Creative distillation

Creative Distillation Episode 73 - Dry Land Distillers with Ashley Taylor Tillman and Alicia Sepulveda

Emily Iliff — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Creative Distillation Episode 73 - Dry Land Distillers with Ashley Taylor Tillman and Alicia Sepulveda Emily Iliff Thu, 12/19/2024 - 06:00

Emily Iliff

Looking for the perfect mix of holiday cheer, craft spirits, and entrepreneurial inspiration? The latest Creative Distillation episode has it all! Recorded on location at Dry Land Distillers, a Colorado gem known for its legendary eggnog and annual Nog Off competition, this festive special dives into what makes the holidays (and innovation) truly remarkable.

Hosts Jeff York and Brad Werner from the �� are joined by Nels Wroe, founder of Dry Land Distillers, who shares the story of how a friendly competition

among friends turned into a full-blown community event. Last year alone, they sold an astonishing 30 gallons of eggnog in just two and a half hours! With notes of nutmeg, cinnamon, and aged rum, this eggnog is as refined as it is festive, setting the perfect stage for the episode.

But this isn’t just about holiday drinks. The episode brings together some of CU Boulder’s brightest minds, including Ashley Taylor Tillman, Director of CU’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, and Alicia Sepulveda, Ph.D., Assistant Director of Research at CU Boulder’s Rad Lab. Together, they explore how CU is fostering a culture of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and entrepreneurship across its campuses, aiming to empower students and faculty to solve real-world problems.

The hosts and guests dig into the importance of sustainable agriculture and the big vision behind regenerative distilling: creating a fully integrated, certified organic supply chain.

As the eggnog tasting continues, so do the heartwarming and humorous holiday stories. From ski shops in Illinois to Santa pub crawls, the team shares personal anecdotes that make the episode feel like a gathering of old friends. Add in a bit of AI-generated Christmas music and Jeff’s musings about technology solving world problems, and you’ve got a holiday special that’s both insightful and entertaining.

So, whether you’re sipping your own eggnog or gearing up for the holiday season, don’t miss this episode of Creative Distillation. Tune in to hear how Dry Land Distillers, CU Boulder’s innovation leaders, and a little holiday magic are shaping the future, one glass (and idea) at a time.

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Creative Distillation - Episode 72: Reversing the Arrow conference with Ryan Coles

Emily Iliff — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Creative Distillation - Episode 72: Reversing the Arrow conference with Ryan Coles Emily Iliff Thu, 12/05/2024 - 06:00

Emily Iliff

In this episode of Creative Distillation, hosts Jeff and Brad from the University of Colorado, Boulder, are joined by guests Ryan Coles and Ben Waterhouse for a dynamic discussion on entrepreneurship, research, and sustainability. The conversation explores the value of conferences and networking for building meaningful relationships and intellectual collaborations, Brad's inspiring transition from entrepreneurship to academia, and a thoughtful tasting of Colorado's renowned Laws bourbon. Ryan shares insights from his research on gender dynamics in entrepreneurship and the impact of policy changes, as well as his work on sustainable organizational design and strategies for reducing carbon footprints in businesses.

This episode offers actionable takeaways, thought-provoking dialogue, and a glimpse into the real-world applications of cutting-edge research. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with innovative ideas and expert perspectives!

Listen to the full episode here.

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Creative Distillation Episode 70 - Bryn Rees, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation

Emily Iliff — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 19:05:00 +0000

Creative Distillation Episode 70 - Bryn Rees, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation Emily Iliff Thu, 10/31/2024 - 13:05

Emily Iliff

Get ready for a Halloween-themed episode like no other! This week on the Creative Distillation Podcast, it's the annual Halloween twist, joined by Jeff York and Brad Werner from CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. They're diving deep into entrepreneurship with special guests Bryn Rees, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, and Emily Iliff, the Marketing Director of the podcast. The episode is packed with fall fun: Jeff and Brad swap stories about their Halloween traditions, sip on festive pumpkin beers, and even try unique cocktails crafted by Ethan Decker at Boulder’s own Pits and Stems.

It’s not all treats and cocktails- Bryn and the team explore the exciting shifts in CU Boulder’s entrepreneurial scene, from innovative tech transfer to the remarkable New Venture Launch program. the episode wraps up with Halloween costume chats, horror film recommendations, and inspiring stories on the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. Join in for spooky sips, startup insights, and the Halloween spirit with the Creative Distillation crew, it's a seasonal special you won't want to miss!

To listen to the full episode, please click here.

