowly whittle away at its dominance in favored sectors. Or, whether Apple will once again “think different,” and take a once-in-a-century opportunity to bring its innovative muscle to new markets ripe for revolution.

Less Knowledge Is Less Power

With little fanfare, we recently passed a major technological milestone: the sale of the one-billionth Internet-enabled smartphone worldwide. About one in seven humans on earth hold the Internet in their hands – not bad for a technology that hardly existed 10 years ago. Worldwide sales of smart tablets, a technology barely three years old, exceeded 100 million units in 2012 and are set to surpass 600 million in the next few years.

That's the opening to the latest op-ed I helped put together and place with my friend Neal Lane for US News and World Report. Neal is a top-notch writer and innovation policy advocate, and a pleasure to work with.

It's amazing how much this story—of how innovation is what drives economic growth—is so taken-for-granted in the circles I travel, and yet still seems novel to vast swarths of the American public. In progressive economic policy, in business school, and in science and technology circles, the idea that innovation, both radical and incremental, is responsible for better economic outcomes is not only taken for given, it's taken for granted. Yet each time we work on one of these projects, the press treats it like a totally novel concept.

Part of the issue is that the innovation policy community lacks a strong communications push or much coordination to help keep these messages going, with perhaps the notable exception of folks like Neal DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye. We need to keep elevating folks like Neal, like Bill, and like Neal Lane to continue to grow our American culture of Innovation and ensure we send leaders to Washington who are prepared to make the rational investments we need to educate, innovate, build, and grow.

The rest of the article, reprinted from US News and World, is below:

This isn't just good news for web lovers and email addicts – these exploding markets represent tremendous sources of economic growth and job creation across the entire value chain, from manufacture, to infrastructure, to retail, to app development. The global smartphone market was estimated to be worth $219 billion last year, while the iPhone 5 alone was thought to have added as much as 0.5 percent to the GDP of the United States in the fourth quarter of 2012. These billions of dollars translate into millions of jobs.
The idea that new technological innovations are major drivers of economic growth is not new. In fact, economist Robert Solow won the Nobel Prize for his observation that roughly half of the U.S.'s economic growth since the 1950s could be attributed to technological advancement.

This inextricable relationship between technology and prosperity is why it's particularly troubling to see the severe cuts to federal science and technology programs continuing under the sequester. After all, it has often been public investments in science and engineering research that have paved the way for robust private sector growth in new American industries.

Of course, Apple and its competitors created this new industry. But the technologies that make smart phones and tablets possible came from discoveries made through federally funded research. According to one analysis by Research Trends, the technologies used in LCD screens, lithium-ion batteries, digital hard drive storage and Internet protocols – all critical to these success of these devices – were enabled by key research discoveries funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Departments of Energy and Defense.

None of this research was carried out with a smartphone or tablet in mind. It is simply not possible to say in advance where fundamental research will lead – but without the research, revolutions like this one won't happen.

Beyond tablets and smartphones, some of the United States' most economically important industries, from aerospace to biotechnology to software, can be traced to an alphabet soup of federal research programs – NASA, DARPA, NIST, DoD, NSF, NIH, DoE, and others. One analysis drew a direct connection from the United States' $750 billion biotechnology industry to a $3.6 billion investment in the Human Genome Project, which had the support of four presidents. Another showed that each year the National Institutes of Health generates twice as much economic benefit as it costs to run.

When I served as President Clinton's chief advisor for science and technology, I saw both Republicans and Democrats rally around a number of bipartisan innovation initiatives, such as funding for the National Nanotechnology Initiative and the completion of the first draft sequence of the human genome. Though it was a time of deep partisan division on many issues, we found we could agree that government investments in research were critically important to the future of the economy.

America is at an economic crossroads. The current path of austerity leads to ever diminishing returns – cutbacks on research and training of future scientists and engineers, slowdowns in technological innovation and fewer high quality jobs for Americans down the road. The right path for the country is increased investment in research and innovation, which history has shown reliably yields a high return.

Shutting off the sequester and any other science-cutting measures that Congress may be considering and restoring funding for critical research is an essential and urgent first step. But we need to go further.

An insightful report by the Center for American Progress called "300 Million Engines of Growth," outlinesan aggressive vision for reinventing the U.S. innovation system for the 21st century. It advocates placing the budgets of three key federal research agencies on a sustainable doubling path, making sure we get the most we can out of our national labs, and investing in grand challenges in the form of what it calls "Frontier Prizes" that can push the boundaries of science and engineering.

In an increasingly globalized and digitized world, nations across the globe recognize that knowledge quite literally is power. Members of Congress who place austerity above all else need to ask themselves how falling back from the frontiers of knowledge is somehow good for the economy. I have yet to hear that argument.

Neal Lane is a former science advisor to President Bill Clinton and currently a Professor at Rice University.

11 Tips for Future CEOs from a McCombs Leader

Some words of wisdom from William Cunningham, former UT president and system chancellor, and McCombs Dean.