Transcript

Welcome to another episode of creative distillation. Your host, Jeff and Brad from the University of Colorado, boulders, Leeds School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. Today, we pause our coverage of the reversing the arrow conference to bring you a creative distillation treat our annual Halloween episode. This time it comes with a twist. Instead of Jeff putting brad through another ritual pumpkin beer tasting, we return to one of our favorite locations, pits and stems, to sample some hand crafted fall flavored cocktails created by our favorite bartender, Ethan Decker, joining Brad and Jeff is Bryn Reese, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation and Managing Director of venture partners at CU Boulder, in short, Bryn and his group are at the center of tech transfer and new technological developments coming out of CU as you'll hear, there's a lot to be excited about with regards to innovation. Here, tune in to learn more about this, as well as Jeff's horror film recommendations and other thoughts on this spooky season. Enjoy and cheers and happy Halloween. Jeff York 1:31 Welcome to Creative distillation, where we distill entrepreneurship, research and actual insights. I am your host, Jeff York, research director, no Faculty Director. I have new title you do that's very exciting. Another title. It's pretty exciting and scary as well. Brad 1:50 And I'm joined by my co host, Brad Werner from the Deming center. And Jeff, it is great to see you. Jeff York 1:55 It's great to see you, Brad, it's your favorite time of the year, Halloween. I know you, I know you love it and you're excited. And you know, you just were so excited you had to invite your first ever guest that you solicited onto the podcast. Yeah, Brad 2:09 no, I'm really excited about our guests, because with Halloween, first of all, you know how much I love Halloween. I hate it. Brad Jeff York 2:15 loves Halloween. Brad 2:15 I look forward to the day after Halloween because it really kind of starts to line up the holiday season, yeah? And I'm sure you like it too, because every pumpkin beer goes on sale. Jeff York 2:24 Well, I think more of like the first of September lines up the holiday season, because that's when my Halloween celebration starts. Yeah, it does. It goes for a long goes for a long time. You know, it involves the fall and, you know, going to the mountain, seeing the leaves change and and watching nothing but horror movies. Oh, really, you'll be excited about that. You love horror movies just as much as you love Halloween. What are you gonna be for Halloween this year, Brad ? Brad 2:49 Hiding, Jeff York 2:51 He'll be here all week. Ladies and gentlemen, you introduce your guest. Let Brad 2:55 me give it a try. Bryn, first before and you can correct me. Bryn Rees 2:58 This is like letting chat. GPT, tell me about Yeah, Brad 3:03 so, so Brynn is the Vice Chancellor, associate associate Chancellor, Associate Vice Chancellor, okay, Bryn Rees 3:16 Associate Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation, right? Awesome,which really means that you run tech transfer, we can get into that, but let's go for it for now. Okay, okay, Brad 3:26 so, right, so, but Brynn actually sees all the really cool scientific innovations that come through the university, exactly, right? Really great. And we've had a chance to work together on a few ventures, and the innovation that's coming out of CU is incredible. The program has just gone gangbusters. Since you've been here. How many years now? Bryn, Bryn Rees 3:45 I've been here 15 years. I've been in this role for 10 years, and I can say that I'm in a completely different job than when I started, and it's a completely different ecosystem. Yeah, that's great. Brad 3:54 And actually, data has told us that we are number two in startups. Bryn Rees 3:59 That is correct. You know, there's a lot of ways to look at startups and a lot of types of startups at universities, but one of the ways is to say how many startups came out of the research labs in a single year. And if you look at that metric, then CU Boulder is number two all time. So the most ever was Stanford University, unsurprisingly, right? Fair enough, in 2002 Jeff York 4:19 they do have a slightly larger endowment in the CU. I mean, just, just about a few they Bryn Rees 4:24 do zeros zero, and we did 35 in the last year. So that was, that's amazing. You Boulder, kind of coming out party for startups. But I would definitely say it's one of those, like overnight successes, 10 years in the making, Brad 4:38 right? That's, that's, that's fabulous. So congratulations. It's great for Jeff York 4:40 all of us, actionable insight. I think it's actual insight so Brad 4:45 but because it's Halloween, Jeff, I always bring a taster, and I'd like my taster to say hello. She's a friend of the cast. Emily Iliff 4:50 Hello. My name is Emily, and I am the Marketing Director of creative distillation podcast. Yay. Jeff York 4:57 We're so glad you're here. Liz, good to see you again. Welcome back. Glad to be here as well. All right? And then we have, we have one more guest, yeah, well, this Brad 5:07 is really, really cool, and we are lucky to call him a friend of the show, right? Josh, absolutely. Jeff York 5:11 I am thrilled to be back here at Pitts and stems on. Should we say what route it's on now we will. It's in Boulder. It's in a garage, and if you can find it, then maybe you can also meet Ethan. Yeah, so just Brad 5:27 start knocking on doors. Ethan Decker 5:30 It's Halloween. That does tend to happen. Jeff York 5:33 It's true. So do you usually invite trick or treaters back here into the bar? Ethan Decker 5:39 Most trick or treaters don't appreciate fine cocktails. Yeah, Jeff York 5:42 what we do? And we're thrilled to be here again. Thank you for having us. Thanks Ethan Decker 5:45 for coming back, gentlemen. So Jeff York 5:47 you know, normally for our Halloween episode, we have a fine variety of pumpkin beers, which Brad is a huge fan of and always excited to taste and sample many, many pumpkin beers. And he's been doing this, I think, for three years running now. So if you are a regular listener of creative distillation, first of all, bless you. Please give us a five star review. Put some review in the Apple podcast thingy or the Spotify podcast, whatever you want to do. Just, just do something, but don't do anything less than five stars, because that will not be good. So now, now you're gonna be disappointed because we're not drinking any pumpkin beer this year. Pumpkin beer this year. Brad 6:23 How did that happen? Jeff York 6:24 I don't know. I think it was Emily. I'm pretty sure it was Emily suggested we're Emily Iliff 6:30 doing pumpkin cocktails. We're upping our game. We're becoming more sophisticated. Ethan, Jeff York 6:34 is that true? Ethan Decker 6:35 I would say yes. I would hazard a guess that a pumpkin cocktail order. Oh, cocktail. So bread just Jeff York 6:44 when you thought you'd escaped. Brad 6:46 I really thought walking into Ethan's garage day I was safe. Jeff York 6:51 You're never safe at Halloween, Brad 6:55 this is a nightmare for me. Yeah, this Jeff York 6:57 is gonna be great. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be away like so should we start off with some drinks? Ethan Decker 7:02 Yes, okay, absolutely. All right. Brad 7:04 What do you have in mind, Ethan? Jeff York 7:05 So if you're interested in learning more about the history of pits and stems, you're going to want to go back to Episode 62 in which there is a more elaborate history of this place. And we still won't tell you where it is on there, but it's an amazing establishment, Ethan. You wanna give us abbreviated history of where we are, like a really quick one. Well, my Ethan Decker 7:25 day gig is marketing and branding and brand strategy, but pits and stems is a project of applied brand science. We are boulders best speakeasy, and I like to say that we might have the best cocktails in Boulder, but maybe not. You can only find out by coming I've got a few things on the menu. We've got a bourbon cocktail with some homemade pear vanilla syrup. We've got something else with my wife's homemade apple cider as well. Really, yep, that's called the Covered Bridge. That's bourbon or rye. Like a covered bridge, a Jeff York 8:05 headless horseman might go over and, like, walk your way. Brad 8:10 Never met a Halloween nerd before. Ethan Decker 8:14 I have a drink lined up called dad's cardigan, which is an amaro based cocktail. Some maple syrup, and then you can kind of got something called the Upper Peninsula, which I have developed, which is based with Calvados, which is an apple brandy. Oh my gosh. Bryn Rees 8:30 I mostly don't know the words that you just said, but definitely They sound amazing, especially the homemade Cider. Ethan Decker 8:39 Okay, something with a little homemade cider for you? Brent, yeah, I'll make a couple so you can taste a few different things. Sure Jeff York 8:46 sounds wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay, so Brent, you've been here 10 years at CU what have you seen change and evolve about, like, the entrepreneurship that's happening out of the university? I'm a loyal loss. I don't have a paper to ask you, but I can't, like me slapping a paper down and like, you know, looking at the abstract. We've never, ever done this. I'm loving this. We've never done this. So you are the you have the honor of being Brad's only invited guest, as well as the only person to ever be on creative distillation without a paper to flog. So Bryn Rees 9:16 all of the stats I'm going to mention are not peer reviewed. The statistical significance could be absolutely Brad 9:25 terrible. So Speaker 1 9:26 what has changed? So when I got here at 2009 it was such a different environment. And I would say that the majority of faculty that I would meet, meet with to talk about entrepreneurship, kind of would sometimes look at me like, What do you want from me, you know, like, I think I'm supposed to do this, and I don't really want to do it right. And fast forward to today. I'm just going to start on the, you know, the people, sorry, so many other things have changed, but now I get calls from folks faculty. Who are not even at CU yet. They're coming here in six months or three months, and they're like, I want to know what kind of entrepreneurship resources are here, what kind of programs, what kind of support I've got a startup, or I want to do a startup. So I would say that the culture is completely different, and everything else comes out of that. So I could say, yeah, we've got a venture fund and a startup accelerator and all these cool new programs, right? But none of that means anything if we don't have a culture of entrepreneurship right in the faculty and their grad students and their postdocs. Jeff York 10:29 Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, there are some, like, structural changes that have occurred. But would you say the bigger change has been, like, more cultural, like people just thinking, like, well, this is just sort of normal and something we do. And, I mean, we were also just listed. There was a new thing, yet another ranking, because we needed another ranking, actually, as well. It's pretty interesting. So it's in confess company, yep, Empath, right, yeah, just they did mention the best professor at the University, which I was very happy to see. That was good. Bryn Rees 10:56 Oh yeah, yeah. And that being yourself, yeah, of course, yes. Okay, very good. Jeff York 11:08 Here's something we could get. No, I was really surprised they mentioned me. I was like, what? That's really weird Bryn Rees 11:13 from 80th to 33rd Yeah, exactly, Jeff York 11:15 straight into that 33rd side. So Bryn Rees 11:18 I have read that, and I will say this, there are a lot of universe university rankings of entrepreneurship, or things of measures that are used as a proxy for entrepreneurship that are terrible, yeah, things like issued US patents, which are just very fast. It's just so narrow, right? And so what I like that Fast Company has done is at least try to be a little more holistic. So they've got number of alumni startups, and how much did those how much capital did those companies raise? And something about tech transfer that they didn't really disclose how they were measuring that, and research funding. And so they're trying to kind of look at innovation. Yeah, Jeff York 11:52 they're looking at new systems. Yeah, well, that's why I thought from the ranking, and it's like it was, seemed to be talking more. Was it like the number of startups like, because, I mean, we know that's not necessarily a very like, you know, Brad and I can just go create every student team in our class. We can create a startup. We can have them become an LLC. And that would be a terrible thing for us to do. I mean, it would just be responsible, in my opinion. But, boy, we don't write startups. I Bryn Rees 12:18 mean, ranking, Chase, chasing the ranking does happen, right and but what I love about all our ecosystem is that people don't do that. They're saying, what's the right thing to do to impact the present state, exactly, and the rankings will come because one of the issues with all these rankings is it's like looking, I'm going to get into some physics here. It's like looking at the at a star in the night sky, and you're actually looking back in time, right? The light from that star is traveling. For that star may have long burned out. And the same thing with rankings. If we're looking at how much capital that startups has raised, what did the university do to catalyze that? It happened five years ago, 10 years ago. So when a ranking comes out, I think, well, that's a reflection of CU Boulder and everybody else, five years ago, 10 years ago, and what we're doing today, we're not going Speaker 2 13:05 to know in rankings. That's really a great, a great insight, and scary, actual insight. Jeff York 13:14 I don't know what that was. That is called annihilation, the alien. I didn't quite get that from that. I didn't either, but anyway, that I did think that's that is an interesting insight that most people are probably not aware of. When you look at the university rankings, they come out every year, and you're thinking, Oh, well, so and so moved up. And really, what you're looking at is what happened quite some time ago. And so you gotta start, I mean, for have those effects on those things, you gotta start laying those tracks. Now, I guess it's Bryn Rees 13:41 really pronounced in my field, where we're, you know, we're working actively with folks in, especially in science and engineering, on these early stage ideas for that to become a product on the market. I mean, we're talking 10 plus years, yeah, yeah, Jeff York 13:54 which is amazing, but that's Brad 13:56 deep tech, right? That's deep tech. That's what it is. But deep tech is Bryn Rees 13:59 really freaking cool too, right? To change the world it is. And by the way, if we were looking at that star, and we wanted to know what the star is made out of, like, what the substance that is burning in that star, we could do that with CU technology, just from the Brad 14:13 light, amazing, right? So, when you, when you think about, kind of your 10 years, tell me the the fields that you're really excited about now that maybe that didn't exist 10 years ago. Bryn Rees 14:26 That's a great, a great question. You know, I've a couple of advanced degrees in in science, and yet most of the stuff that I see didn't exist when I was in graduate school. So it's totally new. So a couple of examples of that. Genome engineering has come so far. Before I got into university, entrepreneurship, I worked in pharma, in genomics, right? So cutting edge stuff, but if I think about what we were doing then versus what we can do now, it's just like light years. So as an example, if we wanted to truly cure somebody's disease, that. Was science fiction 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and now you see people with these, you know, congenital disorders. There's something wrong with your immune system. We're not treating that. We're fixing their genes, right? So something has gone wrong with, let's say, their their T cells, and how they can respond to disease, reactive after, yeah, after you have symptoms, yeah, it's incredible, right? So that's an example that just it didn't exist when I started in this field, right? Brad 15:27 I would say actually, the mapping of the genome is probably one of the biggest scientific achievements in my lifetime, right? And we have 100 years to go until we really see what the outcome of that discovery is going to Bryn Rees 15:39 be, absolutely. So the company I was at was GlaxoSmithKline, and we were doing some very cool things in terms of leveraging what was available through the Human Genome Project to say, why do people respond differently to drugs? Why does it work for some people have no effect on others and actually be detrimental to another part of the population? And that was, you know, I was 20 plus years ago, and we're only just now starting to make progress in that really cool Ethan just set Jeff York 16:06 something in front of us. Is this finished? Ethan? Are you still building it? Ethan Decker 16:10 Nope, that is ready to be enjoyed. Jeff York 16:12 Okay, well, I gotta ask you about it. Then Sorry to interrupt. Ethan Decker 16:15 This is called the flannel shirt. It is some blended scotch, homemade apple cider, Amaro Averna, lemon juice, and then a bunch of other little things, like a little bit of maple syrup, a little bit of St Elizabeth allspice DRAM, and then a little bit of Angostura bitters. And I think you're excited about the ice cube. Jeff York 16:36 The Ice Cube is a large square of ice with a flour frozen in it. It's incredible, right? Ethan Decker 16:44 Those are flowers from our garden. Jeff York 16:45 I take a picture like, we gotta taste this. Cheers. Cheers to the flannel shirt. Brad 16:49 Nothing better than a good flannel shirt. Jeff York 16:52 Well, I mean, the aroma is like, immediately evokes like apple orchards and like fall apple picking, kind of leather Brad 16:59 to me, I wasn't this so much more refined than pumpkin beer. Well, Ethan Decker 17:04 the Beer Fest just has a different vibe than a cocktail, right? Yeah, exactly. I Brad 17:09 like the cocktail vibe myself. Jeff York 17:10 Well, pumpkin cocktails coming. So, yeah. So this has got, like, initial greatness, and then, like, get the maple syrup, for sure. I taste the same Elizabeth in there. This is just delicious. The other Ethan Decker 17:24 thing I love about this cocktail is its base spirit is scotch. And Scotch cocktails are a rare yes and B, difficult to create because Scotch is often smoking overpowering. This has a lot of other stout things that stand up to it, and then they all kind of punch each other in the face and blend harmoniously together. But Jeff York 17:45 I do get a little bit of the smoke in the background, just a hint. It's really nice. This kind of gives you that outdoor, fireside kind of fall feeling, least, that's what I'm thinking of. Bryn Rees 17:56 That's a very sophisticated palette. I like it. Jeff York 18:02 What was the foam you put on top? Or the DRAM your top there the DRAM that Ethan Decker 18:07 was some of the homemade apple cider, but it's a foamy apple cider that I've concocted with it. So it's a little bit of a, yeah, an apple cider foam float. Do Brad 18:18 you have apple trees on your ranch? Ethan Decker 18:19 We have a honey crisp. Oh, you do, yeah. We planted it about 15 years ago for anniversary. Fabulous. And it, it probably bears fruit every other year because the springs in Colorado were pretty various. Yeah? Jeff York 18:34 Awesome. Thank you. Ethan Decker 18:35 This is, it was a good year for the apple. Did Jeff York 18:37 you taste this brand? It's Ethan Decker 18:41 The other thing I love about doing this isn't just concocting new things, but using what's around. So when there's fresh mint in the garden, we do a lot of things with mint. Oh yeah, when my wife makes something like elderberry syrup, I use a lot of that. When apples are booming, we make things with apples. Jeff York 19:00 So did you create this cocktail? Ethan, or is this it's one of your own creations. It's Ethan Decker 19:04 a it's based on something I found, but ultimately, I've modified it a bit again to use the local ingredients and to make it a pits and stems. Originally, I Brad 19:15 don't think I've ever had anything Jeff York 19:16 quite like that. I mean, it's the sale. Elizabeth, I've just been drinking so many Tiki cocktails. Elizabeth DRAM immediately evokes like a jet pilot or a zombie or, yeah, Ethan Decker 19:28 or the all spice, yeah, there are a couple things in cocktails that don't play well, right? You know, it's the same way that, like, you know, grapefruit flavor doesn't play super well, or with things. Or pineapple, you know, pineapple stands out so much in your food. So when you have those things, you got to pull them way, way, way back. So in this case, it's maybe a half of a teaspoon right between both cocktails, because you just need that little little scotch. Look at Jeff York 19:55 the flower, but the overwhelming aroma I get from it is the Apple like that seems to come. Cross. Oh, this Brad 20:00 is apple pie to me. Yeah, right. It's Jeff York 20:02 very what I was saying is almost like an apple Tiki cocktail to me, because it's sweet, it's balanced. It's also got that richness on the bottom end that usually get from the rum. But here, oh yeah, it's a Ethan Decker 20:16 challenge to use sweet ingredients and not make a cocktail that's overly saccharine, right? So, Bryn Rees 20:22 so does that have honey in it? Ethan Decker 20:23 This has a little maple syrup, but again, dialed back from a lot of the recipes you'll find, because I think they're overly sweet. So you need a little maple syrup flavor. You need a little apple flavor. And people often, I mean, you hear it in wine all the time, people say this wine is so sweet, and what they really mean is it's fruity, but it doesn't have any actual sweetness or sugar to it. They're Jeff York 20:44 getting that fruit flavor, yeah. Now, considering it was 90 degrees yesterday in Boulder, it's uh but today it's nice and cool. It's perfect. It's love getting into the actual spirit of Halloween. When do you like Halloween? I love Halloween. Yes. Great Bryn Rees 20:59 answer. Nothing is Halloween me, to me, more than being way too cold in some kind of, you know, absurd costume. And it was a nice day, you know, on October 31 in Boulder. And then the temperature drops 1015 degrees, and it's, it's a little challenging. Jeff York 21:18 Now, is this because you go trick or treating with Bryn Rees 21:20 us. I absolutely go trick or treating. I've got a 12 year old and a nine year old. Jeff York 21:25 Because what you were just telling me is like that is, that is, my kids are 17 and 20, so they they go wreak havoc in whatever ways they do. And I just the police don't show up on Halloween. But I so remember so many times we go trick or treating in Boulder, and it'd be like the day before, 80 degrees, sunny, gorgeous. Sure enough, Halloween, like, right about noon, a cold front comes in, or maybe even, like, five o'clock, like, they come in, and it starts like, wind starts howling as it does. It drops to, like, just around, not cold enough for it to actually be like freezing, like, just feel three with wind, and then the snow and rain starts to come. Yeah, that's my Halloween. Brad 22:08 Just like elk hunting. Jeff York 22:11 I got a story about anyway, we won't do that. Okay, all right, so there's been those kinds of changes that have happened over time. Brynn, what do you think? Like? What does the future look like? As far as like, I mean, the entrepreneur, because you have a view that Brad and I, you know, we, we get involved in things across campus. We try to help out, you know, we go to the New Venture Challenge and sit in the very top and do our Muppets thing, yeah, but, you know, but you see, you have, like, a much broader view, like, what are you most excited about in the future, and maybe, where are some of the challenges we face in the university. Bryn Rees 22:42 I mean, forward, I think that Brad, our connection is a microcosm of where the university's going. And if there's one word, where there's opportunity and where we're addressing the current challenge, which is fragmentation and style, yeah, it's integration. And So Brad, we've got. So you're, you're in the College of Business, I'm in a, you know, campus wide group, and we're, we're working together, you know, against all odds, right? That's where, that's where this university is headed, right? Well, so Brad 23:15 for me, Bryn, I'm not an academic, right? So I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been searching out opportunity, right? What would make great businesses, and how do you accelerate and really light the rocket on some of these things? And that's how I found you, right, right through Betsy and some of the things we've done. And I have a company that came out of tech transfer from MIT, so I understand the importance of what this is, and it's just, it's really cool. Jeff York 23:37 What are you guys working on? Like, together? I don't think we've talked about that explicitly, happy on that name. So Brad 23:41 no, so let's talk about some of the classes or some of the teams that came through new venture launch last year. Yeah. Bryn Rees 23:48 So we had Icarus quantum Yep, was one. We had Mesa quantum systems. Was two, right? And we now your class is not a quantum class, but we did have two and Brad 24:03 then a filter company. Oh, that's right. Do you remember what the innovation was? It was a bit, I think it was a very high powered or very improved filter system that could be integrated into a current line of chip manufacturers. Okay, great. Bryn Rees 24:19 I know less about that one. So let's Brad 24:23 right, but so anyway, we have two quantum companies in common, and those companies very different, by the way, but they really have the chance to change the world, both of them in different ways. Bryn Rees 24:33 Yeah. And what I think what is common between the two is a highly motivated, engaged, recent PhD grad who's just got a ton of hustle, great attitude, and is going to be the differentiator in both cases. I totally Brad 24:48 agree. And here's the thing, not only, I mean brilliant people, but quality humans, yes, and, and so that even makes working with them for me times 10x right? Bryn Rees 24:59 It's. And then coming back to Jeff, you were saying, So what are some of the problems? This is not a actually, Jeff York 25:05 if you don't mind, just want to dig a little more into that, because you're not as familiar with these companies as you guys. What degree is like, the focus on quantum of two of these companies and, and let's actually rewind just a little bit more from New Venture launch, like, I don't think we've ever talked about that on the podcast, right? So you want to Brad 25:20 talk? Yeah, yeah. So Jeff, Jeff actually launched new venture launch five years ago through a grant from the intuitive foundation I took over from Jeff. This will be my third year. So grant funded where we can actually provide funding for some of these startups, a legal foundation, and any sort of mentorship that they need, and really get them moving. And it's truly incredible. So from last year, I think every venture, these are not teams, these are not student teams. Every venture is still moving forward, and the quantum ones are gaining great traction. And the really cool thing about the class is, is that it's open to the entire cu ecosystem, right? Do Jeff York 26:00 you still require the applicants to represent at least two disciplines on cu campus? I Brad 26:06 just leave it open, and it just is dependent as to what the pool is. Okay? Great. So last year, we had 60 applicants, and we took 20 and range, yeah, it ranges from we had a sophomore who had won the US Robotics Championship twice, all the way to PhD professors, right? I mean quantum professors and postdocs and MBAs, lawyer I mean, or law students. And it's just, it's truly incredible when we put these teams together, and many of them meet it in the classroom and actually move and move forward together. Yeah. Bryn Rees 26:42 So what I love about new venture launch is that very often my group, which is a group of about 25 folks, are working with these innovators, and they've got tremendous technology, but when it comes to product market fit and when it comes to a revenue model, they're they're really needing a lot of help. So they're brilliant, and they can pick this stuff up, no problem. But they've never been exposed to it. Oh no. So having a formal, structured program like new venture launch, and we had a couple companies go through when you were teaching it, too, Jeff and some of them have gone on to do some really great things. First, COVID, Jeff York 27:15 I was like, oh my god, I gotta find better. And that led me over to venture partners. Yeah, it really did, because, like, we were, we were we started the class. We were doing kind of a traditional thing of, you know, oh well, these students have an idea and they want to explore. And this, there's a place for that, absolutely, on campus, and it's the vast majority what we teach. It's like students coming in, they don't really have any experience, they don't really have any technology, they've got an idea, usually bad and they're trying to explore, but we wanted to create something totally differentiated that was actually about real companies. Like, how do we take real companies have links to CU Boulder and launch them? How do we make the transition from the campus to the real world? Yep, and that was the whole goal of the thing. Bryn Rees 27:59 So seeing the progress that Icarus and and Mesa made last year was was tremendous. Yeah, Brad 28:06 I have to tell you, though, as someone that's customer focused, the first time that I talked to a quantum scientist and say, Tell me about your first customer. Look at me like, I'm from Mars, yeah. Bryn Rees 28:16 But I mean, no matter what question you ask, you may get the same answer, which is, how does their science work? Right? Jeff York 28:25 So true. Yeah. So even you're a marketing guy, like, what do you what do you think? Like you ever deal with people that, like are technologists or entrepreneurs, and they just have no idea how to create or you have to try to help them understand how to do this all the time, but the beauty never happened to me. No, no, Ethan Decker 28:44 obviously, obviously. The beauty of what I've I've learned, and what I've started to do is I figured out how to give those folks an intuitive, personal understanding of how some of these mushy, emotional things really work, so that it's not abstract. It's not the data trying to persuade them or convince them of something, and especially when it comes to things like mascots, right? Mascots seem silly. Mascots seem illogical. Let's talk about the features, the benefits, if it's in B to B, we're dealing with rational agents and large committees and procurement departments. But you know what, all those people go home and watch True Detective. They like they like TV, right? They like interesting things probably Jeff York 29:33 watch. It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, exactly. Ethan Decker 29:35 And none of them know what brand of toilet paper they probably wipe their butts with nor do they know that brands story, nor do they know the features and benefits of where it's manufactured Jeff York 29:47 that made me weird? Yeah, absolutely, Ethan Decker 29:52 I've done this and at this point quantitatively, and I have good quantitative data that that it's like one in 200 That knows what toilet paper they Bryn Rees 30:01 really use. I love where you're taking us Ethan, which is like the psychological side of your customer, right? And what is their experience exactly? Something that we talk a lot to our founders about is empathy and and getting out of the let's just, let's just be real. It's kind of like a self absorption with our own work and our own product, product, our own technology, and completely put that to the side and say, Who is this person across from me? What is their world? How do they make decisions? And really try and have some kind of like resonance with their experience bingo Ethan Decker 30:35 and most people can't find their car keys in the morning, so they're not going to really dig into all the features and benefits of your product or company. So make it simple. One of the phrases I use, especially with engineering types, is a when it comes to a business or brand or all of those aspects of marketing, you gotta overthink it, and then you've gotta under think it. You've gotta radically under think it, for instance, most of us probably Jeff York 31:04 actual insight. Ethan Decker 31:06 Most of us can't tell the difference between State Farm and Farmers Insurance when it comes to their features, their products, their services, but Jeff York 31:13 we know they're bad. We know their mascots, yep, yep, flow and whatever. The guy right guy that was in whiplash, the Ethan Decker 31:26 mayhem guy, the meerkat. Guy in Europe, right, right. We know all those things, because this is, this is, think about it, a very complicated financial service that is used when it's, yeah, when, when stuff goes really bad, like your house gets demolished or someone gets injured. It's insurance, right? And they figured out that, okay, we have to underthink it, radically. Underthink it so much so that if your brand name is Geico, your logo shouldn't be an elephant or a giraffe. It should be one letter away, a gecko, Geico Gecko. That's how underthinking they got to do it, because it's not like any of us are dumb. It's just that even when it comes to our own insurance products, we don't really want to give that much time and attention to it. We want to make it easy and trust that the company will be there when stuff goes bad. Brad 32:18 I think it should be called Frelk Did Brynn see the frog? Did you? Yeah? Chance to check this out. Jeff York 32:26 I mean, I've got them on all my larva. I've got one on my guitar. They're awesome for those Ethan Decker 32:31 listening at home. The frolic is the logo for Applied brand science. It is a kind of version of a jackalope, I guess. Yeah, it's a frog with elk antlers. It's Jeff York 32:40 awesome. Yeah, it is. Brad 32:41 So I've been working with scientists for a long time, and large part of my investing life. And I will tell you that if you get and I think I've mentioned this to Bryn before, if you pay a scientist about 150,000 a year, you give them a world class lab and a great pizza every day, you will never see them again, right? You won't, they'll be, they'll be so happy. Is that an insight, Jef? Jeff York 33:05 You know, we don't got a paper. I think that's actionable, though. Yeah, I think there are people in the world that can afford to find a scientist and afford to get them a pizza and a desk, yeah? And they probably be a lot better off doing that than sitting around and coming up with their ideas, yeah, but Brad 33:19 the world class lab, though, actually helps quite a lot. Jeff York 33:23 Seriously, though, I often mean, you know, we're here. We're here in Boulder. For those of you not from Boulder, it is a wash in high net worth individuals, many of whom want to talk to people like me about their ideas, like when we're at a party or whatever, and their ideas are pretty bad, because they're not based around anything. They're just like, I got this idea, and because I came up with it, it's good, it's a good idea. If we build it, there's no there's no underlying I think this is the, this is why I'm so excited about the direction of working more between business and engineering, because it tends to be the case in my experience. And these are really crude generalizations, but, but but having been teaching here for like, 13 years, tends to be the case. Their engineers absolutely understand how to make things work. They will not have survived long enough to make it into one of my classes. If they have not gained that level of understanding, the engineering curriculum is just too much. They won't get there. The Business students tend to have good ideas about how to they know how to build a revenue model on Excel. They know they should have a brand, and they know that pitching is important. But their ideas are tend to be outside the laws of physics if they're technology based. And so when you bring these two disciplines together, and I think the next step is trying to teach the same people both disciplines. Yeah, because bringing the teams together is one thing, but imagine programs that teach people all right? Yes, you're going to have to learn to a certain level of competence engineering skills as well as business skills. I mean, I think that would be something that would really potentially change the world. In a lot of ways. And I And when Bob Dobkin, the founder of intuitive foundation, I sat in his house and he told me that I think five, six years ago, because I was going out there and talking to him about potential gift to the University, I nodded and smiled and said, Yes, Bob, of course, you're right. He's so much more right than I ever thought he was, you know. Brad 35:19 And I spoke to Bob six months ago, and he's thrilled about the work that we're doing. I mean, he's thrilled. I mean, so Bob effectively invented the the computer chip. So he looks at the outcomes of new venture launch, Jeff York 35:30 and then spent the next 50 years trying to work with business people. Yeah, right. Brad 35:35 I mean, seriously and, and he's actually met with some of our team members, including Mesa Quantum. Yeah, right. So he's just, he's he's great. So it's fun. I like Jeff York 35:46 the COVID. Ethan Decker 35:46 Oh, that's the early snow. Well, no, sorry, the September snow. It is a pear based and bourbon based cocktail. It's got a bourbon. It's got some wild turkey 101, which is my go to for good Kentucky bourbon. Really, it's got Poor William, which is unaged pear brandy from France, a little bit of sweet vermouth, and then some homemade pear and vanilla syrup that I made. It's like, it's Bryn Rees 36:18 really incredible. Ethan, really Brad 36:20 incredible. Ethan Decker 36:25 Yes, Jeff York 36:26 yeah, the first time we were going to come here, we were like, This dude's garage. Like, sit and drink. Yes, great. It's not some dude. I mean, it is some dudes garage, but it's also, Brad 36:40 It's a great bar. Jeff York 36:40 I think the best cocktails and possibly the best bar in all boulder. Yes, Brad 36:44 are there other speakeasies in Boulder? You Ethan Decker 36:46 don't know if any. I think they're, they're at least a couple other garage bars. That's know how Jeff York 36:52 that this is, this drink is amazing. Different patrons. Ethan Decker 36:55 They've had. I've had about 200 folks come through that I've met just because they were interested in trying out some cocktails. Yeah, now they're members, Jeff York 37:04 cool. Would you be having a Halloween gathering? Ethan Decker 37:07 We will be having a Halloween gathering. Oh, yeah, excellent. I Jeff York 37:13 will come make zombies go to cocktail, and it's thematic, right? Brad 37:19 Check this out. Joel. Jeff York 37:22 Joel, I Joel's in Brad 37:24 the back with his feet up on the desk. He's all good. Well, Jeff York 37:27 so Okay, so now we'll rewind back to where we're I'm getting better at this, like, keeping up with where I distracted everybody from. So not necessarily problems. But what do you think are like, some of the obstacles like that we face that we got to kind of prepare for in the coming I've been working on the strategy for the business school for the last like year or so, and so I know what I think. I'm just curious to get your perspective right. Like, you know, as far as being an entrepreneurial ecosystem, see you advancing itself in entrepreneurship and innovation. What do you think are some of the obstacles we face? You Bryn Rees 37:58 know, some of them are a little cliched, but I think that they're true, right? Sure, we talk a lot about, you know, embracing failure and celebrating failure, at least in the entrepreneurial community. I don't think the university is really there yet, like, in terms of, like, let's, let's, let's, let's experiment, let's try things and let's figure out, you know, what doesn't work and let it go. I don't think, I think we're still, we still got a waste. Jeff York 38:24 Sorry, I'm saying awesome, while you're saying that. Sorry. This was just, I was like, that's awesome. University isn't there yet. Ethan's day of the dead dog, of the dead aloe. Ethan Decker 38:35 That was a gift from a patron. Jeff York 38:37 That's awesome. So, okay, so that's, that's kind of tough. It's tough to people that don't understand, like, the vast majority of these things are not going to work, and that's okay. Like, that's the price we have. It's, Bryn Rees 38:49 well, actually, actually, I was on the way over here, I was thinking about distillation, right, and how that works. So I was, you know, we were talking about, yeah, you know how you're a nerd when it comes to Halloween, I'm a nerd about a lot of things. And one is that, you know, I spent a lot of time in a chemistry lab doing actual distillation, right? And it's like you're separating impurities out of something that you want. And that's what we're doing in entrepreneurship, right? But in order to do that, we've got to have a process to apply, to apply the heat, right, right? And knowing that some things are not going to go forward, yeah? And that's, that's Jeff York 39:24 a much larger volume of liquid to start with, that's right, Bryn Rees 39:28 with a lot of junk in it, yeah, with a lot of things you don't want, yeah, but those Brad 39:31 successes may ease the way in the future, right? I mean, if you how many companies were you working with? Like, 10 years ago? Bryn Rees 39:39 10 years ago, we probably did about five startups a year, and that's so now about seven times faster. So it's a, it's a, it's a big change. That's awesome. Brad 39:47 I mean, so just in the VC world, that basket is going to lead to success, right? And Unknown Speaker 39:52 nothing, let's say, develops culture more than than success, right? And having one person say, you know, my my colleague, did it, I'm definitely. Going to do it. But also, I think the low hanging fruit is we've got to celebrate the successes. So I was counting up the other day in a internal meeting about how many unicorn companies have come out of the research labs at CU Boulder, seven, really, seven unicorns, right? And like, who knows that? Nobody knows that. Brad 40:23 I didn't know that, right? That's incredible, yeah, so, so I first met Brynn, actually on a phone call before Eric and I went to the Weizmann Institute on Tel Aviv, yeah, and the whitesman had hired the Deming center to help them commercialize technology. And when I had the call with you, and I was not, it was not in person. I think it was a zoom call that I'm thinking as we went through this list. Though, in my head, you're hitting everything that I like, and I'm thinking, I like this guy, and so after that, first of all, testing it at Wiseman was a great success. We just signed another contract with him, actually, okay, but the techniques that you use are they're in commonalities with everything that we're doing, right? I mean, there is a methodology behind all this, right? That works? Unknown Speaker 41:04 Yep, actually. I mean, I think the universities in Israel are known for being some of the most mature when it comes to translating technologies and commercialization. And what we believe is our most innovative programs embark, which is a deep, deep tech startup creation program. We haven't seen anybody else do anything like that in the US, but after a few conversations with some of our advisors, we learned that Technion University had done something. I Brad 41:33 didn't know that, right? Yes, yeah, really cool. I actually mentioned all of my students somehow take a look at the portfolio at Venture Partners, because there might be something in there for you, right? I mean, everybody needs to be aware that you can search this and and go through Venture Partners with a very favorable licensing agreement and start something Jeff York 41:55 up, wow, action website. I think this because we do. I mean, what little we know of who listens to this podcast, and if you do, make sure you give it a five star ranking right now, I think so. Well, yes, until maybe tonight, because there's no pumpkin beer, and people are gonna be sorely disappointed. They will be the guy with the disappointed, the guy with the pumpkin tattoo is gonna be really upset. That's my favorite guys that's ever written to us, I was going to say that is actually, in reality, an actionable insight, especially for our alums. I think that I do know some of them listen to this, you know, coming back and being able to look at those opportunities to get into that embark program, yep, like, let's say you've gone and had some success. You've done well or or maybe not. I mean, whatever. And you're looking to really change the direction your career. You're looking to get involved in the start. I mean, this is a huge opportunity. Yeah, this is not open. I don't think it's open to just anyone, right? Well, it's Unknown Speaker 42:52 competitive, so anybody can compete, but it's got about a 10% acceptance rate right now, or maybe a little Jeff York 42:58 I just had a former student come through, and I was really excited. He made it through. He did, yeah, so that was and he's coming back after, I think, seven years. Yep, I'm really happy for him, because he was like, Oh, this is, this is really cool, yeah. So, Unknown Speaker 43:10 and, you know, I have seen some research institutions, but actually more of the federal labs that, you know, they'll put a listing of their technologies up on a website, but I think that is not going to be compelling for most people, right? And so what we're doing with embark is, you know, taking an innovation that's usually got hundreds of 1000s, if not millions of dollars of research funding behind it, right? So you're kind of, you're hitting the ground running, right? You don't need that years of R and D to generate your product, but you're also joining a really well developed ecosystem, right? You can, you can go into new venture launch. You can participate in other campus competitions and get several $100,000 in non dilutive funding. You can pitch to our venture fund, buff gold ventures participate in our startup accelerator. So you're, you're, you're joining a community, right? And a really fantastic community in Boulder, it's not just, Hey, you get some tech. Jeff York 44:04 Oh yeah. The advantage of being in Boulder too is like, I mean, yesterday, I was meeting with a current student, and you were at some brewery, and I saw two other entrepreneurs I knew, and she was trying to talk to me about this initial idea she had, and she had talked to me about and had a beer. I was like, Okay, go here. Pitch this guy on. And she actually got some really good advice and some offers to help with her mind. And the Brad 44:26 other part of Boulder that I didn't realize, which I found out this week, is this week, I had a tour of NIST. I had never been in. I'd never been well, I've driven by 1000 times, right? I'd never been in the gate. So you pull up and the guy has you open all of your doors, your hood and your trunk. They said, Go wait in this office while they check your car. It's like going to the airport, but once you get in, I Unknown Speaker 44:47 do that to you. When you go there, pretty much that's just you. Brad, yeah, it Brad 44:52 was incredible. It was truly incredible. We've been to NREL. Never Jeff York 44:57 Oh, we gotta go over to NREL. Yeah, that'll really blow your mind. Yeah, so I Brad 45:00 mean Chocolate Factory renewable, but talk about an ecosystem, though. So we have entrepreneurs, there's money, there's there's brilliance here. There are ideas, multiple Jeff York 45:10 national laboratories, pits and stems. Yes, some Brad 45:15 of this is kind of this random happening as well that has come together to build something incredible, right? Jeff York 45:21 I think so. Yeah, you know, guys, any other halloween thoughts you want to share? I mean this, I gotta say this is perhaps the least spooky episode we've ever done on Halloween. Unknown Speaker 45:31 So what are you gonna be? Jeff, well, I Jeff York 45:35 am always the same thing. I'm the storyteller because I run this blood on the clock tower game, and I run the game. And the game is the storyteller is the first person to die. Their body is found impaled on the minute hand of the clock tower. And then my ghost actually leads everyone through the rest of this. How long does this take? It takes about two and a half hours to run the game. Davis, it's pretty great, though. Anyway, well, anything you want to add on, add on Halloween wishes. Ethan, any parting thoughts? Ethan Decker 46:03 Good libations to all, Jeff York 46:05 yes, Joel Davis 46:07 Jeff, give us a good horror film recommendation. Jeff York 46:10 Oh, okay, so you know, Brad needs a horror film recommendation. This is actually not good for Brad, but if you like horror films, I would say there's one called barbarian that came out last year that's quite good and not what it seems at all. If you really want a good horror movie, in my opinion, 824, you can't go too wrong with most of their horror films. In particular, the bitch or the witch. Stylize the bitch. Emily, you seen that? Emily Iliff 46:39 It was disturbing. Jeff York 46:41 What were your thoughts on the vet? Emily, Emily Iliff 46:42 I think I saw it when I was, like, a freshman in college. Perfect. I Jeff York 46:47 showed my kids when they were, like, 12. Emily Iliff 46:48 Um, well, I watched it with my it was me and my family's the whole first time seeing it. But the main takeaway is that it's disturbing, yes, and weird, yeah. Kind of makes you want to, like, crawl out of your skin, but it's great. That's what you're going for, Jeff York 47:04 exactly, exactly. So check out the bitch. Bryn Rees 47:07 One too. Great. This one, I can't shake it. This is from like, 10 years ago. It's called the baba Duke. Oh, yeah. So this is, I can remember 24 watching this with with some friends, and one person leapt up in the middle, ran away, and we never saw her. And, and, and I think it's deep too. You know what happens? Jeff York 47:36 No, it's, I mean, that's the thing. Is, there's some commentary going on underneath, absolutely. And there is in the bitch too. I mean, I think a truly great horror movie. I mean this, this goes way back to, like the universal monster movies, or even before, but, but really, uh, George uh Romero perfected it with the the zombie movies, Dawn of the Dead, right? Having a parallel social commentary going on at the same time as the movie itself. And that makes it disturbing on a whole different level. And that's what's a great horror movie is, in my humble opinion. So hey, if you listen to the podcast, what you're gonna want to do is set all this horror aside. You're gonna want to reach out, come to Boulder before it gets snowy, and you're gonna wanna see all the murals. And what? How can I see murals in Boulder if I wanted to see I mean I can't walk! Brad 48:18 No, I think electric bikes, are the only way, right, Jeff? Jeff York 48:22 Electric bikes, because, I mean, clearly I'll be too inebriated to walk, so I have to ride an electric bike, because that's safe. If you need to do that, you want to go to jdjoyrides.com if you want to go to a place that has no pumpkin beer whatsoever, and they're very proud of it, liquid mechanics, check them out. Liquid mechanics.com Those are our two sponsors for the podcast. Maybe we'll be able to get pits and stems the sponsor eventually. There we are, but yeah, and once again, I'm Jeff York. I'm faculty director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. Boulder. I Brad 48:56 am Brad Warner, and I'd like to thank both Ethan and Bryn for being here, and Emily as well. Joel, you too. So it's great to see all of you. Thank you very much, and we'll see you next time. Jeff York 49:06 Absolutely Happy Halloween, everybody. Dona L 49:10 This episode of creative distillation was recorded on the front porch of the Chautauqua mission house at the reversing the arrow conference held in Boulder in June 2024, Jen's paper challenging what we think we know, theory and evidence for questioning common beliefs about the gender gap in entrepreneurial confidence was published in June 2022, in Entrepreneurship, theory and practice. Check the show notes for a link and learn more about Jennifer Jennings on her faculty page at the University of Alberta website. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. Email us at CD podcast@colorado.edu Them, and please be sure to Subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The creative distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado, boulders, Leeds School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu, that's D, E, M, I, N, G, and click the creative distillation link. Creative distillation is produced by Joel Davis at analog digital arts. Our theme music is whiskey before breakfast, performed by your humble host, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here next week for the next round of creative distillation. You.

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Creative Distillation Episode 69 - Reversing the Arrow conference with Jennifer & Dev Jennings

Emily Iliff — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 19:16:40 +0000

Creative Distillation Episode 69 - Reversing the Arrow conference with Jennifer & Dev Jennings Emily Iliff Thu, 10/17/2024 - 13:16

Emily Iliff

Recorded at the Reversing the Arrow conference, Jeff York and Brad Werner from CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business sit down with professors Jennifer and Dev Jennings from the University of Alberta, who happen to be the first married couple to appear on the show. Together, they dive into topics like gender roles in business partnerships and Jennifer’s fascinating research on the gender gap in entrepreneurial confidence.

The conversation isn’t all academic, there’s plenty of lighthearted banter, including Prosecco tasting and the surprise introduction of "Deviate Sparkle," a glitter-infused vodka drink. This episode offers more than just insights into research, it explores the dynamics of balancing work and family life, teaching entrepreneurship with a focus on feedback, and the broader implications of accurate versus overconfidence in business. Whether you’re an educator, entrepreneur, or just curious about how gender and confidence impact venture success, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways.

To listen, please click here.

Transcription

Dona L 0:07 Welcome to another episode of creative distillation. Your host, Jeff and Brad from the University of Colorado, Boulder's Leeds School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. Here's another episode from the reversing the arrow conference held at Boulder's beautiful Chautauqua Park in June 2024 this time Brad and Jeff speak with Jennifer and Dev Jennings. Both are professors in the department of strategy, entrepreneurship and Management at the University of Alberta School of Business. They also happen to be the first married couple to appear on creative distillation while enjoying a crisp Prosecco on the porch of the Chautauqua mission house. Jen and Dev talk about a paper they've co written about how starting a business with one's romantic partner tends to lead to stereotypical gender roles translating from the marriage into the business, requiring a special kind of work life balancing to truly succeed. Then Jen tells us about her recent paper examining the gender gap in entrepreneurial self efficacy, and how that plays out in terms of investor confidence, the ability to learn and adapt, and ultimately, a venture's success. The results may surprise you, all of that and more in this episode of creative distillation, enjoy and cheers. Jeff York 1:51 Welcome to Creative distillation, where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. I am Jeff York, your host, with my co host, Brad 1:59 Brad Warner and Jeff, this is really an exciting day. This Jeff York 2:03 is an exciting day. We are. We are in the first day of reversing the arrow. Brad, have you ever reversed an arrow? I've never reversed an arrow, but I'm actually trying in Wisconsin. Brad 2:14 I was never a bow I was never a bow hunter. No Jeff York 2:17 No When Buzz is bow hunters. Sometimes I think reversing arrow is a really bad thing. If you want to know about reversing the arrow, you'll have to rewind in time and go find the one that says Robert Eberhart. That's the most academic sounding name of anyone. I mean, you know, if you know Bob, you know, and if you know Bob, you know, you know he is and he explains what the heck reversing the arrow is. But we're really excited to be here. We're on the beautiful front porch at the Chautauqua. Gosh, what is the Chautauqua? The mission house at the Chautauqua. Thank you. Producer Joel and the Chautauqua is this amazing place in Boulder, Colorado that we also talked about with Bob in the previous episodes. We're not gonna talk about any more than to say it's a lovely day and we've got some guests. We have two faculty members joining us, two professors. First Brad 3:00 of all, Jeff, just walking before we get to our Okay, um, it's amazing how all these folks know you. I walk in, I'm in this group of, I don't know these folks, and they're all looking at you, and I think that that's gonna make my days. I think that they're gonna be a lot of fun things that are you were amazed Jeff York 3:17 by that the last time I was just, like, making all this up, and, like, nobody actually knew who I was. No, Brad 3:22 I think that there are like 50 of you in the world, yeah. And every once in a while you all get together. That is Jeff York 3:27 kind of close, yeah. So who do we have today? Okay, so we have two professors from University of Alberta, the University of Alberta, School of Business. I get that, right, guys, yes. All right, good. There we go. Really. Really, really on fire. Here, the first person introduces Professor Jennifer Jennings, she's professor in the Department of strategy, entrepreneurship and management, as well as Professor dev Jennings, who is also in the department of strategy, entrepreneurship and Brad 3:56 management. Okay, so this leads to my first question. No, this is, this is the first husband and wife team, I believe we've ever had on Jeff, we Jeff York 4:07 have never has been a wife team. So how does that work? Brad 4:11 I mean, I'm just thinking, I'm thinking Jeff York 4:14 people love each other. Brad 4:15 I understand, I understand that part, but I'm thinking about the working together component of this right as an entrepreneur, I've seen many ventures crash and burn with partners, working as partners, and so is it the same way in academia? Just tell us a little bit of the backstory and how you got here. Dev Jennings 4:31 Well, you might not get the same answer from me as from Jennifer, Jennifer Jennings 4:36 but I think that hits it on the nail on the head right there. I'm waiting for mine, but that's okay. Jeff York 4:48 So this is a change request, yeah. So we're doing a little bit of a different format this week, as we're reversing the arrow and the Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference doing these episodes. There's only so many brewers into. Stillers and bartenders we can call in favors from. So getting them to come and, like, just serve their beer to like, three or four people, even if one of them's Brad, tends to be difficult to have happen. So we're just bringing beverages that people ask for, and Jen requested Prosecco, which I know absolutely nothing about, Brad 5:17 so I do so yes. So these folks don't know that I live in the south of France during the summer, and I will talk about rose when Bob gets here. But Prosecco is actually fermented in stainless steel barrels. And where's this from products of Italy? I Jennifer Jennings 5:35 was gonna say my understanding is that this is the Italian champagne, yeah, Brad 5:39 but the French would never say that this is a champagne they would say they're not worthy of this. Okay, so, Jeff York 5:47 oh, thank you. They would say so. The French would say the Italians are not worthy. No, they're Brad 5:51 saying the French are very, very protective of their wines and their wine regions, and they don't believe that anyone, for the most part, makes anything better than they do. Well, sure, right? And but Prosecco was something that's really taken off in the US and Canada as well, I guess. Jeff York 6:06 I've tried to find one made Colorado, and they don't exist. Jennifer Jennings 6:10 Cheers. Thank you. Jeff York 6:14 Cheers, man. Cheers. All right, so we all love you. This is actually nice creative distillation. First, we have never drank wine on creative distillation. Oh, and 60 some odd episodes, wow, never have drank wine. It's good. Well, no, we don't have wine. We had Snoop Dogg's prison wine in California. No, no, I do remember buying it though I was very excited. Joel. Joel thought it was a good idea. And so Wait, I see someone over there in the corner. Wait, what's this? Oh, my God. Oh yeah. Hey. All right, come here. Guest, friend of the pod, Professor, Beth Emery from University of Kansas. What are you doing here? Beth? And what have you come to tell us about? Beth Embree 6:56 Since it's June, I was wondering if you got any sparkle from DB eight. Sparkle Jeff York 7:00 from DV eight. What's that? Beth Embree 7:03 Apparently, it's Dev Jennings 7:03 got a unicorn, fabulous Beth Embree 7:06 that's vodka based and fruit punch with edible glitter inside that you should shake up before you serve. Jeff York 7:12 Well, let's shake it and see what happens. Are you serious? Dev Jennings 7:15 I see the unicorn If you drink this, one of Beth Embree 7:21 the best distilleries, Jeff York 7:23 the home of our very first episode. I believe, Beth, are you planning to offer this to other people during the podcast this week? Busting it right open? Wow, holy cow. Brad 7:35 It has a brown bag shaped bottle. It Jeff York 7:37 might need ice, so I didn't have time to chill it, but I think it's got enough alcohol in it to but I'd be Beth Embree 7:43 curious if someone else wants to try it with me. So deviate, and this is from the Jeff York 7:47 back. It says there, we love deviate, great distillery here in Boulder. They've really upped their branding since we were visiting them. So deviate from the norm. That was their motto then, right? But now they're just like deviate is a queer, kinky and diverse distillery dedicated to making this world a little freakier. And this bottle says made with real fruit, peach, blueberry, pineapple, strawberry and cranberry, as well as eatable glitter. So describe what this looks like, Brad, Brad 8:14 it looks like a teenager's bottle. Dev Jennings 8:21 It's true. Yes, folks. I mean, sparkly is your phone, my Brad 8:24 love and it has a unicorn on the bottle, my granddaughter would love Jeff York 8:27 that. Oh, god, okay, so, so in the glass, this presents as sparkles and pink liquid. Oh, Jennifer Jennings 8:42 my, it looks a little intergalactic. Yes, Jeff York 8:46 that's its own. I think you see intergalactic things you drink too much. Dev Jennings 8:49 Yeah, it's true. Look that is a unicorn. Jeff York 8:52 Wow. That is, I actually taste all those fruits, but not I can't tell Beth Embree 8:57 my part. Don't need to tell you the ones that you're supposed to be tasting. Sure Jeff York 9:01 taste bath and famous on sparkle. What I learned Beth Embree 9:04 when I was researching it is apparently you're supposed to be able to taste cardamon, juniper, blood orange, lavender, coriander, Angelica, rosemary and Cuban peppers. Jeff York 9:18 The Cuban peppers is really strong. I give it a thumbs up. If you're looking for an alcoholic fruit punch full of glitter, go find deviate sparkle. Anyway, back to the Prosecco. This is delicious. The Prosecco Brad 9:29 is great, yes, so tell us about your love for Prosecco. Or, Jennifer Jennings 9:33 how did Yes? How did I develop this? Well, it was imported from one of our new colleagues, Christopher Steele, who was quite a connoisseur of all things good to eat and good to drink. So he introduced it to us, and I haven't gone back since. So Brad 9:50 we can find battles of prosesco. And you're sitting in your home right now, yeah, Jeff York 9:54 so this is what my 17 year old daughter researching Prosecco on the iPhone on the way the liquor store suggested. Nice. There's a shout out for you. Brad 10:01 So how do we get the other thing, though, what is that? Things like, Jeff York 10:05 just showed up and then she absconded away. I'm starting Brad 10:09 to, like, link the conferences with the UCLA and that blue drink that we had, and this, yeah, brainwashed break this. So Jeff York 10:16 this is like, this is like, the brainwash of but this is actually pretty good. I think. What'd you think? Deb, you tasted the deviate, Dev Jennings 10:23 I think better brainwashed than mouthwash. It's good. I mean, shake me, Jeff York 10:30 it's a totally unique beverage. Yeah, Brad 10:32 shake me actually is awesome. Jeff York 10:33 All right. So good. Anything else you guys want to tell us about Prosecco? I gave you the extent my knowledge is what my daughter found out. Well, Dev Jennings 10:40 yeah, but also we found trying them. Now, quite a few that the Italian is quite distinctive, right? I mean, you know, when you've had ones, we've tried those in California. We tried French ones. We've tried some Spanish version. We have tried different Prosecco as well. Have Jennifer Jennings 10:56 we okay? Yes, I just thought they were always made in Italy. No, no, Dev Jennings 11:01 you're telling me go to the go and get the Italian one, right? Brad 11:07 I look at this like a session wine, where you can actually sit out on a hot day and yeah, per second, Jennifer Jennings 11:11 right on, on a covered Yes, this Brad 11:13 is perfect, right? Yeah, yep. I like it, yeah. Jeff York 11:17 I like it too. It's well, very well suited summer beverage. Yes. So we, since we had two people today, we thought we were going to talk about two different papers. But, you know, since you guys, oh, we never answered Brad's question, yes, I'm sorry. Well, I Jennifer Jennings 11:29 think you got a little bit of a sneak preview there. Did you see how chivalrous he was? Yeah, he somebody took out the Prosecco. He immediately said, Oh, let me serve that to Jennifer, right? And he poured my drink and everything. So I think that goes a long way okay, in the relationship, yeah, and Tito kind of transfers over to actually co authoring together as well. Brad 11:53 So are we talking about co authored paper here today? Jennifer Jennings 11:55 No, not today, no, but Dev Jennings 11:57 we've done on whether to go into business with your partner. Brad 12:00 No No kidding, we've Dev Jennings 12:01 written a paper on that. Jennifer Jennings 12:02 We've done that. Brad 12:03 What was the result? Is there a takeaway? Just quickly, we Dev Jennings 12:06 actually found it was pretty good for both with those data, but the woman always had more of a burden. Jennifer Jennings 12:11 Yes, that's true. Yeah, yeah. That one, yeah. And related, research has shown that, typically, in that sort of situation, sadly, they fall into, you know, historically, you know, stereotypical gendered roles, so it's typically the man in the relationship who gets to be the top dog, Dev Jennings 12:31 right? Try to split the housework and everything like that we do in our own relationship, yeah, and the kids stuff. So, yeah, but it's never equal. Jeff York 12:40 Well, yeah, it's really hard because it's a fuzzy line, and it's always hard to figure out who did what. And, you know, it's just, I think that's a pretty good, actual insight already here. Brad, like the idea that, like starting a business with your your partner, a lot of those stereotypical gender roles that we know actually play out, usually in marriage, and are really hard to resist over both sides, also translate into the business. Am I getting it right? Jennifer Jennings 13:07 Typically? That's yeah, what the research shows, yeah, and does Jeff York 13:10 that interfere with, like, the ability for the business to be successful, or the couples to be successful? Or does it, is it just sort of like an unfair outcome? Or what'd you guys think from the research, like Jennifer Jennings 13:19 when I was way back as a doctoral student, collecting data in the Greater Vancouver area, going out around, you know, and talking to folks. And every time I discovered that it was actually a white wife team, I kind of deviated referring to our sparkle drink here, no deviated from the script. The and kind of, and I was just really intrigued, like, Okay, your husband, wife team, how's your marriage doing? Yeah, right, as a result of being in business together. And I remember keeping track, and, you know, we haven't published this or anything, but I remember it was half and half, so half of those couples, you know, were kind of on their way to divorce, or they were still in business, but, like, kind of, but divorced, believe it or not, and then the other half were like, Oh, this is the most amazing thing to be doing as a married couple. And I think that's how Devin I feel about actually being married, academics, like, it's really amazing when it works, right? It's great, right? Like, it's either the best of times or the Dev Jennings 14:20 worst of times, right? Jennifer Jennings 14:24 Yeah, Dev Jennings 14:25 when paper isn't going it doesn't really go right, and it does. It's awesome. Jeff York 14:31 oh yeah, I can only imagine. It's like, really nice having your spouse understand the challenges and the ups and downs, like, of because I mean a lot this whole podcast now, Brad and I are not romantically entangled, but just to clarify, but a lot of this has been me explaining to him and showing him, like other people, some of the challenges actually doing this work, because as an outsider, you look at and you're like, Oh, you wrote a paper. All right, you published it. Well, big deal. Like. You know, 30 page paper, would that take, like, a week or something? And, you know, it's like Brad 15:04 10 years. We've had people 10 years that you now, know. Jeff York 15:09 So it's, I think, is that, that helpful aspect of it, understanding each other? Oh, absolutely, Jennifer Jennings 15:14 it's really great. I mean, if we are working on a paper together, or, you know, a project, or, of course, or whatever. I mean. Can you imagine waking up in the morning and your husband, your partner, has served you breakfast? And not only that, you get to talk about, yeah, right? And then beyond that, exactly, then you get to spend breakfast talking about, like the next section of your paper, right? Oh god, you know what cool analysis you're gonna do next. Sounds like misery. This is academic heaven. Dev Jennings 15:52 Professors. We do have to draw a line now, right? We just draw a line. Oh, yeah. Like when we go on our walk and stuff, we like, Okay, we need to be in the moment. Yeah, sometimes, you know, right? Yeah. Otherwise, just be all this paper that all cerebral. What's going on? Yeah, side of what life is about when you have kids to their demands, but now that the kids are grown, now that you know, they finished university, all of them. It's different too, right? In a way, we have all our co authors who we kind of look after interesting. It's not just about a different family sort of thing. It's a different Yeah, Jeff York 16:31 because you guys both have doctoral students, you're Jennifer Jennings 16:34 trying to get tenure, Dev Jennings 16:36 these things matter. Yeah? No, Jeff York 16:38 it does. It really is. It's, I never quite got that until, like, you start, I don't think you get as a doctoral student, like you can. I just think, like, well, you know, this person's being so nice to me, that's cool, but like, you don't realize, like, the burden you're putting on the person. Because it's like, it's like, watching your kid play a sport or something, right? You're just like, but, yeah, it's hard. I mean, and you feel accountability for taking care of these people and getting them through and trying to help them and and they don't know as much about it, and they is an apprenticeship model. So you know, this is just how it goes, right? All right. Well, cool, let's, let's dive into one of your papers. Jim, so this was that right, just came out in etmp, entrepreneurship, theory and practice, challenging what we think we know, theory and evidence for questioning common beliefs about the gender gap in entrepreneurial confidence to 2023, volume, 47 issue two. Brad 17:29 Okay, so I'll pay the 47.50 No, I know I'm just teasing Jennifer Jennings 17:34 I think it's open access. Jeff York 17:42 Oh, good. This is the new thing. You can like, pay extra to make your paper open access, to avoid the paywall that you're talking about a lot of times. Maybe your institution will pay for that. Maybe you just pay for it. I know people have paid it out of pocket just because I thought it was the right thing to do. So this paper is also with Zahid Rahman, who and please correct me if I'm mispronouncing any names at the Dillon School of Business at University of Lethbridge, and also with Diana Dempsey, who is at the School of Business at McEwen University in Edmonton, Alberta. Jennifer Jennings 18:12 Yeah. So three, three Alberta Canadians. They're co authoring this one, the Canadian boss. Yeah, watch out. So Brad 18:21 you go out to dinner one night and say, Hey, folks, let's do a paper together. How does this collaboration even begin? Oh, Jennifer Jennings 18:27 and this one, Brad, oh, well, actually, it relates to our prior conversation when we were talking about the doctoral students, right? Really. Okay, so these two were both prior doctoral students of mine, or at least I was, you know, on their committee, or at least their instructor that sort of, yeah. So there Brad 18:41 was a late a relationship, some somewhat prior Jennifer Jennings 18:44 relationship, and not only that, at the time of writing this, both of them were early stage so in their career. So Zahid had just landed a job, and so he's under pressure to get tenure. Diana was a little bit further along, also under pressure to get tenure. So it was one of those situations there which I love. Yeah, I really love, like, you know, in those sort of collaborations, no offense, Jeff York 19:06 gotta get Dev through. Yes. Now that would be rough, like, if you were co authoring with your spouse and love you was going up for tenure. Well, we were in Jennifer Jennings 19:21 that situation. Yeah, sure. Like, Jeff York 19:22 they'll off your papers. It's just fascinating. Like, was Yeah, so was that? Like, I mean, how was that, like, was it because you're at the same school at the time? And, like, right? It's like, even harder. Like, what if you don't get it and you've got to move? And, I mean, that's, yeah, that's that sounds very from Dev Jennings 19:39 UBC to Alberta. Okay, so we could be together. I mean, we were together and, oh, okay, we would go Jeff York 19:45 together, right? Yeah? Oh, awesome. Okay, so you guys were already pretty committed Dev Jennings 19:49 to being together. This is, like the love, yeah. We were pretty committed to being together regardless of which, yeah, regardless Brad 19:57 we're hanging out guys, yeah, yeah, right, Jeff York 19:58 yeah. Well. Course, I mean, but that's just, I just was thinking like that be on top of a stressful situation even that much more maybe, although I guess not. If you're just committed, you're like, well, doesn't really matter, Dev Jennings 20:10 right? Yeah, still, it wasn't easy. Yeah, okay, Jeff York 20:15 if the case is so strong, it's like, let's just go with the paper. Jeff, get back to so these are former doctoral students, former doctoral Jennifer Jennings 20:25 students, and now, yeah, in their first jobs, trying to get tenure. And I think I might have brought the idea to them. I really can't recall, okay, but what we were really intrigued with was really, there is quite a large body of evidence out there, like other research that you might have had to pay a lot of money to read if you were to university story. And what that research was showing was that when you're looking at studies of entrepreneurial self confidence, right, or entrepreneurial self efficacy, ese, okay, for short, what you find is that women tend to exhibit a lower level of ese than men, so they tend to be less confident, on average, in their entrepreneurial ability than men. And this is so the research you're showing in many countries around the world, data, it emerges even really early, like in adolescence. This is showing up adolescents, university students, showing up within older like adults beyond University, even showing up amongst entrepreneurs themselves. Brad 21:31 I see it all the time. Yeah, the first book that I have anybody that I work with Read is called creative confidence by the Kelly brothers, and it's, it's, I don't know if you've heard of this, but before, but it's great, and I think it helps people to recognize the things that you were just mentioning, right? Because a lot of times, people don't even know that that's happening within them. And I think that that's, I think it's a great insight, yeah. Jennifer Jennings 21:54 So we weren't so much upset or whatever with these findings. Of course, these are just the findings. These are the facts. What we were sort of annoyed with, perhaps that's a bit too strong of a word, but I'm going to use it anyway, was how that sort of fact was being portrayed. Okay? And so how that fact tends to get portrayed is that, because women have lower entrepreneurial self confidence than men, therefore women are under confident in their entrepreneurial ability. You see that slight Jeff York 22:31 little shift? Yeah, so one is just like a finding of like there is this difference between gender that we find. The other is a critical assessment that there's something wrong, wrong with women Brad 22:44 under right, but under confident might be a good thing sometimes, right? Jennifer Jennings 22:48 Absolutely. And that's also what annoyed us was, well, first of all, Jeff, what you picked on, like, Hold on here, that's kind of, I think, under knowing what you just said, there is kind of presuming that the men are, first of all, the appropriate yardstick, and that the men have the appropriate level of entrepreneurial competence, that there's nothing wrong with men's ESC right. Hold on. Maybe there is right. Maybe the men, on average, are over covid. So if women are falling short, then perhaps, perhaps women actually have an accurate level, a more accurate level, sure understanding of where their real entrepreneurial ability lies. And actually, it's the men who are overconfident. But there's that tendency always, right, especially in entrepreneurship, because it's such a stereotypically masculine field to think, ah, you know, whatever the guys are doing, that's the appropriate yardstick, right? To measure the women it gets. So there was that that we were kind of a bit perturbed, a bit Sure, but we were also perturbed about what you're saying over there, Brad, is that, well, hold on, maybe actually exhibiting an accurate level of entrepreneurial confidence? Maybe this is Brad 23:56 a good thing, right? Where is the baseline? Where's the accurate baseline? I should say, right, yeah. Jennifer Jennings 23:59 Maybe, you know, if overconfidence, okay, that might be good to give you enough hooch spa, is that the word I can never say that word to get you started, like, you know, okay, I'm gonna go and launch this thing. Okay, yeah, overconfidence might be good for that, but maybe beyond startup, having an accurate level is better for your long term survival. So kind of for both of those reasons. That's why we were a little bit annoyed about the typical portrayal and the associated recommendations that went along with Jeff York 24:34 that. Yeah, because you could sing that that leads to all sorts of bad outcomes and teaching and coaching accelerator program, and you're like saying, Well, we know that women are under confident, quote, unquote, therefore you know they're not being we need to boost them up and make them more confident. That's gonna make people believe in it more. And I'm gonna coach these people to do this and and given we know from research, the preponderance of coaches and people that are running these programs. And investors and professors as well are male, right? They're gonna be like, buying into that probably even more quickly, because it's like, oh yeah, of course, my gender is at the proper level of confidence, right? Jennifer Jennings 25:11 Absolutely. And that is bang on like. So the common, you know, implication after portraying the women as underconfident is exactly that, okay, so then the advice goes out to the practitioners, the accelerators, these sort of things. It goes out to the policymakers. Hey, you know what we've got to fix women. They have this problem. They are deficient, right? They've got this problem that needs fixing, and so we need to put together these programs or these policy initiatives, whatever, right, that are mainly focused on fixing women and bumping up their entrepreneurial confidence. But does that Brad 25:47 really anyone's listening, right? I mean, to me, there's a deafness involved here. Yeah, right, that first of all, over when I think about overconfident entrepreneurs, I think my alarms go off that this is really dangerous, because, first of all, I know how hard it is. I think we all know how hard it is to be successful, and sometimes overconfidence leads to uncoachability, right? Jennifer Jennings 26:10 Absolutely. And that's what one of our when we looked at like the the second part of our sorry was, well, the first was, part was, you know, okay, let's see whether this is really the case, right? Whether the men are overconfident, where the women are actually, accurately confident, rather than under confident. That was kind of the first part. And then the second part of both of our studies was around, okay, so what does it make it? Does it have behavioral implications? Yes, and you hit on one of the first ones that we looked at, which was, okay, these people with these different levels of confidence. Is that associated with their likelihood of asking for information, knowledge about, Hey, how did I do actually on that task? And if they didn't do well, are they then likely to go off? And if there's an opportunity for them to find out how they could have done better, will they actually say yes to that opportunity. And what we found, I think, exactly with, in line with what you're saying, Brad, is the overconfident folks, men or women, right? The overconfident folks, when there was an opportunity there to learn further about how they did and how they could have done better, guess what did they take it? Right? No, no. Right. But the accurate confident, accurately, confident, and the under confident folks, yeah, yes. I want to know more, Brad 27:24 right? Actually, see it all the time in practice where, and this is a generalization, but so I don't mean to overgeneralize, but the men come in and they say, Oh my God, here, this is my venture. I'm going to change the world. I know I can do it. And whatever you have to say, it doesn't freaking matter, because I know I'm going to do it, yes. And the women come in and they think this is a really interesting process. I'm not sure if I fit here, right. I mean, right, this, this acceptance. And then they they actually do the correct research, or understand what problem they're solving, and go through the the process, and they surprise themselves that, oh my god, I'm now a CEO. And they find that really surprising. Once they embrace that, though I see kind of this life changing event happen in their head, and then they're off to the races, yeah, Jennifer Jennings 28:10 and now that they've done the research initially, because perhaps they were a little uncertain, but they've done that research, and so that brings their ability level up. So now they are portraying right, like, the more accurate level of Brad 28:25 crime. But I'm also thinking about VC success with women entrepreneurs. Do you have some data for that? Not Jennifer Jennings 28:32 on this particular city, but like, yeah, I can tell a little bit about kind of the other outcome variables, if you want. So above and beyond, like whether they were likely to, you know, follow through on an opportunity to learn more. So what else did we look at? So we looked at like, we gave them scenarios, like as if they were an entrepreneur, yes, and let's say there was, you're getting feedback on your initial product idea, for example, and things aren't looking so good now, right? You're getting some customer feedback. I welcome to the world, right? Yeah, exactly, right. And so what are Jeff York 29:06 shows these customers don't know what they're talking about. I'm an engineer. I mean, Brad 29:13 10 times a day, right? Oh, my God, all day, every day. Jennifer Jennings 29:19 Yeah, we see it so exciting to hear that like this, academic research is resonating those of you you know who are on the street, right? And so exactly what we found there is that the overconfident, they get the feedback and doesn't matter, they don't pay attention it, they continue to plug more money in, right? So escalation of commitment to what now appears to be not so good idea, right? So escalation of commitment, even prior to Yeah, right, even prior to that, the overconfident ones were more likely to start up their venture in a industry context that was totally unfamiliar to them. Of course, so they didn't have experience in it, and they hadn't done that research that you were talking about Brad. And they were not only doing that, they were going in with a ultra innovative, high risk product. These are those sort of statistically significant and Brad 30:15 the more overconfidence you are, and combine that with very, very bright people, leads to disaster? Yes, I mean, like big disaster. Jennifer Jennings 30:22 Well, I'm really kind of happy to hear that, because, of course, our study couldn't show that we were just dealing with scenarios. What would you do if you were in the situation? And that's certainly a limitation of it. We didn't have the actual behaviors, right? So it's really validating for me, Jeff York 30:36 experiments or survey. Jennifer Jennings 30:39 It was a mix that one one study was a lab experiment at a university, and the other study was in Canada, and then the second study was online surveys with general population the UK and US, and that was more scenario based, yeah, in both cases, though, they were given an actual like Entrepreneurship related task to do first, right, to assess, remember, because we got together talking about, yeah, so in the the lab study, the students were they had to do a task around sorting criteria that could be used to evaluate an entrepreneurial opportunity into, okay, are these actual criteria that you think VCs use versus not, okay, right? And so kind of assessing, really, their entrepreneurial opportunity knowledge, right? Jeff York 31:30 Acumen? Jennifer Jennings 31:30 Yeah, exactly that was in the one the online study in the US and the UK with the general population. That one was a business idea generation task, interesting. So they were given, you know, a technological innovation. And now, hey, go up, come up with as many ideas you can, and then we had coders rate those very cool, yeah. I mean, those are two Jeff York 31:51 very generalizable, empirically generalizable samples, because the way you're doing that much more so than a lot of other methods would well, to me, at least those kinds of things tend to lead to the insights where you're like, okay, yeah, that probably does apply in almost most situations. Thanks, Jennifer Jennings 32:06 Jeff, yeah, we thought it was really important to make sure, like, across the studies, we gave the different types of entrepreneurial task, right? So that somebody could, you know, from the real world, couldn't criticize us, going, Well, really, you only give them one type of task, really, and it really isn't all that relevant a task, right? Brad 32:22 Or it's a lab and it's not real, yeah, exactly. Jeff York 32:24 So what do we think? Like, let's try hominin, like, what is the actionable insight we give, like, to female entrepreneurs from this? I can think of some things, but rather, hear what you think. Jennifer Jennings 32:35 Jen, okay, well, I'm interested in what you think as well, to be honest. Jeff, if you want to start or I and then, and then, maybe I'll correct it. That's perfect. So, Brad 32:50 first of all, this isn't a surprise to me, but it didn't come from my entrepreneurial career. Came through my academic career, watching the writing, yeah, teaching, because, because the the pool of people that I've been able to work with is much larger than anecdotal evidence, right, right? So for me, everything you say makes sense, but also one offs are really hard, right? There's always an outlier out there. So it's, so it's, it's very hard to judge, but I do know that in the venture capital world, even though women are maybe 2% of venture capital finance, their success rate is substantially higher than men. The ones that are actually get the financing. So I think that that's really important. And I think it's a fact that we should be yelling from the rooftops, absolutely. Jennifer Jennings 33:35 And I think what this study is showing to and why we should be yelling that from the rooftops is that our research, which would suggest that that's because those women, they probably got that VC funding for one of the reasons, being that they were, you know, they presented themselves as confident, right? But in the women's case, that's because they deserved to be exactly right, right? Because they can back it up actually, they're actually their entrepreneurial capability, yeah, would suggest that they actually do have what it takes, that that confidence that they're projecting is real. That's right, yeah. So exactly, that's one of the main messages, as you just said, Brad, that we want, would love to, you know, scream from the rooftops, absolutely. Yeah, yes. Cool. Jeff York 34:20 What do you think? Jeff, Oh, the other one I was honing in on is for like, because, yeah, we because, you know, we try to find actual insights, not just for entrepreneurs, but for teachers and, yeah, policy makers, and literally anyone who's not an academic. I think this has great insights for teaching. Because, like, I've been teaching entrepreneurship for like, 13 years now, I guess maybe 14 years. So my tendency, I guess, early on, was when I would see I would try to boost up, because I used to teach for engineers. That was the first entrepreneurship classes I taught. They tend to be less boisterous, quieter people all the time, not to be stereotypical. But you see this if right teach in the engineering school and then you teach in the business school, you will see different types of people in general, not all, but in general, definitely. And you try to, like, bolster them up and get like, Hey, you got to be really good. And I'm thinking like, as I'm saying or thinking this, I'm thinking like, well, if we know the finding is true that women tend to present as less confident, and they probably do in this context, we know that's true from the findings. Was I like honing my tendencies even more towards my female students to try to build them up more? And was I, like, doing that in a way that was actually disrupting what they intuitively were probably doing better, which is doubting their ideas at the at the ideation stage, like we weren't trying to, like, go out and do a pitch and raise funding. We were trying to do ideation and go test and learn, and at that point, I think teachability and learning and the willingness to pivot and to adjust and to actually listen to others is so much more important than confidence, exactly. And Jennifer Jennings 35:51 I guess, yeah, and I love it, Jeff, like the takeaway you have there, and the only tweak so I'm not going to correct you, I'm just going to tweak it a little bit for the PBA. Brad 36:00 Correct them all you want. I'll sit here all day and listen Jennifer Jennings 36:04 the little tweak I would have there would just be to take away the gender aspect. Because, you know, one of the other important implications here, right, is so if you were trying to, like, rah, rah, right, like, elevate all of your students, right kind of confidence level, but if you did so to a level where they collectively became overconfident, whether they were men or women, now you've potentially created that overconfidence problem, which, again, the second part of our study suggests can create problems down the road, right? And so, yeah, so like that just really warms my heart that both of these gateways is like, Yes, this is exactly what we would we were hoping would come out of this. But if Brad 36:49 you close your eyes and eliminate gender and you don't know who is presenting, it's all about show me the data, right? It comes down to whoever can show me the data. Show me that you have people that actually care about whatever problem you're being solved is being solved. And once you have someone confidence or no confidence, it still comes down to, is this problem relevant, and do people care about it being solved? And I think that if you have enough people working whatever their confidence, multi confident levels, right, all the this universe of confidence that, once they see that the data trumps all that's leveling as well. Jennifer Jennings 37:27 Nice. Jeff York 37:28 Anything else you want to talk about with the paper, generally, anything else we should take away from it? Jennifer Jennings 37:32 Well, just one, one little takeaway. And this was from a practitioner, so I gave it to someone, and she had her her partner read it, and he said, Oh, I think I get the gist of this study. And he goes, I think it's saying this that women aren't deficient with respect to entrepreneurship. They just aren't delusional. Yeah, nice, nice alliteration there. Using that one. I Jeff York 37:58 want to talk about devs paper too, but I think we're gonna split this into two episodes. What do you think? Brad, perfect. All right, cool. So once again, that was Jen Jennings, sorry. Jennifer Jennings, I just know you as Jen. The paper is challenging what we think we know, theory and evidence for questioning common beliefs about the gender gap and entrepreneurial confidence that entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, also known as etmp. You can pick it up down at your local 711 or on Google Scholar, because it's open access which a Brad 38:22 title, once again, is there like a requirement that your titles have 20 words, yes, Jeff York 38:29 and it must have a colon Dev Jennings 38:32 hit as many keywords. This Jeff York 38:35 is insane colon, long explanation that no one can write, yeah. And we'll be back to see if Dev Jennings title is similar to that, Faculty Director at the doing surfer entrepreneurship leads School of Business. Brad 38:50 I am Brad Warner and Jeff. This was a great episode. It was great. Thank you, yes. Jeff York 38:53 Thank you, and a quick shout out to our sponsors. JD, joyrides, if you want an E bike tour of murals here in Boulder, Colorado. Get on down there. Jdsjoyrides.com, and our other sponsored liquid mechanics over in lovely Lafayette, Colorado. Liquidmechanics, brewing.com, Amazing craft pier is brought to you in a beautiful setting and a lovely Taproom. Go check them out. We'll see you in just a few minutes. Or next time Cheers. Dona L 39:19 This episode of creative distillation was recorded on the front porch of the Chautauqua mission house at the reversing the arrow conference held in Boulder in June 2024 Jen's paper challenging what we think we know theory and evidence for questioning common beliefs about the gender gap in entrepreneurial confidence was published in June 2022, in entrepreneurship theory and practice. Check the show notes for a link and learn more about Jennifer Jennings on her faculty page at the University of Alberta website. You. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. Email us at cdpodcast@colorado.edu and please be sure to Subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The creative distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado, Boulder's Leeds School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu. That's D, E, M, I, N, G, and click the creative distillation link. Creative distillation is produced by Joel Davis at analog digital arts. Our theme music is whiskey before breakfast, performed by your humble host, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here next week for the next round of creative distillation. You.

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Creative Distillation - Episode 68: Matthew Grimes, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Features at Cambridge University

Emily Iliff — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 19:34:53 +0000

Creative Distillation - Episode 68: Matthew Grimes, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Features at Cambridge University Emily Iliff Thu, 10/03/2024 - 13:34

Emily Iliff

In this episode of Creative Distillation, hosts Jeff York and Brad Werner from the University of Colorado, Boulder, are joined by Matthew Grimes, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Futures at Cambridge University. Matthew is in Boulder to co-host the Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference (GEIRC). As always, the hosts and guest enjoy a selection of craft beverages, including Sibson D-branded bourbon and unique sour beers.

Jeff and Brad open with updates about their summer, highlighting Jeff's return from Hawaii, Brad's flight from France, and the scenic beauty of Jeff’s Boulder ranch. They also introduce their dog, Ranger, and talk about two upcoming conferences. The conversation then shifts to Matthew Grimes, who shares his preference for sour ales, leading the group to sample a D&D-themed whiskey and a metal-themed pale ale, before diving into the adventurous world of sour beers.

The discussion becomes more academic as Matthew introduces his research paper, "Living Up to the Hype," which explores how new ventures manage the balance between future-oriented visions and the realities of impact investing. The paper examines the role of hype in entrepreneurship, with case studies on social stock exchanges in Singapore, London, and Toronto. The group reflects on the rise and fall of these exchanges, highlighting the role of social proof and tangible goals in sustaining hype.

As the episode progresses, Matthew shares insights on how entrepreneurs can balance hype with fundamentals, build credibility, and tackle challenging problems. The conversation covers the importance of social proof and celebrity endorsement in driving hype, along with examples from Matthew's consulting experience. The episode wraps up with a toast to creativity and innovation in entrepreneurship, as the hosts thank Matthew for his thoughtful contributions.

Transcript

welcome to another episode of creative distillation. Your host Jeff and Brad from the University of Colorado, Boulder's Leeds School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages, Dona L 0:21 this time on creative distillation. We gather at Jeff's ranch where he and Brad speak with Matthew Grimes, Professor of Entrepreneurship and sustainable futures, and co director of the Cambridge judge Entrepreneurship Center at Cambridge University's judge School of Business. Matthew Matthew is in Boulder as co host of gurk, the Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference held at CU Boulder earlier this summer, and at which we recorded several of this season's episodes. He joined our host a Sibson D and D branded bourbon as well as a couple of rather exotic sour beers selected by Jeff, and discuss how and whether to appreciate sour beer and marvel at the ever expanding universe of beer weirdness. They also make time to get into a recent paper, co authored by Matthew, which addresses the perils of hype to entrepreneurship and proposes an emergent theory of heightened management. Enjoy and cheers. Jeff York 1:24 Welcome to Creative distillation, where we distill entrepreneurship Research and Action Plan sites. I am your co host, Jeff York, Faculty Director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado. Boulder, joined by my co host Brad Brad 1:38 Werner and Jeff, it is great to see you, and we work together at the Deming center. And now, though it's summertime, Jeff York 1:45 it is summertime. We are in the midst of enjoying the summer of academic relaxation, Brad 1:52 but we also have some really cool events coming up at Deming. We Jeff York 1:54 do have, we do? Yeah? We do okay. Brad 1:58 We have two conferences. Yes, Jeff York 1:59 yes, yes. We have two conferences, and we're gonna talk to one of the guests of those conferences. But first, let's just catch up real quick. Where did you arrive here to Well, first of all, where are we? Brad 2:10 So we are actually, for all you young entrepreneurs out there, do not believe that there is no money in academia. We are actually recording at the Jeff York ranch in the mountains of beautiful Boulder, Colorado, actually, just west of Boulder. And I'm looking at mountains cattle. I'm looking at your cattle herd, Jeff, I can see the town in the distance. And I would say this is a really beautiful place. Academia does pay. Jeff York 2:36 I don't know about that, but thank you very much. It's awesome to have you guys here. We just enjoyed a lovely dinner outdoors and our ketchup. And Brad, you just arrived this morning, last night, last night from Brad 2:47 So I flew in from the south of France to talk to you for a week, because we're going to do some really cool things. Jeff York 2:52 Yeah, absolutely. And I just got back from Hawaii. So you know, it's a tough life. We're having a terrible summer Hawaii. Yeah, it's rough. But anyway, I'm here at home for a while, so it's nice. It's nice to be here. Brad 3:05 The ranch is great. Jeff York 3:07 We're also joined by my dog, Ranger, rangers here. Ranger, if you hear a thumping noise, that's his tail hitting things, because he's loves Brad. And we are also joined by our guest. We're very excited to have a professor of entrepreneurship and sustainable futures, as well as the co director of the Cambridge judge, entrepreneurship sir, from the University of Cambridge. Or is it Cambridge University? I always get that wrong. Either one will actually work. Well, okay, I'm right then, University of Cambridge. Excellent. Nice. Judge, cool business professor. Matthew Grimes, thanks for joining us. Man, great to have Brad 3:38 you. Yeah, it's great to have you here. And by the way, Matthew as a repeat guest? Jeff York 3:42 Jeff, yes, we have very few repeat guests. We're actually we're getting creative distillation swag. Yes, the rumor is it's been ordered. So next time you come on, Matthew, Not this time, this time you get nothing. I did get dinner. You did get dinner. You get the dinner, and you'll get to sample some fine things here, but next time, we may have schwag. Matthew Grimes 4:03 Schwag, yeah, something that you count me in one Brad 4:08 of your Harry Potter dinners, so Jeff York 4:09 you'll take any international flight from wherever you are. Yeah, I never got to do the Harry Potter dinner. I was so bombed like I did not get to sit at the high table and look down upon the students of my academic robes. I really want to do that. You would have loved it. I would have loved that. That'd be great, you know, anything where I can, like, you know, wear academic robes and look down on people. Yeah. Well, okay, so, so we're gonna sample some beers. Matthew has expressed a preference for sour ale. So when we're doing these, well, first of all, Cambridge is, if you've if you've missed our previous episode where we've talked about the Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference, as we like to call it, gurk, Matthew Grimes 4:50 just a great Jeff York 4:52 acronym that, you know. What else be trying to steal our acronym, gurk? Are you going to the gurk? You know? I mean, it sounds good, right? For sure, it apparently works as lots of people, we had to turn people away from this. Yes. So Matthew is the representative from Cambridge University, and is here in town as our co host, along with the Darden School at the University of Virginia. And you might have this episode where we spoke with him and and my clinics a little bit about the history of the conference. If you hadn't just rewind, go find that one. It'll say the history of the gurk, and you'll know you're in the right place. So Matthew's here. We're going to talk about, we talked about the conference of the other episode, but we want to talk to him about his research, because we thought his research was pretty interesting, and before the podcast, we did sample this. So first of all, Brad's microphone is on a book that he's really interesting Brad 5:40 heroes fest. It's one of my favorites. Here is feast. Well, that's Matthew Grimes 5:46 the other one. Yeah, the Brad 5:47 official dungeon and Dragon cookbook, yes, oh my god. And by the way, the cover art is just Jeff York 5:53 incredible. Nope. We sampled a DND themed whiskey from questions distillery. Queston is founded by the actor I'm probably gonna mispronounce his name, also Matthew Lillard. Lillard, I'm sorry. Lillard played shaggy in Scooby Doo. 2002 you're a big fan of the Scooby Doo. Brad 6:16 I've never seen the Scooby Doo. Matthew Grimes 6:17 Oh, the trilogy. Jeff York 6:20 Yeah. Anyway, so I don't know anything about Matthew. He's a d&d enthusiast, and he's created this company that does bourbons based on d&d classes. So you looked at the bottle and what were your thoughts? Okay, so Brad 6:35 the first time, when you showed me the bottle, Jeff, I actually thought it was a joke. Matthew Grimes 6:39 Bourbon. I'm like, Brad 6:40 How would bourbon for Dungeons and Dragons? Jeff York 6:44 Who would buy it? Yeah. Well, Brad 6:45 I know, I know the one person that would buy it, but after tasting it, it was actually very good. It's actually a pretty good price. So teasing aside the bourbon is Yeah, and I'm shocked to even say that, yeah. So Jeff York 6:58 we'll have a link. Go check out questions if you're into DND or just bourbon. Brad 7:02 So is D and D now a drinking game, or has it always been? Jeff York 7:05 I kind of think it always has. Well, I called my campaign dungeons and flagons so, you know. So I was thinking, because we're gonna be drinking a sour Ale, Brad might like to have some other beer on hand as well. You're a good man, Jeff, and we won't be able to taste it after the salary, so we've already applied him with quests and Rogue. Now we're gonna have true Brewing Company scorn. Scorn is a pale ale to keep with our d&d theme. This Brad 7:35 is truly incredible. I mean, talk about a market this d&d world. So true Jeff York 7:39 brewing is like, we're definitely gonna get down there. If anybody from true brewing hears this, I love you. I love your brewery. Where are they? We're coming down there. They're in Denver. We're definitely coming down there. I don't know where they distribute to, but it's one of the best breweries in Colorado, in my opinion. And what's really cool about true brewing is they are a metal themed brewery, like as in metal music. So all their, all their branding and labeling is like weird names, like, I've also got apparition Pale Ale, but this is scorn, and it has a cracked skull with like beer poured on it. Is how I interpret it. I don't know if that's what they intended on a black label. And I first found them on Halloween one year. Of course, I was going to a party, and they were out of pumpkin beer because it sells out before Halloween, because everyone loves it so much. So I was like, oh my god, what am I gonna do? They sold out a pumpkin beer. I was faced with this tragic situation. So then I saw a beer that had a Jason from, like, Friday the 13th, like character out with a chainsaw. There you go. And regularly bought it, and I've been in love with true brewing ever since. It's a fantastic brewery. Yeah, we need to go down there. you go. Cheers, try it. Brad 8:50 Cheers, cheers, cheers, sir. See you guys. Joel, happy summer. To everyone. Jeff York 8:55 Happy Summer. They make so many beers, especially these kind of sours and lagers. But this is just a pale ale they make that I find really, really good. So this Brad 9:06 brought me back to my Chicago days. It reminds me of Gumball HUD. Really had Gumball head. Yeah, Jeff York 9:10 it's an IPA though. Yeah, it's Brad 9:11 just, for some reason, it's what I thought of when I Jeff York 9:14 come I haven't had in a while. That's three Floyds, right? Yes, we were talking about that with some Chicagoan. Yeah, I don't know. So to me, it's got, like, a really, like, nice biscuity malt flavor, kind of a toasty malt flavor going on in the background, not a lot of hop heaviness, just a really good easy drinking beer, perfect accompaniment to questions rogue. I mean, just look at them together. Does that? Joel, you knew that that'd be a good photo. There's your photo for the podcast. These are fine beverages. Zoom in and I endorse these beverages. I know. What else I endorse, bread. What I endorse, bicycle tours of Boulder. Me too, but I don't know. Where could I get a bicycle tour of Boulder, and particularly if I was interested in seeing the beautiful murals here Brad 9:58 in town. Is there such a offering? I don't know, Joel, is there such an offering? As Joel Davis 10:02 a matter of fact, there is an offering. It's called JD joyrides. Oh my god. And we'll show you around boulder. We'll show you a good time on two wheels. And Brad 10:12 where can we find information for about JDS joyrides, Joel Davis 10:15 jdsjoyrides.com JDS joyrides.com Jeff York 10:18 Fantastic. It's awesome. Our very down, I'd love to ride with you. Our very first sponsor. Very excited to have JDS Joy rides, official sponsor of creative distillation. Had to remember the name of the podcast. I'm really good at marketing. I can't remember the name on a Brad 10:36 podcast. So the amazing thing, though, we need to take a moment here before we bring Matthew in is to talk about 60 plus episodes. Jeff, well, I mean, right? I mean, to me, Jeff York 10:46 what do you think about 60 plus episodes? Oh, I mean, I just, I think it's here for one year, 222, Matthew Grimes 10:52 now, yeah, you know, part of the game is survival, right? And Brad 10:57 I'm looking at through our list for the week, though, and Matthew's gonna be repeat guests again. Oh, he's gonna Jeff York 11:02 be a three fur Yeah. So Brad 11:04 we Jeff York 11:05 also have another official sponsor. I don't know if you knew this, Brad, no, but liquid mechanics brewing, located over there, just over the hill from Boulder. Lafayette is the town. It's a great brewery, by the way, there's a fantastic brewery. You can check them out at liquidmechanics brewing.com they have agreed to be our other official sponsor. Seriously, yes, they have. It's very exciting. Cheers. I love that. And you probably are hearing even before this episode, you might have heard the actual Brewer and founder leading a beer tasting. If you want to rewind in time and find that there's episode with Professor Tony Kong, and that one took place at liquid mechanics. We met Devin, the who is, of course, a buff. Brad 11:46 Yes, he is, I love about liquid mechanics is in on this? Yes, we're very excited. It really is a great brewery. It Jeff York 11:52 is a great brewery. Okay, now to get down to business, Matthew, I have here for you a Colorado sour beer made by what I think of as the most adventurous brewery in Colorado. Some may disagree with me, but I don't think they will another place. We have not done an episode that I very much want to, and Brad probably will not want to after we taste this beer. But they make all kinds of beer. They make the wildest variety of beer of any brewery. I think of what we have here is a weld works Brewing Company over in Weld County, Colorado, Okay, Grandma Jay's strawberry rhubarb pie sour ale. Oh, my God. And this is sour ale. Matthew Grimes 12:32 I'm reading the can sour beer. Sour beers are named very, very poorly Jeff York 12:36 with strawberry and rhubarb puree, vanilla bean graham cracker and milk sugar. It says, keep cold drink. Now, dialed in beer. Let me give you a small sample, because this is thank you very good beer. Brad 12:50 Okay, I appreciate that. Though, this one's good, though the first one was really good. Oh, yeah, oh, I Jeff York 12:54 gave you that. Hold on to that. Brad 12:55 I feel like this is hazing. It's not, oh, this Jeff York 13:00 is Matthew's choice. Brad 13:01 This is Matthews. So Matthew, what is your before we even taste this, what is you? Tell us about your story with soccer. Jeff York 13:07 We got we I just want you to smell this sucker before it phase. Brad 13:11 Oh, my God. Matthew Grimes 13:13 Wow, the strawberry shortcake. Jeff York 13:15 Yeah, strawberry rhubarb pot. Wow, Brad 13:18 somebody's attic. Matthew Grimes 13:21 This is the official beer of gurk. Jeff York 13:27 Really well, Grandma J's strawberry Rupa pies, the official beer of gurk. Matthew Grimes 13:33 So are we gonna taste this now? Brad 13:35 Yes, we'll talk about Matthew Grimes 13:39 Whoa. Okay, okay, that's interesting. Jeff York 13:42 I mean, so here's the thing, like, I know, oh my God. What's your impression? Is this a Do you really Brad 13:53 like this? Yeah, I mean, like you would. I don't even know an occasion where I would open this. I can't even imagine something, Jeff York 14:04 this official beer of Kirk. So that's Brad's reaction. I don't even know an occasion where I would ever open this. Oh, my God. Quote, you put down the can. Brad 14:16 And this is a good one, right? Jeff York 14:16 I don't know. What do you think, Matthew? I Matthew Grimes 14:18 mean, this is probably one of the more adventurous sour beers I've tasted. He did ask. I went big in general. I would say that sour beers are one of the more adventurous beers, just generally, you know. And this one is particularly so. Brad 14:35 So how did you get into them, though? Matthew Grimes 14:38 I mean, the novelty factor is a big factor, which actually ties into the topic we'll discuss later on. But so there is, there's a, you know, there's a novelty to it. And I think that this was toward the end of my Nashville day. So I was, like, I was winding down my PhD in Nashville, and they were just starting to come out with these sour beers. And so there's a. Bit of nostalgia with it. You know, a lot of people have talked about how I see I actually probably have some questions about sour beer. Maybe Jeff, you can answer these. But like I've been told that this is a more healthy beer. Is that? Is that not true? Yeah, because if you taste this, Brad 15:17 you only drink one. Jeff York 15:22 I don't think there's any truth. No, in fact, like, you know, at least the research I've Matthew Grimes 15:27 read, the fermentation, any, nothing, nothing. Well. I Jeff York 15:30 mean, what people are saying, like the lactobacillus, like with it's the Matthew Grimes 15:34 kombucha of beers, almost, sort of. I mean, there's, do you like kombucha? No, see, so there you go. Yeah, it has a similar kind of, yeah, like acidity and Yeah, somebody Jeff York 15:46 gave this to you and told you it was kombucha. You probably believe it, right? I mean, I guess I really like this. I think it's amazing. I mean, it tastes like strawberry pie, Brad 15:56 Grandma J's strawberry. I Matthew Grimes 15:58 mean, the after the aftertaste is, it was a bit weird at first, but it's a, it's actually a, it's actually pretty good. Well, the Jeff York 16:03 first sip of it like every Okay, here's the thing with sour beer too. If you're like Brad and you take one sip, you will never like them, because you'll take that one sip, and what happens is your taste buds get hit with all the lactobacillus, which is what most of the sours derived from. And it just like, hurts. It's like painful. It's much like drinking, like, you know, a double IPA, like, you know, your first sip of like, it's just hops and it like, actually, will burn your throat a little bit. And the same thing with sours, like, you can't even taste them in the first sip. Usually it just is, like an overflow sour. But as you taste a few, take a few more sips. Come on, try What Matthew Grimes 16:37 does what does this say about my social identity that this is the beer like, like, if, if I had a choice of beers, I'll always choose sour beer. Like, what does that? What does it say about that? You Jeff York 16:50 want people to think that you are a bold, adventurous outlier type? Matthew Grimes 16:56 Okay, I Jeff York 16:56 would say, I would say Brad 16:58 it's just that you're perfect for this podcast. Jeff York 17:02 I that's how I would interpret as a social so, like, Well, I mean, it depends, like, your social identity, it would be like, so what group are you trying to be? Yeah, Matthew Grimes 17:10 exactly. Like, what Jeff York 17:11 is it I sort of misinterpret. I Matthew Grimes 17:13 was thinking, well, because, I Jeff York 17:14 mean, I would say how you would interpret a social norm around, I wasn't thinking about social identity. So social identity, I mean, what people Matthew Grimes 17:20 would you be? Your choice says a lot about a lot about a person's identity, social identity, right? When you say, so, I guess Jeff York 17:27 I don't know. What do you think it says? Matthew Grimes 17:29 I don't I don't know what the demographic is that. So, okay, so Jeff York 17:32 to be Matthew Grimes 17:33 like, who's buying these? Brad 17:35 Oh, well, I would just say some idiot. That's all I would need to know about the person? All right, I've had five steps like to get through that Jeff York 17:45 tasting different. Brad 17:46 Oh no, it actually does mellow out, right? But sourness at the beginning, after a few tastes, that goes away. It chills out. But, man, this Jeff York 17:54 is so here, what's here's what's crazy about this beer to me, is it like you taste the sourness? Yes, okay, fun. It's not really that sour. I mean, like a lamb beak from, like, from Brussels, correct, a real one is, like, really. I mean, that's just thing, nothing there but the sour, like smack, and maybe a little horse blanket flavor to go with it. That's a flavor descriptor for that. But, um, all right, so to balance this discussion a little this is actually, I mean, it's not a typical sour beer at all. Like I said, this must be adventurous brewery I know of, maybe anywhere, but certainly in Colorado. I'm sure there's more adventurous breweries in Belgium and other places. But, um, what's crazy about this beer is the layers of flavor they got in it. That's what's nuts. It's like, just as an achievement of brewing, it's kind of insane. So you got sour, right? Okay, yes. But then you do taste, I taste strawberry. I definitely get a hint of the rhubarb. Oh yeah. Then I taste vanilla, and then the graham cracker kind of comes through at the end. I mean, I taste all those things now as a power suggestion of me reading the can, maybe, I don't know, but I can pick up all those flavors and tasting this, and it's kind of an amazing I agree. I agree. Brad 19:00 I agree that the flavors are there. The problem is, is it doesn't go away. It just it's still in my mouth from a SIP maybe two minutes ago. Those flavors last, Jeff York 19:10 yeah, no, it really lingers. Yeah, that's the problem. It's kind of amazing. Brad 19:14 I mean, I'm sure, as a brewing, a brewing challenge, awesome for a customer, no way. Jeff York 19:20 I don't know. They're pretty damn successful. I'm Brad 19:22 sure they are just, I'm Jeff York 19:23 not entirely this sells for 20 bucks a four pack, probably. Yeah. I mean, now as though that wasn't enough. Brad 19:32 Now, Matthew, would you order this in a if you knew this was coming? Would you order this? Matthew Grimes 19:36 Yeah, yeah. I would. Jeff York 19:38 I think about sour beer. You have to develop a taste for it. You're probably going to pick it up and drink your first one and react like Brad, but if you persist, yeah, it's Matthew Grimes 19:49 like coffee, yeah. Do you like coffee? Brad 19:52 Yeah? So an IPA is a gateway beer to sour, Jeff York 19:56 huh? Maybe, maybe because IPA certainly. It tastes very different. No, like a lager, right, right? I would say just drinking craft lagers is, like, kind of a gateway, like, oh, wow, these people made a German pillsner Instead of drinking a Miller. I mean, Brad 20:11 there's a difference, for sure. Jeff York 20:12 Yeah, I don't know. Have gotten so weird now, like, because there's so many craft breweries and it's just like everybody, I don't know it's, beer is like a ever expanding universe. Yeah, it is. Matthew Grimes 20:25 I mean, the combinations I you know, in general, I would say that the have now having lived in the UK for six years and coming back to the US, like it's always a place where people are very willing to experiment. It's in a way that other cultures just don't have that kind of same experimentation urge. Jeff York 20:43 Who couldn't have given me a bare segue into our next beer. Also a world works creation. I just happen to have two world works sours. Matthew say one sours. I said I got two sours. We're next trying. Bam, bam, Rubble. Rubble, bam, bam, Rubble. Rubble says sour ale. And then if you look over in the corner, it says with fruity rice cereal, strawberry, vanilla, marshmallow and milk sugar. I'm Brad 21:10 gonna get ready for that. Jeff York 21:16 So I'd say you need to cleanse your palate. But not really. Brad 21:20 That's amazing to me, though, actually, as well, well, county is a very conservative County. It is that base this type of brewery there. To me, I wonder how they pulled that Jeff York 21:29 off. I really want to go interview them and find out amazingly successful. I mean, they they're really known for their they make an IPA called juicy bits. So if you're looking for a weldworks beer. Look for something called juicy bits. They mostly are known for those. These are kind of, we're definitely delving into the deep cuts of weldworks. Here we go with, bam, bam, Rubble. Rubble, cheers, and Matthew Grimes 21:51 bam, bam, bam, cheers, rubber. Rubble, cheers, Jeff York 21:55 gas smell at first. Because, Matthew Grimes 21:58 wow, okay. Oh Jeff York 21:59 okay. Yeah. That's, I mean, you guys, obviously, oh Matthew Grimes 22:02 yeah, the fruity, fruity bubbles, yeah, Fruity Pebbles. Come on, come on. That's, that's crazy genius. Yeah, Brad 22:08 I'm just still thinking about it. Matthew Grimes 22:12 Yes, that's good. What's interesting with, with both of these beers is the is the aftertaste, Jeff York 22:21 speak, I Brad 22:22 can't speak. It's interesting to watch me or, yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm just, I'm still thinking about the customer profile. Who drinks this. Matthew Grimes 22:34 Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out. Jeff York 22:37 I bought it. I did not buy these for the podcast. Brad 22:43 I don't even know how to explain this, but there's a taste in my mouth so bad, and I want it. I'm trying. I'm drinking water and the IPA, and it still doesn't go away. Whiskey, Jeff York 22:54 we've got, they've got more, more. This Brad 22:57 beer is so good, it takes whiskey. You need a whiskey Chaser to get rid of it. So this beer is nuts. Yeah, it's nuts. Bet I agree. I Jeff York 23:07 actually don't like it as much as I like the grandma Jay's strawberry rhubarb pie, but I do think it's really interesting. The most interesting thing going on in this is the marshmallow. Brad 23:18 Okay, so that's I think I have a problem with that right there. I don't want my beer to taste like marshmallows, really. I know if somebody can figure out how to do that, I still don't care. It's kind of like a solution looking for a problem, right? That we're going to make this. Jeff York 23:33 But I actually was wondering about that a little bit with this beer. I'm really, I really want to ask them, like, did they just make something that they thought tasted like fruity pebbles, or were they, I think, I don't think so. I think they were aiming to make something that tastes like, yeah, yeah. I Matthew Grimes 23:48 mean, they had to think, I think Jeff York 23:49 so. How else do you How else do you decide to make this like? I mean, you must have, there's very strong intent here. I Matthew Grimes 23:56 mean, it could be a lot of experimentation, or there might be, you know, direct intention, Brad 24:02 they're experimenting. This is, they're an amazing brewery. We Jeff York 24:05 definitely got it. Okay. So what do you think of their nephew? Of bam, bam, Rubble, Rumble. Matthew Grimes 24:11 Yeah, I'm a fan. I'd order it again. Jeff York 24:13 Do you like it? Or, or the strawberry rhubarb pie? Matthew Grimes 24:16 I think one of the challenges is that, with the rhubarb, yeah, that was the first taste I had. So it was coming off of, like, you know, drinking glasses of water all of a sudden. It's like, you the intensity was, was potent, right punch in the face, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas, whereas this one had the benefit of, like, actually having a sour before it, but I, but I will say, you know the bam, bam, Rubble, Rubble, Rubble, Bubble, bubble, Rubble, Jeff York 24:45 bam, bam, Rubble, Rubble, bam, with two b's. Anyway, if you're out there, for some reason, you have an association with what works. Get in touch. We want to come visit you not quite meant that. Same goes for true brewing and. And if I doubt Matthew Lillard is going to want to talk to us, since I butchered his name and we haven't seen his movies, Matthew Grimes 25:05 but let's talk more about Matthew. Jeff York 25:08 We like his whiskey. We like his whiskey. Oh, so anyway, well, we're going to talk about paper with Matthew here, because this actually is pretty a little pertinent to the conversation we've been having about sour beer. I think so. This appeared back in 22 not that long ago, while back in the academy Management Journal volume 65 number three, living up to the hype, Brad 25:31 that's the first part. We should just stop there, right? Jeff York 25:37 Okay, keep going. All right. How new ventures manage the resource and liability of future oriented visions within the nascent market of impact investing. Matthew, Brad 25:47 how'd you come up with that one? Well, I Matthew Grimes 25:50 went down to the local, local brewery. Brad 25:54 There we go. There's our connection. Jeff York 25:56 So this paper, the lead author is actually Daniel Logue, who's at the University of New South Wales with Matthew Grimes. So So tell us about the paper, Matthew, what were you guys up to in this? Matthew Grimes 26:06 So Danielle and I were actually co students together during our master's work at Oxford, and so really, yeah, Jeff York 26:14 knew each other as master went off and did PhDs, yeah? Matthew Grimes 26:18 So she stayed in Oxford and continued on, I went back to the states and pursued my PhD at Vanderbilt and and then several years later, she had approached me about this really interesting data set that she had where she was looking at kind of impact investing for several years. And one of the recent kind of innovations within the context of the impact investing market was this idea of social stock exchanges, the idea that you could, you could create these organization, you know, basically a stock market that would funnel capital towards ventures with with an impact, impact focus. You know, this was coming out of really early kinds of organizing that was happening around impact investing in the late 2000s and at like, one of the launch events, there were three different founders in different areas of the of the world that all founded these social stock exchanges at the same time, one in Singapore, one in London and one in Toronto. And so being able to actually look at these organizations that were being launched at really the same time, with the same business model in mind, and trying to take advantage of all of this cultural momentum that was building these expectations and excitement and attention that were being drawn towards the whole impact investing space, and these organizations are trying to take advantage of that growing hype to basically try to change the way that we finance new ventures, but different impacts, Brad 27:48 right? Each, each venture was kind of focused on a different in a different universe. Matthew Grimes 27:53 Yeah. So these, these were very they were independent organizations with against very similar business models operating in kinds of, I mean, yes, culturally speaking, I mean, Singapore is different from London. There's different from Toronto. But at the same time, we're talking about, you know, highly financialized countries where, you know, relatively speaking, these are all, you know, similar kinds of, similar kind of development level economy, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So thinking about what, what you know, how did these organizations go about this process in similar or different ways? How were they taking advantage of the hype, but also, how were they managing all of the growing expectations that were that was essentially building around them? And so there's this tension that motivates the paper, between this idea that hype, on the one hand, is this really interesting short term cultural resource, right? It provides opportunities for ventures to mobilize all kinds of additional resources around what they're doing, and yet, at the same time, it also creates this long term relational liability, because there's growing expectations of, well, you need to deliver on, on all of this promise that you've, you've, you've guaranteed. So there's kind of temporal compression there that happens where it's like, show me the money and then, and then, in addition, there's kind of categorical compression where, in other words, like, there's a there's a compression in terms of your ability to pivot, right? So there's growing expectations that say you need to kind of stay the course, and you need to show results. And so that the elevated expectations around these ventures. So there's this real tension, like, how do you do you embrace the hype around you as a new venture, or do you manage expectations in a way so you don't, you don't actually engage the hype directly, you know, to avoid a situation where there's, you know, essentially unmet expectations, Brad 29:55 right? I mean, if you over promise, it's dangerous exactly Jeff York 29:57 just as just looking. Like. So when we talk about hype, yeah, you know, I think it's interesting that you're defining that as like a academic construct, because it's not something we normally think of. And you guys say hype is a collective vision and a promise of a possible future around which attention, excitement and expectations increase over time. Isn't there like, a bubble though, I'm sure it's part. I mean, like, you know, I'm just thinking, like, we all teach entrepreneurship, right? Yeah, and we all got, how many of the bitchers in the last year did you see had something to do with AI? Yeah, yeah. Like, it's just, Brad 30:34 I want to get short AI so badly. Jeff York 30:37 Yeah, right, right? I mean, but we, we, I think unlike Well, I mean, most people experience hype. They read the paper, they see about this new thing that's coming out or whatever. But I think we experience it as as entrepreneurship professors, on a much more visceral level, because our job is to guide students in the process of starting to think about ventures. And we see these waves of hype, at least, I think we do is that what you're talking about here, like, Matthew Grimes 31:01 well, so that, I mean, I think there's different ways that we talk about hype, like, one is, one is? We talk about it oftentimes as a form of deception, right? That there that essentially, is this real or is this mere hype, right? He said, Don't believe the hype, right? Don't believe the hype, right? So there's an assumption that, essentially, hype is either over promises or some some form of deception. So that's one way that we talk about it. Another way that we talk about it is this idea of hype cycles. Yeah, so, so I, prior to academia, I spent time in the world of consulting, working a lot of with Chief Information Officers for this company called CEB was a consulting firm that did a lot of research. It was ultimately acquired by a company called Gardner, which actually produces the hype Hype Cycle model. So that, you know, I was looking at these hype cycle models a lot in my consulting experience, and essentially, what they suggest is that there's this kind of trigger point where, you know, you can think about it as kind of the launch of the public beta of chatgpt, or the public release of chatgpt in what, late November of 2022 right? There's a trigger event that, ultimately, you know, contributes to an expansion of resources and attention that so it's that upward side of the slope there. At some point in time, there's so many suppliers in the markets as their supplier proliferation, and the promises are so great, because everyone's competing for attention, that ultimately, you know, there's no way that those promises can deliver on the expectations, and at that point in time, the sort of media attention actually flips. So there's sustained attention, but it's actually negative and criticizing it, where you see kind of the collapse of the market. So there's a lot of consolidation around suppliers that leads to this kind of trough of disillusionment, where ultimately, you know, this is actually where a lot of the hard work of building out second order use cases actually starts to take place, and then that leads to some kind of plateau, ultimately. And so this is the the kind of an evolutionary diffusion model of hype, right? So hype is a cycle, but there's another interesting kind of phrase that we use sometimes in talking about hype, and it's, it's the title of the paper, this idea of living up to the hype, right? How do you actually deliver on these grand promises? And I think that that's, that's at the heart of what we were trying to do with this particular paper, is to say, Okay, well, if we think about hype as deception that doesn't really capture all of the nuance and dynamics of what's going on, because it's not. You can only know whether hype is an over promised post hoc after the fact, like you can. You can look back and say.com, bubble. So now you could say, oh, well, that that's that was just hype, right? Jeff York 33:58 But then Amazon, I would argue, as right, there were well, well beyond what gonna be a bookstore in that swell guys. And we were like, swell, and it was, and now it's so much more than that, frighteningly so. But like, you know, it's interesting, some people actually over deliver, like, Matthew Grimes 34:19 right, precisely. And so this is the idea that that there's we might associate the idea of hype with fads or market bubbles, that assumes that there's always going to be a collapse. And actually, social scientists have have looked at the actual data around the diffusion of innovation, and those patterns do not necessarily map to the hype cycle model that has been become popularized by Gartner. Now I think it's a useful heuristic, like when I teach exec ed or teach MBA students on the topic of hype I'll usually show them this model, because I think again, it's a useful heuristic for understanding this is generally how perhaps. Perhaps, on average, technologies tend to evolve, but just because that may be the mean doesn't mean that everything's going to follow that sort of pattern. And so I think you're, I think what's quite interesting, and what's usually interesting with qualitative research, is that you can explore the outlier so you can see how have people actually lived up to the hype? And this is why we, you know, we were really interested in doing running the comparison here, because it was like one organization completely collapsed. Sadly enough, that was the London social Stock Exchange. Another sort of pivoted out, you know, away from the kind of grand vision of the social Stock Exchange to something where they were more focused on something they could, like, tangibly deliver, which was like impact bonds. And there was just a lot, there was already a lot of conversation around this, so it was just easier for them to deliver on simplified. Yeah, exactly. So it kind of pivoted to something that was, it was simpler. And then, you know, actually, the Toronto exchange was very thoughtful about its approach in how it engaged, engaged with hype, and how it essentially built relationships around the kind of platform ecosystem that it was creating, and so it was generating social proof. Because again, like one of the things that's hard about living up to the hype is that you've got these really long term visions of what you're trying to achieve. But the question is, how can you actually deliver on these really long term results in the near term? Well, you can't, and so traction. So how do you show traction? We show it through social proof. You don't have material proof, but you can, you can deliver social proof. Measuring impact, though, is still difficult, correct, totally. But you have to essentially build the kind of network and ecosystem and like and support that's going to finance your runways. I mean, this isn't at one point in time. The title of this paper was about it included the term entrepreneurial runways. The reviewers ultimately stripped it out because for us, like that was, that was what was happening. Was this, you know, the challenge of managing the cash flow as you were under delivering on these really grand promises. Brad 37:11 That's really interesting. And so I'm thinking about the hype. I'm thinking about the way that you explain it. Though the timelines had to be explained properly, too, right? So the timeline at the early stage, obviously, you're never going to do everything right, but to at least set expectations for, Hey, folks, this isn't a two year play. This is a 20 year play or whatever that worked, I think would be critically important, Matthew Grimes 37:36 yeah. And in some ways, you have to get, you have to get people to buy into an abstract, long term, long term vision, and that requires, I think, a willingness to, sort of, you know, sustain commitment, even though, even though it looks like there's no tangible results, and then, you know, coming, coming through, right? But, Brad 37:55 I mean, I see the Gates Foundation doing that, when you kind of look at some of the projects that they fund, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I think this is, this is interesting, because I do, when you first said it, I'm thinking hype equals fad, yeah. And that's, that's the dangerous part, but it's, it's, it's more this vision part. And how do you actually fund a vision where you can't show results, or at least positive results, in the shortage Jeff York 38:16 more into what you mean by social proof? Because I don't trust something everybody listening to this is gonna be like, Oh yeah, I know exactly what he Matthew Grimes 38:22 means by what he means by that. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, you know, there's ways that we talk about this in practice, like, you know, well, you need to go out and build social proof, right? And what does that mean? Well, it means that you're, you're showing the letters of intent that you've generated through potential customer sales, right? Or you're showing that other investors are interested in Jeff York 38:42 validating interest, yeah, building the chain of belief as well, yeah? Matthew Grimes 38:45 Or you're, you've got the right advisors or board of directors in play, right? And so if you can build the ecosystem around what you're trying to do, that matters, and what we actually show, for instance, like the way that London approached this, they do wrong. So they actually, they actually connected in, like in the very beginning, they were given space in the London Stock Exchange building. They had the Prime Minister helping to launch the launch, the the main event around it. And so really cranking Exactly. So it was, it came out of the gate, just right away, strong early alliances, exactly. But in a way, that was all about the celebrity associated with social proof, right? Like, look at Theranos, for example. I mean, it's hard to talk about hype these days without talking about about the Theranos case, to not bring it up. But yeah, it's hard. It's yeah, I mean, but that's because it's just such a good example of exactly what we're talking about, which I mean, if you look at, for instance, the board of directors at is probably, yeah, is probably the most prominent board of directors of all time for a startup. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, it was unbelievable. And yet, when you show when you just look at the picture of all of the people on that board, and you show that to students, it's almost embarrassing, right? I mean, it's all these old white men that know absolutely nothing about the technology or the science. And so I think celebrity can buy you some degree of temporary social proof, but it can be fleeting. Yeah? Dangerous? Well, yeah. Brad 40:26 I mean, Theranos was fraudsters too, right there. Well, fire Jeff York 40:29 festivals and other, oh yeah, Ja Rule, whatever, it's gonna be fine. Yeah? So it's so interesting, and it's like in the world of like social media hype is, I mean, it's an art form. It's what influencers are paid to do, yeah, to generate hype around products, yeah? And I think, I think we're celebrity, the more, the better, the more celebrity like we can get. You know, Kim Kardashian to drink grandma Jay, strawberry rhubarb pie, sour ale. Matthew Grimes 41:00 Yeah? Brad 41:00 I mean, Matthew Grimes 41:02 technology has this unbelievable amplification effect and speed of amplification, yeah, that's right. And so it's, it's really been for the process of hype. I mean, it is, it's just explosive. Jeff York 41:17 I mean, so it's so hard as I think, like, as we think about like an entrepreneur, a new entrepreneur. It's so easy to buy into hype. It's like the London Stock Exchange is going to let us on. Well, of course, we're going to do that. The Prime Minister wants to go. Of course. You know, John rule wants to be on. All right, great. George Shultz will be on our board. Okay? It seems like it's almost could be a distraction, right? Of like, I'm doing this thing and it's building height and heightening the expectations, but I think you raise a really great point, and perhaps this is a, I don't have the sound effect, right, but perhaps it's an actual insight that, like, actually like focusing on, and you'll probably articulate this much better. And I will, Matthew, but I'll try, like, focusing on the celebrity aspect of hyping your product, rather than the authenticity legitimacy, like actual, possibly emerging. You know, I mean, it's like, it's so easy to build that buzz instead of actually working on getting the product to market. Matthew Grimes 42:25 Yeah, a lot easier. It's true. I mean, well, you can spend all your time trying to, trying to learn about the, you know, the various kinds of algorithms, and optimizing your messaging around those algorithms. I mean, that can be hard work in itself, right? So actually creating hype, right? It can be challenging. And a lot of a lot of organizations you know are desperately trying to figure out how to Jeff York 42:48 messaging stand out, like, actually, I mean, it's almost impossible. I mean, it's very difficult, Matthew Grimes 42:52 yeah, but it can. It can be a huge, a huge distraction, if, if you don't have your fundamentals in place, and if you're not thinking critically about the sort of broader interdependencies and and systems that you're trying to generate, particularly in nascent markets, where you're having to build the legitimacy of the market, right, and so and so Hype. Hype is not just legitimacy. That's Hype. Hype is fleeting. Legitimacy is is there's a there's a permanence and a stability to it, and so, but the the key is figuring out how you actually, as you generate this kind of precarious resource that is hype, how do you not fall off that cliff, and how's it actually turn it into Right? Like, how do we legitimacy? Jeff York 43:35 How do we take this hype and then transform it into actual reality, right? So, how do the people that do it, you talked about building an ecosystem, say a little more about that, like Matthew Grimes 43:44 so for instance, like with the with the the Toronto exchange, right? The contrast here was pretty stark between London, for instance, and the way that Toronto approached it, right. So what Toronto did was they, for instance, looked at a partnership with the B Lab, right? So this is the organization behind B Corporation and the B impact assessment. So, so again, we come back to fundamentals. One of the really hard things about impact investing is what it's about, measuring, measuring impact actually? Yeah, how can you actually figure out how to how to measure what social or environmental impact looks like, maybe environmental impact is possibly a little little easier to quantify, but actually, you know, measuring social impact extremely difficult, and so a lot of the these in in London and the way that Singapore approached this very different to the way that Toronto said, Well, we're going to partner with the people who are, you know, serious about building expertise around measuring impact and assessing that impact. And so those kinds of systems of support, and it was local and global, right? So what they were doing was building out lots of credibility with local stakeholders. Embedding in those networks, even as they also connected in with these prominent experts in the global market, like B Lab. So Jeff York 45:09 what I'm hearing from what you're saying is like to actually properly take advantage of Hope hype. Obama did a pretty good job, right? Matthew Grimes 45:22 So you laugh at that. But like, I mean, I was giving this talk at Boston College, and one of the folks in the audience was like, Well, how are hype and hope related, right? Because, because there's a recent paper in ASQ that looks precisely at Hope cultures, like cultures of hope, published by the person who asked me this question cite Jeff York 45:43 their paper. I Matthew Grimes 45:44 believe I did, because I think there is an interesting connection between hope and hype. Yeah, Jeff York 45:51 well, because hype is, I mean, it's building the hope that this positive future is going to be real. That's right. So for, like, individual entrepreneurs there and find themselves in emerging market in, like a hype cycle. And, you know, I mean, I think it's hard for us to, I mean, maybe, maybe you disagree. I mean, I think it's hard to advise someone that jumps into like a market because of the hype, it's just, oh yeah, it was what we see our students doing all the time. Well. I Matthew Grimes 46:14 mean, let's, let's be honest. Like, it's what, it's what we as academics do as well, of course, right? Like, I mean, when you see a special issue emerge, like, Okay, so there's a new special issue in AMR coming out, and Jeff York 46:26 we're special people. How do you know if you're a special person? How did you have to ask you're not Matthew Grimes 46:36 so I mean, this, this special issues on AI, and how many papers do you think are being going to be submitted to God, yeah, it's gonna be 300 Yeah, the the most submissions, probably, of any special issue ever, right? So we're editors, so let's, let's not deceive ourselves that like this is just that hype. Is only something that our students follow, right? This is something I think we all professionally are thinking about, and is that the wrong approach to to follow the hype. What was Brad 47:01 your surprise in doing this research was there was there a finding that really surprised you? Matthew Grimes 47:05 I think the surprising thing is that that the right response to this is not either just completely embrace the hype, grow your market to the point at which you are able to you know your market share, you're able to capture rents from the system and then drive down, drive down prices, and then create efficiencies of scale, right? I mean, because that's one model, right is to is to use hype to just grow, grow, grow, before you actually look at your fundamentals. But at the same time, it's also not the lessons, not the opposite, to just run away from hype, because hype is just deception. It's just a lie, and it's just noise in the system. So you need to avoid it, right? It's both of these things, right? And so, so even just the fundamental, that fundamental nature of hype, and recognizing it as both resource and liability, and seeing that the way, the way in which you navigate that actually matters to your longevity. That was surprising to me. I'm not sure, I'm not sure why, but I think maybe it's because, because the again, I came out of that model where I saw hype always as this kind of faddish tendency. It was like part of the part of the cycle, the hype cycle, where you're always going to see a collapse anytime there's hype, I think that this is, for instance, if you Google artificial intelligence now, you know what's the likelihood that the article is going to mention the word hype pretty high right now. So is that an indication that everything that is happening around artificial intelligence now is just noise in the system. It's just, it's over promises. I mean, some, some will argue that, yes, in fact, that that is what we're dealing with. But I think there's a lot of people out there that that see this as as, again, like a technology and innovation, a growing ecosystem that is ultimately going to deliver and live up to that hype, Jeff York 49:04 or well beyond, in ways. I think the other thing is all the unexpected externalities, both positive and negative, for sure. I mean, you know, we all, we all were around during the.com boom, and, you know, I'm sure we remember how the Internet was going to solve all, oh yeah, all the world's problems and and indeed, he did solve many problems, but also created all sorts of problems that no one ever I mean, I don't remember anyone ever talking about. You know, this could have a really negative effect on people's mental Brad 49:36 health. Important part to focus on. Also, though fundamentals matter, right? You still need to execute. You still need to build gold standard, whatever you're building, yeah, and you need to be in touch with your customers, and, sorry, build Matthew Grimes 49:48 the relationships around everything, and look at the hard problem and solve that, right? So when I teach on hype, one of the things i i show you, know, I show an illustration of you. A monkey on a pedestal, and the monkey is reciting Shakespeare. And I, and I asked, Are you familiar with this before? Okay, so, you know, and you ask them like, which would you do first, if you were, if you were trying to, you know, build this business that's based around a monkey who can recite Shakespeare on top of the pedestal. Would you build a pedestal first? Or would you, or would you train the monkey to recite Shakespeare? And usually, like, I'll get half a room that will say, I build, I build the pedestal. The other half of the room will say, I try to train the monkey. And so you ask, like, Well, why? Why would you build the pedestal first? And he's like, Well, that's the easy thing to do, so you can show momentum, right? Right? But ultimately, if, if right, solving we know, we know you can build a pedestal, right? That's what we don't know, is whether you can train the monkey, right. And so solving that really hard problem and showing progress, showing proof, showing evidence, actually matters. Brad 50:57 There's our actual insight. You got your bow or I Jeff York 51:01 don't, I think we might abandon the bell this. I have enough confidence our listeners that they'll know an actionable Brad 51:07 I think that was that, though that was really amazing. I Jeff York 51:10 really that was very well. Said. Anything you want to add about the paper? We haven't talked about Matthew. I think we've kind of captured the actual insights from it. It sounds awesome. Yeah, yeah. Matthew Grimes 51:19 I'm excited to have it out there. It seems like the field is starting around it starting, you know, at some point in time I'm gonna write, I'm gonna write a book, I'm gonna write a book, and the title is Jeff York 51:30 gonna be hype. I hope you do the papers living up to the hype. How new ventures manage the resource and liability of future, oriented visions within the nascent market of impact investing, Brad 51:43 take a breath to actually get through that. Jeff York 51:45 I still Matthew Grimes 51:47 think it's better than bam bam, Rubble, Rubble, Jeff York 51:49 that's a pretty bad title, although I gotta say I do want to comment a little bit on bam bam, Rubble, Rubble. I would have said at the beginning of the podcast that grandma J strawberry rhubarb pie was my favorite. Bam, bam, Rubble, Rubble. As it warms, it's getting like, the flavors kind of blending together. Yeah, Matthew Grimes 52:05 I really enjoyed it. Yeah. I finished it off. Jeff York 52:08 I finished I finished off grandma's room. No, there's Brad 52:10 some more overhead. Jeff York 52:12 We'll be all right. Well, thank you for joining us once again. I'm Jeff York, your host, joined by I'm Brad 52:18 Brad Werner, and this Matthew, this was great. And of Jeff York 52:21 course, we were joined by Matthew Grimes, Professor of Entrepreneurship and sustainable futures at Cambridge University. Thanks so much for joining us, Matthew, Matthew Grimes 52:29 thanks for having me. Oh, I should also mention that I'm the co, co sponsor of gurk. Gurk, Jeff York 52:35 Dirk, go. Gurk, official beer of gurk, strawberry rhubarb. Putt. I don't think it will be. We'll find out. No, stay tuned to the next episode. Find out if strawberry grandma J's strawberry rhubarb, but actually is the official beer of ger car. Something displaces. All right, see you soon. Okay. Cheers. Dona L 52:57 This episode of creative distillation was recorded on location in Jeff's ranch above Boulder, Colorado. Matthew Grimes paper, living up to the hype how new ventures manage the resource and liability of future oriented visions within the nascent market of impact investing, was published in June 2022 in the Academy of Management Journal. Check the show notes for a link. Learn more about Matthew Grimes on his faculty page at the Cambridge Judge Business School website. We'd Dona L 53:28 love to hear your feedback and ideas. Email us at cdpodcast@colorado.edu and please be sure to Subscribe to Creative distillation. Wherever you get your podcasts, the creative distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the ��'s Leeds School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu that's D, E, M, I, N, G, and click the creative distillation link. Creative distillation is produced by Joel Davis at analog digital arts. Our theme music is whiskey before breakfast, performed by your humble host, Brad and Jeff, thanks for listening. We'll see you back here next week for the next round of creative distillation. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 61: Thomas J. Dean (CSU) on Selling Out vs. Selling In

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 61: Thomas J. Dean (CSU) on Selling Out vs. Selling In Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/07/2024 - 00:00

Stefani H 0:07
Welcome to another episode of creative distillation. Your hosts Jeff and Brad from the University of Colorado boulders lead School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. Previously on creative distillation, Brad and Jeff took a drive up to Fort Collins to speak with Katie Wallace, head of environmental, social and governance at New Belgium Brewing. They discuss the history and impact of this historic microbrewery while sampling some of their fine brews, including the updated recipe for the iconic Fat Tire ale. They were joined by Thomas J. Dean, Timberg business for a better world university professor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who's a big fan and friend of New Belgium, as well as our guest for this episode. Katie stays with us for a little bit for a fascinating discussion about selling out versus selling in something New Belgium knows a lot about it's also the topic of Toms paper, last battles Trojan horses, open gates, and wars one how entrepreneurial firms co create structures to expand and infuse their sustainability missions in the acquisition process. Enjoy and cheers.

Thomas J. Dean 1:33
Welcome where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. I am your host, Jeff York, research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the elite School of Business at the ��. I'm joined by my co host. Okay,

Brad 1:50
Jeff, it's Brad. This is awesome. Katie's Papin corks times duck. This is like, you know, I wasn't in the best spirits coming up here today. And like you guys are awesome. We just locked the door and keep this team we

Thomas J. Dean 2:08
are here to do that.

Katie Wallace 2:09
Electronics on that one.

Thomas J. Dean 2:11
Oh, are we doing okay for you, sir. All right.

Brad 2:15
George, get a glass though. We got okay. And then guess

Thomas J. Dean 2:20
producer George today?

Brad 2:21
What the hell was that?

Katie Wallace 2:24
Well, it's technically called that's that. Sounded like that too. Right? We have this. In addition to some of these beers that we make at a larger scale. We have the largest food or forest we call it but food or cellar would cellar for beer and North America. And so our team is able to brew all kinds of fun stuff. And it's a little bit more like artistry, right? Like blending wines might be because it's a sourdough of beer we say.

Thomas J. Dean 2:55
And it is it is a lavender sour ale. Is that correct?

Katie Wallace 3:00
This is a sour Saison Oh, yeah, well, oil that

Brad 3:05
I don't believe erupt. Because this is a new episode. I'd like to reintroduce you.

Thomas J. Dean 3:09
Oh, cool. Yeah, we should do that at some point. Folks, we

Brad 3:13
are here with Katie Wallace, the lead ESG person at New Belgium Brewing and we are also here a time Dean, Local of the bar.

Thomas J. Dean 3:25
fairy story is Yeah, but actually, Tom is the timber business for a better world university professor at the Colorado State University. And we are still at New Belgium Brewing in lovely Fort Collins, Colorado. Katie is generously provisioned us for the second half of this podcast. If you didn't listen, the first half rewind, go back, listen to it. And then you know, give it a five star review. Why not? I mean, you know, you've got nothing better to do. You might as well do that. And we are trying several beers right now. Okay, I'm I have to set aside my I have the holiday ale of the 1554. And now I'm trying that's that. That's

that's that's that. That's that. Here's today. Cheers. Cheers.

That's uh oh, wow. That's awesome.

Katie Wallace 4:12
This is why I never get tired of our beers here.

Thomas J. Dean 4:16
We at CSU we had a student named my mood. And my mood was from Afghanistan. Right. And they were working on importing saffron from Afghanistan to help the local tribal, economic development. Right. And the first I think their first sale was to New Belgium, really New Belgium did a saffron beer awesome. Based on the beer that was important. That is so from my mood. And my mood was later stuck in the whole mess in Afghanistan. And the program at CSU helped him get out to some of the contexts in our program. That's amazing. Yeah, that's a great story.

Brad 4:55
Katie, what are we drinking? What is that? It reminds me a little bit about champagne, right? I mean with the way the top came off, but also what was exciting. The party the flavor profile, though. Um,

Katie Wallace 5:06
so this is when I, I would love to speak to this, but I didn't even see it until today and so, so I can't tell you as much but I can usually

Brad 5:15
you can read the bottle. Yes, I can.

Katie Wallace 5:18
I can tell you. along the western slopes of Colorado, the aromatic lavender varietals royal velvet thrives. This fragrance has a honeyed herbal signature that harmonizes perfectly with the peppery citrus notes of our wet aged sour Saison. Yeah,

Thomas J. Dean 5:32
so Jeff, what is this sign is like a rustic Farmhouse Ale brewed in Belgium and they're generally not as strong as say a strong golden ale like a Duval or something like that. Or, and then the Belgian beers, you know, I mean, the traditional Belgian beers, you have the strong golden ale and then you have like, triple which is stronger yet the tradition of candy sugar, and that's white candy sugar, and then the doodles are not as strong but they're made with brown candy sugar, say sounds are made with like a yeast that generates this, people will talk about as horse blanket. Does it sound like the most appealing thing, but it's this kind of wild farmy aroma, as well as what Katie mentioned, the black pepper refinish. And I think this one with like the the lavender brood is I mean, it's just fantastic. Normally,

Brad 6:19
I will stay far away from everything. Because it's just yeah, it's just not my style. But this is actually pretty good.

Thomas J. Dean 6:27
I like it a lot. It

Brad 6:29
feels like a celebratory drink.

Thomas J. Dean 6:30
Well, we are still cast. Yeah. So and we're also celebrating the publication of Tom's paper. All right. So production. Tom, I talked about a little bit but Brad doesn't know about our relationship, Tom. So I met Tom when I was an MBA student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. And there was me and I think maybe three other people that signed up for the sustainability class. It was early days. Yeah, there was like three of us and there was Tom. And he's like, Yeah, we're gonna do some study. And it was Halloween. And I remember we had a case of beer and you know me at Halloween, Brad. I had a Halloween mask. I managed to terrify a bunch of people by coming out. I think Tom had gone to bed or at least gone away from us at that point. But I wouldn't be doing this without Tom's mentorship over

the Yeah, took me taking because I had started kayaking in Tennessee, right. So Jeff's like, Oh, you're your kayak or I'm like, Yeah, I'm kind of a kayaker. But he was a really good kayaker. So he's like, God will come with me. We'll go down Pigeon River. So we go down Pigeon River. And then afterwards, he says, I know this place. And we go off in some back road in North Carolina and go to this basically walk down into a trailer and they're like, well, he went through special stuff, or do you want the normal? And there might have been a little bit moonshine in there.

Yeah, Fort marks that there was a trailer down a dirt road. And there was a red light out by the road at the red light was on you could come up the driveway and go at the red light was off. You just were supposed to drive by and obviously get a permit, because they did have a letter from the governor of Tennessee from like two, two governors before the colonel and I said, this is a fun establishment. And my favorite quote from footmarks ever I took my mom there, and they would do the same. They take Marschner cherries, and they soak them in moonshine. And we were we were drinking cherry Cokes. I just love these cherry cokes that she needed some help leave anyway, Tom didn't write their

first moonshine ever had in my life, I believe.

So Tom really introduced me to like a life's academic. He talked to me about being a professor. I said, it sounds awful. Something dirty like that. And then he went Capital One. And the Capital One said, Oh my god, this is really terrible. I started thinking about that. And you've you've helped me and been a great mentor to me, Tom, I really appreciate that to know that Tom is one of the first people that you know, the reason I the reason I met Tom unlike was because he was like one of I mean different at the time. There are two people I think in the world you and Andy Larsen navy. Yeah, that's right, that were well in America, there were probably a few people in Europe true. Writing about the idea that entrepreneurship and sustainability could be related in some way other than entrepreneurship causing environmental degradation. So you really blazed a trail in that area and the people we're going to talk about today, so it continues down that

I gotta give a shout out to North Korea, and that's true. Yeah, we

gotta get north north on the podcast. Oh, my God.

Brad 9:42
one more shout out though time is also known Katie for quite well. Yes. So tell us about how you two have become acquainted.

Thomas J. Dean 9:50
Well, MCC has a great relationship with New Belgium they help us out all the time and they called your business especially in New Belgium with gender VA for I was on a board with the case Center at in the impact of VA, at CSU. And then over the time, I also get to know Katie and I said seven years, but maybe it was 15. I don't

Katie Wallace 10:12
know, somewhere way back there. And I was just the tour jockey, talking to your students about sustainability and brewing. Way back. That's

Thomas J. Dean 10:19
awesome. Yeah. So every once awhile, I'll call Katie. And oh, can I bring some students over you? Can you tell them all the sustainability stuff? Having a new building? So

Katie Wallace 10:27
Professor, bring people to the brewery? Yeah,

Thomas J. Dean 10:30
you get extra straw bale house.

for that? Sorry, I have to mention this. One of the core values of New Belgium has always been have fun. Yeah. So we'll bring the students in. They have a spiral slide. Yeah. So then I have a whole class of students going down this. And that's worth extra bonus points, too. Yeah.

It really changes their idea of what business can mean. I mean, you did that in our class, like, I mean, I was doing my MBA, because I'd been running a whitewater rafting company and not making any money. And I was just like, Man, why don't we make any money and like, I didn't understand margin or anything like that. But then like your class really was eye opening. It's like, wow, that did that business could actually do something good. Like, not just benefit the people running it. I mean, it's a really, it's a big time. Now. It's kind of like we're all sitting here in this amazing place is a shining example, in my opinion of business doing good as well as doing well. But we didn't have those examples back then.

Yeah. Oh, no, we didn't. And now we do. And certainly when I was growing up, it all looks kind of bad, because it's sort of post Vietnam and all this talk of the military, industrial, complex and environmental, you know, all the environmental problems, and the Cuyahoga River catching on fire, like, there was no examples of business for good.

Brad 11:52
Yeah. And I actually think he talked about Milton Friedman, and about just direct shareholder returns. But now I when I put that through ks lens, shareholder returns is not just money. Right, right. And that's, I think that's the new

Katie Wallace 12:06
I was in New York last week at investor meetings having to answer questions about how we impact society and the environment and what risk that provides. And

Brad 12:14
what a return really means. What is the true return?

Thomas J. Dean 12:16
There's also a time horizon, right? Think about like, I mean, as long as your shareholder returns means the next quarterly earnings report. And that's the numbers to make it make it look like we hit our prediction, regardless of whether we did or not, we all know, that's not creating long term value. That's

Brad 12:31
a waste of time for the executive team. It's a waste of time for employees, anyone even having to assemble that there's actually

Thomas J. Dean 12:37
really cool research now coming out a lot of it done by a wonderful professor at Ontario, Western Ontario named to ban it's all about like shareholder returns and long term ism and having a long term perspective, rather than a short term perspective. Both she and Carolyn flammer, who is not Columbia believed, Carolyn's awesome. They're doing some really cool stuff, where they empirically show using statistical evidence that a more long term perspective, not only boosts shareholder returns, and long term but actually increases employee retention, that actually, ironically, also helps you in your short term earnings. But you have to communicate about it is the catch, like, and that's what they find is that companies that actually communicate about it actually benefit from Oh, talking helps, really? Yeah, well, but any company, or companies, you've probably all been part of organizations, or it's like, well, we don't want to talk about like, you know, that like, you know, people won't be the market won't reward us for like saying we're doing a good thing. I think that's changing, or maybe it's always been that way, and we just didn't realize, well,

there's multiple drivers, right. So part of its the market, part of its impact investors, right? If your investors care, yeah, that's part of the solution

Brad 13:46
of investors, especially can also leaders need to lead, right? I mean, it's really important to have a vision and articulate your vision, and you need to be bold and in that as well. But you have to talk about it. Right.

Thomas J. Dean 13:58
And that's why it's great to be sitting here in New Belgium, where it sure they've actually done that.

You got it. Okay. So Tom, tell us about this paper. I seen this paper presented in Prague. I've seen this paper, I think was it. That was Munich. I can't remember. I know, I saw it somewhere in Europe. I saw it in New York City. I saw it for you. And Yolanda really presented this paper for a long time. It was it was a tough paper. Yeah.

For you guys. I was listening your last podcast with Ted Waldron. And you said that paper took 10 years? Yes. I

Jeff York 14:27
don't know that's 10 years competent?

Thomas J. Dean 14:31
Well, based on earlier drafts of this paper, perhaps over

your project, that's always amazed by it.

Brad 14:37
I mean, it really blows my

Thomas J. Dean 14:38
mind. It's been a long time, but it's so hard to get things published. So if you're a PhD student out there listening, it takes sometimes it just takes a long time. And you get rejections and sometimes you just write it wrong. And I have to credit also Gideon Markman. Gideon Martin was the editor ANP accepted this. Then he came back at us and he's The top editor, right? Yeah,

yeah. Gideon as an editor, that's a lot. Where's this? Tom?

Where's the theory here? And then I was just talking to him one day, he says it's like a Trojan horse. This is like a Trojan horse. Okay,

the selling out versus selling it? Yeah. And I'd say What are you selling out selling? So So what is the actual title?

So just some credit to Gideon, that that moment was the impetus for me figuring out how we could frame this in a way that was interesting theoretically, and had was clear to see from practical and the papers in

Academy management perspectives will have a link to it in the in the podcast. So now

I'm gonna back up. It started from actually Yolanda started this and Don, the team was actually on it at the start. And Yolanda kind of came to me and say, we're working on this, please like, that's really interesting. And the question is, what happens if you're a social or sustainable venture, and you get acquired, and then there was all these stories, like, if you look at the body shop story, Body Shop was Anita Roddick was the founder. But they didn't know animal cruelty. They basically one of the early sustainable business. There are bought led by L'Oreal. And Anita Roddick was pilloried in the press for selling out. This is a terrible thing. And turns out is probably an example of what we would call loss battles where a lot of their really strong orientations to social and environmental sustainability were questionable in the long term. And so this assumption, and then you hear stuff like oh, well, who bought Burt's Bees? Right? Well, it's Clorox. No. Oh, yeah. And, and if you're a Burt's Bees customer don't sleep very well.

It's, it's fine. They don't put Clorox underneath. No, no more. Very politician. Like they don't put clocks any any more anymore. So

Yolanda approached me and Dawn was at at the at the time, and then

I wanted to Saracen your Ilana saris as a co author on this paper co

author at Colorado State University. We worked on it for years. And it was really hard to get published, because it is not really an empirical paper, right? And it's also not really a theoretical, because

you're I remember the paper, you're like you're giving examples. And I mean, so let's distill it down. Like what would you say is the actual insights on paper, like what

the actual mean, is selling a social sustainable enterprise is not necessarily selling out?

Yeah, it can actually have positive implications for the equity acquiring company, as well as the acquiree. And perhaps maybe even magnify their impact, because you know, the impact of a Coca Cola versus a tiny startup. So

just at the start, you think about, companies reach a stage where if they don't have capital, if they don't have shelf space, if they don't have access to resources, they can't grow, especially in retail, not only might they not grow, they might fail, right, like you can be the market leader as a medium sized business. Right? And then have a fact second come in and kick you out of there. Yeah. So there's, there may even be a competitive imperative where they have to choice even if you take that venture, which is has some sustainable practices are right. And then you double its revenues, triples revenues, using the resources require having you doubled or triple the impact, assuming you came in maintain. Yeah, there is

Brad 18:49
there a tangential impact to with when a company a Clorox sees this, and they say wait a second, these practices actually work that we're not sacrificing eggs return, right. That's

Thomas J. Dean 19:01
probably essentially the idea of open gates. So last battles, Trojan horses, and open gates. And so at some point in this natural organic product industry, the company started realizing there was something there they wanted. They're not just buying sales, right? They're not just buying margin, they're buying something different that these companies are doing that they want to learn how to do. Right? And so rather than what you would normally assume here is right, that it would be selling out that you go into a large company, and that all that social sustainable stuff just is gonna go away, right? And that's normally what institutional isomorphism inertia momentum of organizations bureaucracies, is going to wipe all that stuff out after we're not saying that doesn't happen, because that happens. But there's also another side of the story doesn't always happen. And from an entrepreneurs perspective, there's the potential to rather than sell out To sell in, magnify your impact through growth, and even impact your acquiring firm in a way that you sell in

Brad 20:09
order. That's why we're faced with that decision, though, when you have three potential buyers. Yeah. What's your process?

Thomas J. Dean 20:16
You better figure out which ones actually aligning with your culture.

Brad 20:20
I mean, if Justin's peanut butter and Hormel I mean, what an example, right? Let's take this really healthy peanut butter, and we're going spam.

Thomas J. Dean 20:33
We didn't look, we didn't look closely at Justin right. After that, well, but we looked at some other. I mean, you look at a similar case, if you look at Burt's Bees, and Clorox, Clorox, in 2013 did a centennial strategy, where they said, where are our growth markets? And one of them was kind of around this issue of sustainability, health and wellness. And so they bought intentionally, because they wanted to create a new strategy. Right? And that's why it was an open gate. Yeah, right. Interesting.

Okay, cool. So, so we talked about last battles, that's pretty clear. And we talked about Trojan horses like so. We've talked about open gates. That's interesting. So sometimes, an acquiring firm is actually has pretty good intent here. Like, yes, of course, they're trying to acquire birds for us, because it's a brand that's gained a certain amount of volume. It looks like it's profitable. It's not a problem to have. But actually, we want to learn from it.

Brad 21:27
Karen, in this specific case in time, you would you would know, Karen's values were 100% aligned with the business here. I mean, we're as much as they could be. Yeah. As an acquirer. Is that luck? I mean, did they work? Did they never did they get lucky? Or tell me what you saw in the

Thomas J. Dean 21:45
cases? I think they chose well, I mean, she she just said that here. Like we had lots of suitors. But they were they would have all been lost battles. Except for one. Yes. One we went with. So they chose wars one is the kind of the next level. Yeah,

that's like very cool. Like kind of matrix going on here. I like this. This is you teach this in class? I'm curious. I do. So this would work. Well, in the class, this article

was really special to me, because I literally have people coming up at conferences and telling me, I use that article in class. And I love that article. I'm like, How do you even know about that article? It

was before it was? No, no, this is after laughter. I mean, how they know why would they? You know, I think a lot of times we publish these things, and nobody, you know, like, somebody comes up to you like a year later, I read your paper, you're like, Wow, really?

Well, they say that use in class, and I use it in class.

I think company can use this too. And I'm very approachable. I use it at

the end of the class in my students say to me, oftentimes, they're like, this is the article that brought it all together. That's cool. I kind of get it now. And because of the because of the structuration aspect of it, so the structure so so the the wars one refers to that over time, the natural organic products, entrepreneurs and other associated people built a new institutional structure. Okay. A bunch of them, including, but the most one we talked about is B Corporations. Yeah. And benefit corporations. Right. So

voluntary certifications or some other institution that creates a tangible right to crack these positive business practices. Yes. Not just saying we do something, right. This is actually I mean, Katie actually talks about this quite a lot. Right. The B Corp certification mattered a cure. Yes. They probably wouldn't have been interested in well, I'm cheating. But I'm conjecturing. Maybe they wouldn't have been as interested or giving them such a price out

Brad 23:46
all these it, but it certainly provided value for the business.

Thomas J. Dean 23:49
Just imagine that like imagine you create a business. And you got people that drive forklifts do a hard damn job, don't have like advanced education, but are doing the best they can provide their community, their family and their work, get this beer company and they believe in it. And then one day, all of a sudden, they realize they have more money than they ever possibly could hope to have that ever because these people stuck with us. I think you want to cry. Yeah, this is great. How it works. It's pretty amazing. That's cool. Anyway, I'm sorry. It's a side job. That's great. I mean, to me, that's a war.

So the whole wars one really the whole industry, changing the whole industry. If you look at Ben and Jerry's people were really upset. Oh, you didn't know we know today that Ben and Jerry's under the guidance of Unilever is probably still one still has strong social and sustainable aspects. Right. And

thankfully, MC fish food ice cream and they make fish food which

is hard not to love. It me.

I mean, yeah, it's got Phish's picture on

that too. Yeah. So Ben and Jerry's is bought by Unilever. People are upset right this is they had to sell out because maximizing shareholder value. So the board, the highest offer was from Unilever. Right? And so the board felt we have to take it because that's our fiduciary responsibility. The

board's not that we gotta be clear about this because a lot of times our students think like, managers have a fiduciary responsibility to always make the short term wealth maximizing choice for shareholders. And that is not correct. There's a great book called the shareholder myth by Lynn Stroud, a Cornell Professor really good book that explains that is a misunderstanding. Now, the board made that decision. They didn't have to make that decision. But they did. That doesn't mean the board can't make a decision to have a company acquired against the CEO or founders. To be clear, that is what happened here. But this is often used as justification for things that are not necessarily going to get them now. Now, if they made some crazy decision, like, hey, from now on, we're not going to sell ice cream, we're going to sell recycled tires. Yes. Now you have a fiduciary responsibility. You are making irresponsible goofy decisions.

Brad 26:10
Tesla buying SolarCity? Yes, yeah.

Jeff York 26:13
So say more about that. Right?

Brad 26:15
Well, I mean, so the the point is, is that common perception of what you see what's going on and acquisitions, there's a lot more nuance that happens there. Right? That's right. And it's just not as simple as saying, Here's three on our board, drawing board, when we pick these guys like that, it doesn't work like that. So

Thomas J. Dean 26:35
sorry, a rookie, I just I tell him I have so many times. And all these, my MBA students are like, well, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders that we have to make the wealth maximizing choice no matter what. And then the question is always a wealth maximizing over what time horizon?

Brad 26:52
That's right. And I've hired 100 managers, and we've never had a shareholder maximization, fiduciary conversation ever.

Thomas J. Dean 27:01
Well, I have worked at a company that did and is disturbing.

There's strategic judgment involved, right? Yes. So you would have to prove that it was a poor strategic decision, which is very hard to prove, right? Well, on the other.

Board is, like, I think a lot of times people also are like, oh, yeah, no, it's fine. I had I own the majority shares and the VCs, like, yeah, I owe the majority of the board. Right. Well, good luck with everything. Enjoy your shares. We're gonna make you rich. Your company. That's right. And so I think it's a really important lesson. That's a whole nother podcast. Yeah, but I see that a lot. You ask a roomful of students, how do you keep control your company? Oh, I keep the majority of the shares. I'm like, no, no, you can't do that already.

Anyway, so yeah, sorry. I can talk more on that. But yeah, sure. So Ben, and Jerry's was sold that injury? I think if you look at most of them, they were pretty unhappy. Oh, yes. Whether they were technically forced, or they just thought they were forced to take is offer, they took the highest offer a lot of dissatisfaction out there. And long come the founders of B Lab, right. They had gone through a similar experience, where they build a sustainable, I think athletic apparel company, and sold it and everything was what all the social sustainable aspects were wiped out. And so that we have to change this. So all that was gestating in multiple parties, right? Like you've got the former entrepreneurs, you got all these other folks. And they go out and they build the lab, the lab creates two things, he creates certified B Corporation, and they create benefit corporation legislation, or they help it happen, right. And then, and then that changed everything, right? That was a fundamental structural, institutional, whatever we would call it change, that has changed the world in significant ways. Really, we can argue against it, whether it was needed, right?

It reminds me very much like the federal organic certification or the LEED certification, where you know, LEED certification is the worst green building certification, other than all the other ones that didn't make any difference whatsoever, right, that were very, very more rigid and less flexible. And it's like, I think a lot of times when we teach our students and when we talk about sustainability for business perspective, we think about this idea. I think the perfect is often the enemy of the good, yes. And then you and I probably go out, it has to be better. But it's like you got to make progress somehow in a way that's pragmatic and realistic. And I think that's what B Corp did. They gave you a lot of pathways to getting there. But I can assure you having many students that tried to VT companies, the B Corp certification is not given to you by any means it is it requires for us some rigorous things you have to do Fact, you know why my students I'm Michael conga have written papers about people that failed. And their attempt to get court certification and the psychological damage that did to them as founders, they thought they were really great, sustainable entrepreneurs and all of a sudden they're like, Oh, we kind of suck. That hurts me. So for so what else should we take away from this paper? Tom? I think I think I love the point of like, hey, this isn't so simple as black and white. There's there's different ways this happens. And I just love being here at New Belgium. I mean, besides back, they're giving us these lovely free beers. By the way I'm having to do with ale. That's what you had before. It's fantastic.

Brad 30:35
All I have to tell you drinking. I'm drinking the oak spire for roses collaboration.

Thomas J. Dean 30:41
I'm a bourbon barrel. I got to try the high. Yeah, I'm

loving this. Yeah. Is

it really good? Is Bourbon Barrel collaborations tend to be dangerous? Yeah. All right.

So you guys like what do you call them? Insights? What are the actionable insight, actionable insights I need to hear?

Hold on, let me get the sound effect up. Because I'm gonna have an actual insight, we got to have the official sound effect of it.

So if you're an entrepreneur, right, and you're building a business, and you have goals other than financial, and you care about your social sustainable mission, yes, right. Right. Yes. The first thing you should realize is you may actually be able to have bigger impact if you sell your company.

That's, so that's kind of crazy. I

Brad 31:28
said, Why don't you just say, Brad, I love that. But the word is May?

Thomas J. Dean 31:33
Yes. Yes, it may. Right. And if you think about Patagonia, that they decide not to do that. Yes, right. So I say me, but it's not necessarily a fait accompli that you're if you sell yourself out?

Brad 31:45
Yeah. And so it's customer education and stakeholder education as well is really important. It's back to the conversation needs to be open. Yes. But the knee jerk reaction is these guys sold out. They were great. They were great. Now they suck. Right? That's not accurate, either. Yeah.

Thomas J. Dean 32:01
So if as an observer, it's not really fair to just assume that it's more complex. That's right. Yeah,

can even be a bigger benefit than you would have had. If

Brad 32:08
you're right. I mean, right, multiplied.

Thomas J. Dean 32:10
So then the question is, if you are that if you are that entrepreneur or entrepreneurial team, and you want to accomplish that, how do you do that? Right. From what we learned, there's a number of ways to do that one we call governance for impact, which is getting your contract ways that you can ensure this is going to continue to future Ben and Jerry's has an independent board of directors, really, that board of directors went to battle with Unilever at some point. And the Ben and Jerry's board kind of won. So

Brad 32:41
what's going on with open AI? Boy,

Thomas J. Dean 32:42
you got me there?

Brad 32:45
Do you think that there's an independent board of directors for a benefits and there's CEO issues? I mean, this is just recently, so I don't I don't know the details. But there's something big going on in regards to exactly what you're talking about.

Thomas J. Dean 32:56
Yeah, this is amazing. This is good stuff. I mean, your paper is good. This oak spire Bourbon Barrel Ale,

you should definitely, yes. Good. Wow. You should definitely put a picture that on the way yeah,

that's terrible. Yeah, that's something Have you had that before? Jeff? No, it's kind of unique. I've never had anything quite so

the other way is, you need to prepare your company, right. So you need to say, you know, to get some sort of contract in writing at the time of acquisition, that could be an independent board of directors. It could be the CEOs, tenure with the company, Gary Hirshberg was CEO for life. I think CEO for life for yogurt. And then the other thing Steve do most from LightWave said, You need to bake it in sustainability, social impact, you need to be such a part of the brand that you would never sit you would be stupid. Destroying

by getting rid of it. Yeah, it'd

be destroying value by getting rid of fantastic. That's really cool. Let's let Katie talk about your paper and the transition. Absolutely. Because New Belgium sold a little line, of course, which is part of Kieran. So how was that transition? Were you able to you know, are you lost battle? Are you in a Trojan horse? Yeah, right. Were there open gates? I

Katie Wallace 34:18
do. Yes. It was a really fascinating experience. And there's definitely moments where the market was changing pretty quickly for craft beer. And we were in a situation where this was the best step forward, potentially, and a fiscal responsibility for our shareholders, which were people who worked here for decades and consider this their retirement. So there were some there were some loss battles that we evaluated as potential buyers throughout the process, pretty much. Most of everybody minus Karen, I would say here is more of an open gate. Yeah, there are leaders in this space too. It's been a part of who they are for a very long time. And, you know, we there is we do get to influence them a little bit and they influence us a little bit and it's been very reciprocal in that in that way. And and they they really came in and it was this question of like, do we like each other? What's the next step here and it was a dinner at Kim Jordan's house, where she told the story about the culture and why things mattered to her and talked about B Corp certification. And the Karen, people said, that's when we knew. So with that, you know, we got we had a really great proposition from those folks. And as far as like the share value, the share price goes as it relates to the broader hole and then propose that opportunity to our employee owners who voted very strongly in favor of it. It's awesome. So yeah, so I think that overall, we're more of an open gate supplemented maybe if I'm using the terminology well, like by wars one, because investors are and these broader systems for mandatory disclosures are also I think, you know, B Corp certification, like definitely been a big part of changing the landscape in a way that Kieran really wanted to be leaders on. They've been very involved in tcfd, 10 t and FD early adopter, as part of the initial beta team that was giving feedback on the initial frameworks and, and so in a way, it's been really cool to help us go see the bigger world that way. And, and they'd love to take learnings from how we've succeeded over the years here. And

Thomas J. Dean 36:10
you're very involved in advocacy to right, so actively trying to change the systems for better outcomes for all? Yes,

Katie Wallace 36:18
like, we have a government affairs position when one government affairs position at the entire company and it sits on our team, because about 90% of the political advocacy that we do is on the environmental and social front. We're members of business for innovative Climate and Energy Policy, out of Ceres. And, and they actually helped us to learn how to use a business case voice. And that really, like distinguish the difference between activism and advocacy, I see this as like more of a ecosystem of a movement, right, where we all play a different role. And you need the activist out there. Like, you know, we've talked earlier about the shame and how productive that is, it's productive, but only in one area, right? You don't want to all adopt that rhetoric. And we've we've seen ourselves, it's happened to us where we've been brushed off with the activist rhetoric because we joined them. And so now we come at it from like, you know, biodiversity, like coming in with a different voice and saying the same thing and wanting the same end, just like we can sit next to a professional skier and say, our business needs this. So we can employ people and buy barley and whatnot and protect our water sources. And a skier can say this matters to me because of skiing, right and have a lot of different reasons why we come to the same end, and, and help to get things like the inflation Reduction Act passed, or 100% renewable electricity commitments in our local utility here. I will do want to say like, I love this paper, I think that one when you are working for an impact driven business, there is an idea that selling is selling out Yeah, and there are so many examples of selling in and I love that there are many of them are highlighted in here. And I think that those examples really inspired us over the years to know what was possible in this way. And personally give me hope to like that those stories that we you know, read over the years that you mentioned in your in your paper. And and I love you it's very strategic and mechanical, there are things that you can do to help that turn out better at the end, right and studying those mechanisms. So that folks who want to preserve impact and leave a legacy are able to do that and a different more scaled up sphere is a really really cool handbook to have handy with you.

Thomas J. Dean 38:17
I love it. Draft the mind is a podcast.

I don't think he's ever achieved. Distillation. a businessperson loving well of our paper.

Brad 38:31
Oh, it's amazing. Amazing.

Thomas J. Dean 38:36
LIKE it if he read it at night,

so thank you so much again. Best podcast ever. Awesome. So the title. Okay, last battles, Trojan horses, open gates and wars. One, how entrepreneurial firms create structures to expand and infuse their sustainability missions and the acquisition process. It's really cool. Thanks a lot, Tom. Awesome. Have you on the podcast and honor really, I'm so glad to get you guys. There are two people that I really admire. I thought we'd get along well, and gosh, Katie was just amazing. The whole podcast. It was fabulous. Very, very important. And I think we should go enjoy an expired. So again, that's the paper look up. It's an Academy of Management perspectives. We'll have a link down below. Tom being joining us from Colorado State University. I am Jeff York, Research Director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business. We appreciate you joining us.

Brad 39:32
I'm Brad Warner. Jeff Tom, thank you very much, George. This has been a great day, George. Cheers to all of you

Thomas J. Dean 39:38
and I are honored to be here.

Awesome. Thank you guys. Thanks. Cheers.

Stefani H 39:44
We hope you enjoyed this episode of creative distillation recorded on location at New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado. Learn more and order merch at New belgium.com Learn more about Thomas G. A Dean on his faculty page at Colorado State University's College of Business. Find Thomas's paper in the Academy of Management Journal, check the show notes were link. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas email us at CD podcast@colorado.edu. And please be sure to Subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The creative distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado boulders lead School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu. That's D M. ing and click the creative distillation link. Creative distillation is produced by Joel Davis at analog digital arts. Our theme music is whiskey before breakfast performed by your humble hosts, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here for another episode of creative distillation.

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Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 60: Katie Wallace, Head of ESG, New Belgium Brewing

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 60: Katie Wallace, Head of ESG, New Belgium Brewing Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/22/2024 - 00:00

Stefani H 0:07
Welcome to another episode of creative distillation. Your hosts Jeff and Brad from the University of Colorado boulders lead School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. This time, Brad and Jeff take the show on the road and hour up I 25 to Fort Collins and the home of New Belgium Brewing one of the original Colorado craft brewers. There they speak with Katie Wallace, head of environmental, social and governance at New Belgium about the breweries incredible origin story, which begins in 1991 in a Fort Collins basement. They're also joined by Thomas J. Dean Timberg business for a better world university professor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He's a longtime fan and friend of New Belgium, as well as our featured guest for our next episode. This week's field research involves sampling three flavors from this iconic and impactful brewery, including the new recipe for their flagship that tire Ale, enjoy and cheers.

Jeff York 1:26
Welcome to Creative distillation where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. I am your host, Jeff York, from the LEED School of Business at the ��, also the Director for the Deming center. I gotta mention that because you know, our famous Deming wants to make sure we get that in there and the research director for the Deming Center, and I'm here as always with my fellow delegate,

Brad 1:49
breadwinner. Jeff, it is great to be with you today. As you know, I'm an entrepreneur, I work at the Dominguez center alongside you, but we have a really cool venue that we got this

Jeff York 1:57
is amazing. We have we are not only by far the largest, most successful brewery we've ever visited, it is perhaps the coolest place I've seen for someone to work it's pretty amazing. So we're definitely gonna have to talk to our guest about that. Because I'm just looking around and these people are like working in this cool area. They got snacks and like you know, they got a gym in the locker room and like yeah, slide they apparently they have free beer. So I'm liking the look of this. We are at New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado, also has a brewery out in Asheville, North Carolina, the pleasure of visiting last year, mountain bike trip out there also beautiful. And we have a couple of guests.

Brad 2:36
Yeah, so first of all, I'd like to introduce Katie Wallace. Katie is the lead ESG manager. Is that Is that correct? Katie? Yeah, head of ESG, head of ESG for New Belgium. Brewing, Katie, thank you for having us today. Yeah, Welcome to Creative distillation. I'm really interested about to hear about your job to hear about we have a couple of beers in front of us. And just the whole story.

Katie Wallace 2:57
Okay, cool. And

Jeff York 3:00
we also have joining us today the Timberg business for a Better World University Professor Thomas J. Dean,

Thomas J. Dean 3:08
Glad to be here,

Jeff York 3:09
as I call him, Thomas J.

Thomas J. Dean 3:12
You've never called me. Podcasts. He's Thomas J.

Brad 3:17
Wait, I love that title, though business for a better better world. That's awesome.

Jeff York 3:22
You get such a cool tool. Yeah,

Speaker 1 3:23
our entire college is based off the concept that business for a better world.

Brad 3:28
Really, you have any openings.

Jeff York 3:32
Tom is a Colorado State University, which I hope I mentioned that. And he is an alum of the lead school. I am indeed so and you know, so we thought what better gathering could we have than to come up here on a road trip up to Fort Collins, which is a lovely town. We boldly left boulder. Big deal. We didn't get off lane. This time though. We just drove for a while. And this This campus is amazing. I would highly recommend visiting here if you're in the area for sure. CSU campus is nice, too. I'm talking about the New Belgium campus actually. And I knew that Tom had written this paper that we're going to talk about in a little while about selling out or selling in. And it's about impact companies going through acquisition. Exactly, which is a paper that he and his colleague, Yolanda Saracen, another professor at Colorado State University had developed for a long time, and I saw many iterations and now it's published. And so we're going to talk about that. And we knew that coming here to New Belgium would be really interesting because you're Belgium was acquired in the recent past. So we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that in a little while, but first to the important things. Beer, obviously. So we have three beers sitting in front of us. What we got here, okay.

Katie Wallace 4:53
Well, today we have our classic Fat Tire, where we you know, the whole idea of New Belgium was born. In a bike seat we say and and Jeff Leibish, who was one of our founders, named his his first beer after his fat tired bicycle. This is a new recipe very controversial. Yeah, about a year ago.

Jeff York 5:15
There's a new recipe for fat. Yes, I know why.

Katie Wallace 5:18
Just Google new recipe for fat tire and all kinds of drama. But it's actually it's really, it's a really cool recipe right now. It's very similar to the initial recipe, and the Jeff made and many of the same attributes. But right now the it's a little bit lighter, easier to finish the whole idea of fat tire originally, I used to say when I was bartending in college back in the early 2000s, and pouring fat tires, that fat tire was the gateway to good beer. You know, people were drinking yellow beer at that time, and primarily, and fat tire was very sessionable. Yeah, so So then, you know, craft beer and palates have changed. People who are coming into the drinking age now no longer, you know, coming off of yellow beers, they were raised on sour beers, for example. And so so just, you know, the palates across the market are entirely different today. And and this is the 2023 version of the gateway to good beer.

Brad 6:17
That's really That's a great story. But Katie, how long have you been with the company

Katie Wallace 6:20
19 and a half years.

Brad 6:21
So you've seen before to after acquisition? Early days? Were you excited about the change of the recipe as a I don't want to say old timer, but as a certainly a long, a long term fan of fat tire? But what do you think

Katie Wallace 6:36
I have very mixed feelings, right? Like I'm sentimental. I have things I've saved throughout my whole life, right? And my grandmother's furniture in my house. And so So I, you know, this is I was very sentimental about it, because it's such a beautiful story that we are deeply connected with. But the reality is, the Amber's really haven't been growing, and it was dying on the vine a little bit. And so you're faced with a decision? Do you just let it die on the vine? Because that style is less popular? Or do you take such an iconic brand and bring it back into relevance in today's day and age. So I liked the idea of maintaining the relevance of the story with a lot of the similar attributes of the beer. Also, that tire for us. And in the sustainability world. It is our brand where we speak about our climate action, and it's a certified carbon neutral beer. And so selfishly, from the environmental impact space, I was happy that we get this chance to revive the brand that really speaks to all of our advocacy for addressing climate showing the business case. And for decarbonizing, do

Brad 7:35
you have like some cases of the old Fat Tire next to your grandma's couch.

Katie Wallace 7:40
I do have a bottle at my desk.

Jeff York 7:43
Let's try. Cheers, buddy. Hey, we managed not to spill up on the microphones good. Yeah, another first recursive distillation. It is lighter. Yeah. So I remember. I remember Fat Tire. I had went a long time, but it is the I mean, it's got to be the most popular Colorado bureau. Iconic. I mean, like is the first dominant craft beer of Colorado. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But

Katie Wallace 8:12
yeah, it really grew up and, and exploded in the early days. I think now for sure. Our video Ranger has surpassed it quite a bit.

Jeff York 8:22
A little brand at this point. I'm not sure if people even understand voodoo Ranger is part of New Belgium necessarily

Katie Wallace 8:28
known. Many people do not know that. Yeah, we can talk about that. But yeah, fat tire is you know, pretty iconic. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Tour de Fat also that comes through Fort Collins, but come back and in August and September, but yeah, we that's we have 30,000 people that come out of the community all in costume to ride bikes, in a parade through town and drink beer and listen to music. And so it's got a whole culture around it. I think it's not just the beer. That

Brad 8:56
was really cool that community. So you said a couple of things. Katie, though, that have gotten me thinking first of all, if we had tasted this beer directly to the old recipe, what's the difference? What What would we be tasting?

Katie Wallace 9:06
I think you'll have a lot of the same multi flavors are in there. As before I taste some familiarity I'm not sure if you all do as well from from the maltiness. But instead of ending with a more molasses note, you've got a crisper finish. And so, so that's the main difference on your description. I actually drink much more fat tire today than I did.

Jeff York 9:29
I would actually order this because I like I would say I'm not fat tar in yours because it had it's a fine beer. But it was it was sort of the quintessential American Amber, where it had this like lingering sweetness on the tail. That's almost to me coy. Like, I don't like that. That means bad. It just means I don't like it. This has a little bit more of a hot profile on the back end that like finishes real clean. Like you don't there's no that lingering ambery I Make Me Think a Killians read you guys remember that beer? Yeah. So which is not a good associate words are that Kathy Ireland? Not all these things all the college beers dating myself, man, this is delicious. It's lighter for sure it's crisper still has that toasted malt flavor that's always had. I think the Toasty like middle kind of comes through better without all the all the caramel malt. I think that's what's going on. I don't know, I'd obviously so

Brad 10:26
I love lagers. And I like it, in part because of the clean finish. This is actually going to go in my fridge. So I'm really I mean, I don't say that. I'm really happy we came here just because I never would have known that there was even a new recipe or anything associated with it. But it gets me even to a more serious question. And the one that will really resonate with me, you said certified carbon neutral. Yes. What the hell is that?

Katie Wallace 10:53
How long do you

Brad 10:55
episode? Yeah, that's, I mean, that's really cool. So I mean, beyond a new recipe and the process to correct Well, is

Jeff York 11:02
this carbon you speak?

Katie Wallace 11:06
This little thing. So we have, you know, been doing decarbonisation for a very long time. Back in the basement of Jeff and Kim's house. Jeff back in 1991. Jeff set up 10 Trash Can over the brew kettle to capture the steam the waste heat, and he put a coil pipe through it, and ran the incoming water for the next batch through the steam to preheat it and save energy. Basement brewery, right. Yeah, the very first batch as a Fat Tire were brewed that way. That's cool. So really, Jeff and him had a really deep passion for what we now call human powered business. The values that that explain that were really similar to the ones that Jeff and Kim wrote before they sold their first bottle of beer in 1991. And they were brewing on this system in their basement. So in 1999, we our co workers are who are employee owners voted to give up profit sharing that year. So they could bring wind power to Fort Collins, and and we became the first wind powered brewery at that point in time. And so it's been a fun, a fun, fun time. We did the first carbon footprint study for beer back in 2008. And the whole world and have been really involved in the business efforts towards you know, being able to measure it, make solid claims and can convince our policymakers of the business case for more investments.

Brad 12:25
I love it. I love it. Like so is all your beer brewed here? No, not

Katie Wallace 12:29
today any longer. So we have the Asheville brewery with Mr. Jeff mentioned a little bit ago. And we also just earlier this year acquired another facility and Danville, Virginia and that's a really fun group of folks that are helping us to expand our Virginia road trip. Beautiful there you can actually drive from the Asheville brewery on the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way up to Danville Virginia.

Jeff York 12:51
Sounds like a good trip. Yeah,

there we go. Yeah, bike ride.

Driving will drive an EV.

Katie Wallace 12:59
Alright, deal. Oh, good compromise, about

Brad 13:02
the values of your employees saying you know what, we're gonna forego some short term gain to make these really big changes in a business. That's That's incredible. I don't think I've heard a story like that. On the package, Jeff? Well,

Jeff York 13:15
I mean, yeah, we really haven't visited any, I guess impact or a coming? I'm trying to think if any of the industries we visit or even be corpse. I don't think so. I forgive me. We gotta get on that. Yeah. Well, it's been six.

I can't relate

Katie Wallace 13:30
Welcome to the new world.

Jeff York 13:31
Yeah, let me but it's not I mean, this has been something New Belgium smelly drawn from the very beginning, like I mean, so I wrote a paper that actually talked about New Belgium, I recovered with an Italian co author. I can't remember the name of it. That's how old I am. It's in the journal business ethics. And we talked about this idea of responsible investing funds. At the time, a lot of them were based on sort of religious ideas. And we both are PhD students. We both thought rolling alcohol out on a moral basis was just terrible. He being Italian and myself being a mere officiant both concerned about impact businesses. And so we put this paper on a car trip up to Philadelphia to a conference, we literally did not have a paper and we just wrote it on the car trip and presented it at this conference in the journal business ethics, where we just argued that like you can't judge a product by its class, you need to judge it by the values of the company and what they actually do with the product. And my example was New Belgium Brewing Company. I talked to all about the history of the company and fact that I think at the time you had a sustainability goddess, which I guess today would be you. Did you ever have that title?

Katie Wallace 14:43
I did not know I followed that title. That was my title. I said Jimmy got us at most. The

Jeff York 14:50
only title cooler than the timber business for a better rule University. Simply got

Speaker 1 14:56
Hillary Hillary Yeah, first I met here but Is that she was sustainability.

Jeff York 15:02
So and then my colleagues and Monet he wrote all about, he was from fair Verona, of course famous from, from Rumi and Juliet. He wrote about the Italian wine industry and about how it creates community bonds and represents the deep belly have values of the region. And we present this thing and everybody was so excited. They're like, you've got to write the paper for the journal. And it's the easiest paper I've ever published, because they were like, please write it up and sit down. We're like, we don't have a paper. We just, we just made this up on our car. We rarely got published anyway. I everybody

Katie Wallace 15:33
loves a little rationalization.

Jeff York 15:36
2009 so long been a fan of the brewery. It's really an honor to be here. It's and this beer is is so good, really good. It's, I gotta say, I Farley, what do you think Thomas? JD? Yeah, okay. Well, we've every one of the next. And

Katie Wallace 15:54
you know, and, Jeff, just to just to wrap up on that topic there that, you know, we we call this New Belgium Brewing because our founders were very excited about and inspired by the Belgian culture of drinking versus what we saw in the 80s and 90s. In the United States, and they loved they loved in Belgium, it really brought community together, and it was consumed more in moderation and in a part of an art they could appreciate. So that was why we called New Belgium and, and you know, Ken, being a social worker really helped to weave in that positive impact over time. They

Jeff York 16:26
start and from a nerdy beer nerds or sect, they were one of the first craft breweries to brew many of the bells themselves. For example, one of my favorites was the triple, which they still make. I'm pretty sure I'm not positive. But but I didn't know any other American craft brewery trying to replicate triple usually, American craft breweries would be like, Hey, we made a British beer, and we added more hops. Yeah. Belgium is was like, you know, even from the start endlessly creative, not only in the values that the employees held, and the the mission basis of the company, but also in their brewing is a reflection of that. And I don't know, I just think it's awesome.

Katie Wallace 17:02
Yeah, not in close to two decades. I've never gotten tired of our beers. There's always something cool to try.

Jeff York 17:08
I gotta be honest with you, I would not have gotten a flat tire. I mean, I would have gotten in before I got Coors or whatever. But I would not have ordered one. I will now this is I think my hat's off to the the new recipe I like, great.

Katie Wallace 17:22
Yeah, well, you've got a trunk in your car. Right. So

Brad 17:26
then here's the other thing, because values are certainly running deep here through your business, that maintaining values before and after an acquisition. I don't know if that's on our agenda for today. Oh, yeah, we're gonna talk about that. Okay, because I, because I do think that many, many times you see, value stay within a company, they stay within a company, either the VCs come in, or there's acquisition and roof. What values right, and I love that they're still here.

Katie Wallace 17:54
Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal to see how that all played out. And certainly moments in history throughout the last few decades, you thought maybe it wouldn't go away. But I think that Kim and Jeff were pretty visionary and creating some lasting values. And also, Kim, I think just with her social work background and the knack for the lived experience of people really knew how to take it off the page. You walk into a business sometimes and there's a plaque. Oh, kindness, integrity, courage, and everybody's

Jeff York 18:28
there in the cubicle. Can I get more money from poor people? Oh, wait. Oh, yeah. freedom and individual choice. What's like the Koch brothers are on business here. It's fine. You

Katie Wallace 18:44
can fit anything into a box. Yeah, no, you know, you can see an architecture here, even like him, in designing this room in this building we're sitting in, she wanted it to feel human scale that so that when you walk in the door, you still feel empowered to share your voice and be a part of the business. So she paid attention to all the little details that I think really drove value and we know are a big part of our growth and our and our ability to become a leader in craft beer. And eventually when Karen decided to purchase as they felt very much the same way. They said this is the business for the future. They they valued us for our culture and our community impact and our environmental sustainability investments. So we got lucky with someone like Kieran, that doesn't always happen. But more and more Do

Brad 19:26
you have a choice though to right, the brewery had a choice and they chose well, yeah, right. So it goes both ways. Related

Speaker 1 19:33
to that jumping ahead. So do you see Kieran saying, Oh, well, how do you do those things and transferring knowledge? Yeah, here in our little lion?

Katie Wallace 19:42
Yes, a little bit of both. But Kieran is actually very impressive and has long been a leader in their own right as it relates to social and environmental impact and the culture of the company and so they've been very easy to work with, but they they really valued that about us and helped us to protect it. We get together several times throughout the year and shared different ways of doing things. And we learn from each other and expand. I've learned so much and working with them. And I know we've shared a lot about our culture, especially and and working with them. And so yeah, really, it's been a really beautiful partnership. And that

Brad 20:16
way, you don't have to forego profits just to maintain really good yesterday breakfast.

Jeff York 20:21
Well, thanks for telling me that. I appreciate you. For me, I never I never would have occurred. I appreciate it.

Katie Wallace 20:28
Yeah, the B Corp story is really a big part of this to a hearing was very attracted to our B Corp sort of religion, they saw that as a marker for a lot of the things that they believed in. And and they have they see that as an important influence in the broader business as a whole.

Brad 20:41
Oh, what's the biggest surprise from you with Karen buying you? What's uh, what's something that surprised you through the process?

Katie Wallace 20:47
I think the Japanese culture is very more much more communal and collective. Right. And so I think that that was fun to click into some of what seems novel over here, and it seems maybe a little bit more obvious. To them. Yes. And then they're just fun people. I have a few beers with some some folks from Karen their blast.

Brad 21:07
You know, you have my email address. So anytime.

Katie Wallace 21:13
Yeah. And then the last fun thing, you know, selfishly, for my team and myself as we have more budgets to do. So they've been really they've been ready to invest in the practices that

Brad 21:25
keep this going. I encourage you to experiment and try new things. They do. Yeah, they're very innovative.

Katie Wallace 21:29
And they have really cool innovation labs that are working on some pharmaceuticals and they do things like plastic recyclability and circularity research. So they're really broad range of work that they get into, and they're just super fun in that way to play with super smart and innovative and, and it matches our culture here, which is always tinkering, right and thinking about new ways to do they have

Speaker 1 21:52
scale. They deal with stuff like packaging your plastics and things. They do. Yeah. What's the next beer we

Katie Wallace 21:58
have here? This is out of our voodoo Ranger IPA family. Which is, you know, this one's the juicy haze. It's my favorite. Oh, man,

Jeff York 22:14
we got this big conference table. And there's all these electrons between us all, not

Katie Wallace 22:19
the first time beer has been spilled. So this this, of course, is the New England style of the IPAs, so a bit easier and I think a softer landing and pulls out more of those fruity and floral notes and, and so juicy, sorry, booty Ranger IPA, not something you usually hear people claiming in the world of craft beer, where smaller is better oftentimes, but it is the biggest IPA brand and the country. And so really, yeah, it's taken off. Really appreciate so much about Buddha Ranger, you know, rights rights, our paychecks and whatnot, right casual

Jeff York 22:54
branding. I mean, just so it's I don't know, I'm just sitting here thinking like, you know, so you've got New Belgium Brewing Company named after like Belgian brewing and their love of the Belgian countryside and bicycle trips to there and all that stuff. And they create this beer is what usually happens in craft beer. They create this beer Fat Tire that really like, I am sure if you did like a survey where people would recognize the name Fat Tire, the new belt, like they just know, that branch. And they did again, with a whole range of beers. Any insights into how and why that's the case? I mean, I just don't see this. Usually. Right here in Nevada for a comparison, right? You got to pay lip, we got to start we got Sierra Nevada, you know, celebration, ale, whatever, you know, they just it's always but Do you guys still do that? It's

Katie Wallace 23:46
very different. Right?

Well, I mean, I think that it for a few years around here. It was like the Thunderdome in relation to are we a house of brands are branded house, right? And so, so that so that we like wrestled around with quite a bit. And I think we ultimately landed in the place that we're both and and we can, you know, we want to do the business practices with a New Belgium brand, which Fat Tire perfectly espouses. But we also want to play around in other areas. And I would say splitting them apart actually made it easier for us because we were trying to just push so many stories down one brand, that being able to say Oh, fat tires about being outside and climate action and protecting the outdoors and being active. And then voodoo Ranger really came along as a way to kind of be irreverent towards the nerdiness of hops like people were showing up at bars the height of like IPA explosion, feeling very intimidated about what hops to you know what, I don't know. Am I supposed to know what happens in this beer Ranger said Who cares and is happy and just enjoy it and will take care of you and and so I think that's the whole idea of the Voodoo Ranger brand. But it actually came out of this Belgian wrestling match to where it was like, all of our sales folks were out in the field. We call them beer Rangers, and they were out in the market and they they liked it. IPAs, and they wanted us to have an IPA. And then it was like this, you know, but the Belgian style, that's not true to Belgian style, we can't do that. Back and forth, back and forth. And eventually, we all agreed we'd make an IPA and we call it Ranger IPA. But inspired by our sales, folks. I

Jeff York 25:15
mean, my dog

Brad 25:18
traveled over the head with hops either.

Jeff York 25:22
It is soft, you're right. Yeah. And I like that. Bread, I think we had an extra one side. That's our actual insight alert. I'm going to try to say this case it much better than I will. But as you're in a growth company, if you're thinking about experimenting with other types of skews, perhaps that go away from what you normally do, not a bad idea to maybe even create a different brand and experiment with that, so that you can hold on to your current brand. And if the second one takes off, then now you have multiple brands. I think it's really worked for you guys to hit. Yeah, as an outsider, I mean, I just so you know, a little podcast, we don't compete directly with call forehead fables. And none of you guys are gonna know what I'm talking about. But my teenagers definitely do. And apparently one of the podcasters on there is sponsored by voodoo Ranger. I don't know much about this. But he says he is. And my kids are, you know, I think his name's poo is sponsored by. This is what I'm told. Yes. And I'm just I'm totally not they be young and hip listens to us anyway. But if you're out there, and you're young, and write to us, and straighten this out, why don't we have a voodoo Ranger sponsorship when poor does

Brad 26:40
that's what I mean, that's a conversation we have with mice turn off, Jeff. I'm

Jeff York 26:44
sorry, I got excited. I just remembered this thing. So my kids, but let's face my kids, like, I'm not just a great thing. But my kids who are 1618 know what voodoo Ranger is because of this podcast how interest is such a vibrant brand with like the skeleton and the ranger at its very, it feels very Colorado's slash Grateful Dead iconography to me.

Katie Wallace 27:07
Yeah, it depends on which one you're looking at, though, too, because I think that there are a lot of different styles of Buddha Ranger skeleton. But the cool thing in this day and age is that it doesn't have skin. We're all the same, you know, like IPAs, and we actually see like a lot of engagement from other markets that historically haven't seen themselves in craft beer that enjoy food arranger do so it's cool. Yeah.

Brad 27:28
Can you give us an example? Um, well, so

Katie Wallace 27:31
I don't know, the full roster of people that we sponsor, that we, for a long time sponsored T pain on Twitch and AND T PAIN was had an effort where he was really appalled to see a lot of the revenue on Twitch for gamers going towards the white community. Right. And so he started an effort to help gamers of color, like get into it and make some money off of it. And so by supporting folks like T pain, and you know, that way, we're able to like, you know,

Jeff York 28:01
I was talking about I mean, this is really smart marketing, like, you know, I mean, I don't know any other craft brewery, who like says, you know, what we should sponsor like, you know, online game. Yeah. But there's

Brad 28:12
an organic component to it, too, which I think is really cool. Right? Let's take a shot here. Yeah, let's check it out. And check it out. And then experimentation, and then the benefits that have come from that and the communities that you've reached. Fabulous. Yeah,

Katie Wallace 28:24
really, really cool. It's been fun, fun to play in a new area, and really fun to not have to reconcile the earnest business story. Yeah, well, we call him in hard business with the irreverence of voodoo Ranger. And it's just a lot of playgrounds that we can express ourselves in different ways.

Jeff York 28:38
I mean, I'm sure you think about this. I mean, to me, it's like I think it's a big problem with the sustainability movement with ESG of like having this I mean, you know, we live in Boulder. So it's like, this is very, like wealthy, very white, like, you know, upper middle class kind of like Tesla driving nerdy. I never noticed that about me either. You know, Tom, you never know said no,

Speaker 1 29:03
no, we're not at all folder. Right. Turn arrogant about it. Yeah.

Jeff York 29:07
Zero arrogance. Anyway, we make those connections. I mean, that's really powerful, right? Like if you can cut across to like, different demographics. And normally don't think about sustainability and somehow combine it messy. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a real problem. Like,

Katie Wallace 29:26
I think that we, well, there's a couple of different topics within that. And one is just like, doing the right thing of spreading around economic Yeah, the flow of money, right, and power and influence and being able to support some of the amazing people we support in that and what they're doing in the world to make a difference. And the other part of it, too, is like being able to talk about climate change in a beer ad, right. And like, so what we always say with the Fat Tire team, and we say this together, it's like, let's keep it in the beer zone. Right there. You can only with Stan, it's so much earnestness when you're talking about thinking about beer and hearing it like climate change. And so then you'll see like in our social media that a lot of what we talk about is in the short explainers that are kind of punchy and light hearted and we try to, you try to really honor the beer zone, knowing that that's the relationship we have with people that we speak up to.

Jeff York 30:15
Ya know, I mean, reminds me a lot of Aspen's strategy around this of like, you know, we're not going to talk about climate, in a sense of like, be raiding people and making them feel bad. We're going to talk about as, hey, you seem to like skiing? Wouldn't you like to do something to make sure that your kids can ski too? I mean, that's the thing. You guys have a partnership with, protect our winters?

Katie Wallace 30:34
Yeah, we love them for that.

Jeff York 30:36
Yeah, I think they do a great job predictor, whereas ferry listeners aren't familiar is, is an NGO that really is built around started with this new sports, professional athletes community of talking about bringing their voice to bear on addressing climate change, and future sports. And now they've expanded into a lot of outdoor areas, mountain biking, and trail running and things like that. And I think that's really important. Like, you know, it's not like, Hey, you should really feel bad and like, not buy anything, and live in a cave or something like that. And you know, only beansprouts more like, Hey, you liked snowboarding, you like skiing, maybe you should do something about protecting, and I even

Brad 31:15
look at it, maybe even a more simpler term, you respect your audience, you respect your customers and respecting customers. That's what we should all be doing. The messaging coming out of Katy is not just for the beer industry, right? You have masterfully maneuvered the business. It's your practices resonate into many other industries beyond beer, all the way down to though number one, it's be authentic, and was authentic when it was in the basement of your founders house, when they were doing the engineering to recapture the steam. And that type of spirit, though, has lived on all the way through an amazing acquisition to an international company. You've been able to keep that. And I think that aligning those values with your, with your partners in Asia, I mean, just this is a great story. This is like you're making my day. Because these are things that

Jeff York 32:14
brands is really bad mood. Near the beer,

Brad 32:18
I don't know it's you because because online.

Jeff York 32:23
Just gotta make sure I get that in there for Yeah, that was a great, I mean, it was a great actual insight, I just want to make sure that, you know, the authenticity, I think far too often entrepreneurs talk about their customer to the extent they get away from being authentic to themselves. And I think it's far better to stay authentic to yourself, and you will track because

Brad 32:47
after meeting Katie, for what, half hour now, this is not fake? Well, no, this is who you are. And this is I mean, that's the beauty about this. And I'm imagining that your team is like that. And the other teams that interact are like that, and you retain employees because of that. And I think it's just I think it's all it's all working in for me. I mean, I'm having a moment of flow here where you can kind of see around the corner a little bit, it makes total sense, and just keep doing it. Thanks. Thanks.

Katie Wallace 33:16
I mean, I think that like when you're saying you're doing this, and you know, who is that you is that we break down. And sometimes it's people a small number of people with very limited perspectives that are in a marketing room or an executive room, making some of these decisions. And I think that one of the beautiful things that I learned from Kim and you know, growing up professionally, you know, being able to witness her leadership was really the the you is everybody, right? And so how do you really, that's great when you're 40 people, and you're going to take a vote, making it make a vote on like, do we want to give up profit sharing to bring wind power, but it's different when now you're 1500 people? And how does that look? And how do you not just get scared of asking everybody what they think. And so, so when we we actually acquired Bell's brewery, and we brought coworkers? Yeah, we did. Yeah. They're awesome. We love that. Yeah. And we, we all work together. Yeah. That was close by Kalamazoo. Yep. And so they, so we actually, you know, now with well, over 1000, co workers brought dozens of co workers together to say, what are the values now? What's authentic to us today? What are we going to keep from the past? That is a legacy and it matters still as relevant today? What do we need to change based more on more voices at the table, and more awareness of each other in this day and age, and then also like the world, the world is changing, right? It's changed. And so we had a really cool process where our co workers came together, and they just hashed it out together. And so our new core values were written by them. Right. And so So I think that that part, that's hard work, and it's scary, I think, for a lot of leaders to open the doors to say, I want to hear from everybody because many when we talk to leaders, they think, well, I'll just have to do what everyone says and I can't please. Right. And so I think if you take the entrepreneurship entrepreneur in mind to this and say there's still going to be a way to do this right? Well figure it out. And even as we're growing and changing, and how do we keep the spirit of this, and I love that example of how people have come together. And we really tried to do that we have a lot of avenues where we're rebuilding them and, and scaling them for who we are today where people can still share their voice no matter where they are in the organization. They're driving a forklift, or on a packaging Hall. There in the beer, the uniform be better. Yeah, everything's and they all have really cool ideas. So anyway, so that's, I think that that's something that you give the right framework and structure to it. And you can hear from people, but also keep it manageable for leadership, too. And

Speaker 1 35:33
we've done this since day one. Oh, I know. So I'm also friends with Jen Vrba. And she comes to speak to my class. And they basically built the business, correct me if I'm wrong on three books. But beyond entrepreneurship, that one chapter of vision that provided structure, they formed the purpose and the mission did all the values. chop wood carry water? Yep. And the third one was leadership handbook.

Thomas J. Dean 36:01
The Great Game of Thrones,

Katie Wallace 36:02
the great game of business, of course, yeah,

Jeff York 36:03
I was gonna set a new complete joy at home.

Katie Wallace 36:07
Parts of it for sure.

Jeff York 36:10
That to relax, don't worry. Yeah. But anyway,

Speaker 1 36:14
when Jen comes and talks, it's because she was there really, really early. She just she just, it's the best story I've ever had on strategic planning. Like, they actually did kind of the strategic planning. Right? Because so offense done so poorly. Oh, yeah. Right, right. It's just management wants to do whatever. So they ask a bunch of people what they should do and does whatever they want. But here, it wasn't great. And and even have that vision, that early phase of time, when you're building a business to think about what you want the values to be what you want the purpose of the company to be. Yeah, yeah. Very

Katie Wallace 36:54
common. No. And I think to just having like him being a social worker, when she started it, her whole job was like, how do I help empower you to this amazing life? And she saw many people contribute in that way. Right? And so like, yeah, how do you bring people to their best? So I

Brad 37:09
don't? I don't know Kim. And I would say it's more than her being a social worker, though. I think this is something that was ingrained with her. Sure. Right, well before social worker, and so it's her personality that came through. And that's, that's really cool.

Katie Wallace 37:21
Yeah, she grew up in a Quaker background. And so yeah, so that everybody's voice matters. And so so many of these wonderful things, she was a bus driver for a while, right? Like all of these cool things about her came through, and this mindset that like people's voices matter. And I think, you know, getting into like the great game of business and whatnot, like, she wanted to include people's voices. But when they were bringing ideas, it was just completely irrational as it related to the finances, right. And she's like, what you don't. So then that's when she's like, I want to teach you about the finances so that you can actually be well enough informed to bring ideas forward that actually work for the totality of the business. And so that's where open book management came in. And then when open book management was there, she felt a little weird that everyone's like, Oh, and this is what you take home. And this is what I take home. And that's when she decided to start sharing ownership and do profit sharing to help people be a part of that. I

Jeff York 38:11
want to talk about that. Next. What's What's this third beer we have here? Well, it's

Katie Wallace 38:15
December and this is one of my this is my most enduring favorite beer if New Belgium 1554 Black lager. Whoo. Cheers. There's

Brad 38:25
a new one for me. Happy Holidays and Cheers.

Katie Wallace 38:28
Oh, yeah. Jeff gets you. So I love I'll start with a story of where this one came from. We were just talking about Kim and Jen and all the early days. One of our early coworkers was Phil Bernstein. And he he's a renaissance man, but he you know, played in jet he was in the Navy and played in jazz clubs, and underground Chicago, and they came here and brewed beer. And now as a National Geographic photographer, you know, kind of has done it all that he he got really interested years ago and the stories of absence from like, you know, several 100 years ago, where the what he was reading about, you know, and what people were feeling from that is not what you experienced when you drink Absinthe today. So he went on the hunt for these like old recipes and these ancient books in Belgium, and across Europe and, and ended up finding this recipe for a black lager, which is, you know, the Belgian say, we don't do that we don't we don't have dark lager or dark beers. And, and so then he found that recipe, dated 1554. And from that year had a had someone translate the ancient dialect of Flemish to interpret it. And so it's a very unique beer, right? It's like this dark malt and it's roasted, it's got all those nice flavors, but it also has a lager yeast, so it has a crisper finish and it doesn't it's very different than a stout or Porter. But this is my all time favorite beer. And we don't do a lot of marketing around it, but it keeps growing and growing on its own Flexity

Jeff York 39:52
of it for a lager is like there's like all these flavor profiles that come and get like that. black patent Bert, kind of on the front end But then it kind of I think the logger use like softens out you to get all those other esters and stuff. Usually we get like an established reporter. It's just kind of a clean, you know, cut off. So you get like the complexity without like, the things that Brad doesn't like where?

Brad 40:14
Yeah. Right.

Katie Wallace 40:18
Yeah. But then you know, a lot of people that don't like beer, but they like red wine, and they love this beer. And I tend to drink it mainly in the winter, but sometimes you

Jeff York 40:29
just have one more actionable insight. I lost my timer here.

Brad 40:33
You can drink beer in the summer and winter, no.

Jeff York 40:36
Episode as soon as possible.

Brad 40:44
Video UNFCC.

Katie Wallace 40:46
You know, I can't say I know my way around it very well. I did try it in Eastern Europe. Because when I went there, didn't didn't have the experience they talked about in the old books, you know, you know, as Peter BlueCard and Phil Ben Stein, they'll tell you all about it. Okay.

Jeff York 41:01
So employee ownership like but New Belgium has been one of the few employee was ever was a co op at one point or an employee owner was

Katie Wallace 41:13
a bit it was a coop is technically a little bit different. There was a phantom stock plan that was a little bit more flexible. And then I think it was 2002, that we switched over to an employee stock ownership plan, ESOP.

Jeff York 41:26
An ESOP. And then how did that happen?

Katie Wallace 41:29
I think, you know, there were some changes to the rules on phantom plans, but also we were growing and that wasn't sustainable, sustainable model as we grew. And so the National Center for employee ownership is a wonderful advisor for any companies that are considering any level of employee ownership and guided us towards towards that decision towards an ESOP. And then I think, you know, we were 36% ESOP, 42% ESOP after Jeff left. And then when Kim was thinking about succession planning, then we went to 100% ESOP. And it was this moment where she announced I sold the company, and like, check under your chair in an envelope so that you can see who I sold it to. And you pull out the envelope, and there's a mirror. And that's when you know, and I would say, like, you know, now we're pretty cool. Yeah. And today, you know, when we sold to Karen, nearly $200 million, were paid out to hundreds of families that had worked here driving a forklift their entire career and accounting and parent pouring beers making beers and so, so yeah, there's really, really beautiful story to it. And I think also, you know, 100%, employee ownership for an asset heavy business and a more volatile market, like we've been in lately is probably a little precarious because it's hard to go raise funds. But then, but there's something you know, partial ownership, or it just really is built into it's a big part of what informed our culture is having a voice about the Green Bay

Brad 42:45
Packers of beer? Yes.

Katie Wallace 42:46
I love the Green Bay Packers. And also because my grandma was a fan, and she like, with merch. Yeah.

Brad 42:59
Your beers? Oh, my

Jeff York 43:01
gosh, Katie, it has been awesome talking to you. And thank you for taking us through these beers and a little bit history on New Belgium. We're going to come back next time. And we're going to talk about Tom's paper and how that relates to the story we just heard. We hope you'll be able to hang out with us. Maybe I want to grab a ball that lavender sounds amazing. I think Brad, you buy that for Christmas presents. So thank you very much for listening. Once again, we're at New Belgium Brewing Company. And we will be back in the next episode to talk about Professor Thomas J. Dean's paper and how it might relate to this conversation. Once again, my name is Jeff York. I'm the Research Director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business joined by my co host.

Brad 43:41
I'm Brad Warner and Jeff, this has been fabulous. We've learned a lot of great stories. It's very, very cool. I'm just it's still resonate, resonating with me what impact this business has had on you the conference, which is great time, I'm sure can fill us in on that, Katie. Thank you, Tom. I

Jeff York 44:00
look forward to it's good to see something besides beer lift. Brad spirits is very excited. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. And I'm beholden to say, if you liked the podcast, click subscribe. Do it on iTunes. It's really fun to do, or Apple or Spotify. Wherever you get your podcasts. Click subscribe.

Brad 44:18
By the way, the guy from Nigeria the prince he's still he's still he's still emailing me. Some negotiations, right? Yeah, but if I send him 10,000 bucks, I'll get 10 million. But as

Jeff York 44:30
you're thinking about that second mortgage, so you can really help. Oh, of course, it's gonna be great. Oh, look forward to

Brad 44:35
talking about our biggest fan. Tom's paper.

Jeff York 44:37
Brad's wise investment he's doing the prince of Nigeria. We'll be right back with that. Thank you. Thanks for joining us.

Stefani H 44:44
We hope you enjoy this episode of creative distillation recorded on location at New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado. Learn more and order merch at New belgium.com We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas email us at CD podcast@colorado.edu And please be sure to Subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The creative distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado boulders weed School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu. That's d m ing and click the creative distillation link. Creative distillation is produced by Joel Davis at analog digital arts. Our theme music is whiskey before breakfast performed by your humble hosts, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here for another episode of creative distillation.

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Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 59: Unpublished! Jeff's Secret Research Into Public-Private Partnerships

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 23:36:30 +0000

Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 59: Unpublished! Jeff's Secret Research Into Public-Private Partnerships Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/08/2024 - 16:36

Stefani H 0:07
Welcome to another episode of creative distillation. Your hosts Jeff and Brad from the University of Colorado boulders lead School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. Previously on creative distillation, Brad and Jeff conducted field research at the burns pub, a truly authentic British public house. Located in Broomfield, Colorado. They tasted some fine whiskies and other spirits and had an illuminating conversation with founder Johnny OD. This time, Brad and Jeff are still at the burns, where Brad tricks Jeff into discussing his own research a first for creative distillation. Jeff tells us about an unpublished working paper that explores a public private partnership addressing climate change through entrepreneurship, right here in beautiful Boulder. Enjoy and cheers.

Jeff York 1:06
Welcome to Creative distillation, where we're gonna steal entrepreneurship, research and actionable insights. I'm your host, Jeff York, the research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business at the ��, and I'm joined by my co host.

Brad 1:21
Hi, Jeff. It's Brad again. I am Brad Warner. I am faculty director at the Deming center. And I am thrilled to be here today it's kind of like old school day.

Jeff York 1:30
It is old school taking it back to the old school like Oh, fool, I love ya. So while two weeks have gone by, for you, people if you're listening to this regularly, mere minutes have gone by and Brad and I are now going to attempt to go back to the future here. We're going to do an old school version. If you've not listened to our original podcast, you really should go back and listen to episodes, one through 50 Odd something and give them five stars every time you listen to them. Because that actually really would help us out we'd appreciate it. Let's think about

Brad 2:01
this for a second. We're almost on episode 60

Jeff York 2:04
Are we close that stuff? So if you want to hear how much improvement we've gone through, then don't listen to this episode. Go back and listen to the old ones. Because what we originally did, we started the podcast, the whole podcast was generated when our research director, the famous Eric Mueller, and by the way, I'm gonna continue with my Halloween actionable insight sounds just because you know, it's not Halloween yet for me. Although for you people listening, it's well after Halloween. Just Just bear with me. I love Halloween. I gotta I gotta keep it go. I gotta go. I gotta go. Thanks. I appreciate that Brett. And our famous Executive Director, our boss, the man who says, Brad don't cut so much on the podcast, says, Jeff, you know, you really should maybe not drink so much whiskey. Those kinds of

Brad 2:48
things. By the way, I love the feedback because the feedback starts one of my family members listen to

Jeff York 2:55
know it starts with I made one of my family members. Choice. feedback I got the feedback was actually helpful. Yeah, that was there was a very helpful we'd love any feedback Write to us at CDI guest at colorado edu. If you out there are researcher or not, and just want to come on the podcast. Or if you'd like whiskey, or if you like whiskey or beer, or if you're gonna have a pulse. Anyway, we started off this podcast, the famous Eric Mueller. We were sitting at a coffee shop, he said what would you guys actually be excited about doing for the very committed boys he has like Brad nuts. And I was like, you know, I'd like to do is I'd like to do a podcast where Brad and I go have a drink and talk about research. Because we had had several conversations, we weren't really good friends them. But we had some some really interesting conversations about like, you know, research where you would say that sounds like the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. And I would try to explain why it was useful. And then sometimes I'll convince you a little bit. And throughout the podcast, it's been the same pattern. Sometimes you're somewhat convinced sometimes not so much. And that's fine, you know, but the goal was to actually say, hey, what if we talked about research to someone who's not particularly interested in the research, other than what's useful about it? And that's what led to this. And so it's kind of cool. And I would be the guy doing it, then COVID happen? Yes. And we said, oh my gosh, it's much better if we have guests instead of Jeff, which I wholeheartedly agree with. But today, we're going to try an old school episode where it's just me defending a paper.

Brad 4:23
Let me ask you this as a research, I don't mean this. Yes. As a researcher, are you thinking that when I finish up when you when you guys should be writing research, or doing this? When you're considering research to do? Is the goal, the research to get published? Or to actually have an insight for someone like me that may be looking for it?

Jeff York 4:45
None of the above? What's the goal? The goal is for me, I don't think this is true for most researchers. The goal for me is, can I find something that I think is interesting that I could spend the next like, you know, two or three years There's like investigating and writing about. And then second is do I think it's actually important. So important to me is not necessarily defined by it's actionable for an entrepreneur, or it could be a broader question of policy, or understanding the emergence of an industry, or understanding why some people do some things, even if they're not particularly helpful to them. My goal is not really necessarily to help entrepreneurs do my research. It's more honestly to find things I think are interesting and important. That's really cool.

Brad 5:30
So you said a couple things that resonate with me. Number one, spending two or three years of my life, we've had people here 11 years plus Oh, no, I mean, that's in the best case scenario, right. And then, actually forgot my second insight here. Here's my here's my second question. So my question to you, Jeff, is you have written many, many papers. That is true. How many papers would you say that you've published? Approximately? Over 20? I mean, which is in a researchers career, that's a big number, correct?

Jeff York 5:58
I guess. So. I mean, some people publish. Okay, so it's interesting. There's sort of this. I think, I

Brad 6:03
haven't finished my question. Well, you, my enemy answering your first question, but I haven't have a second. Because they depends. Okay, so think so think about your lifetime body of work so far. Yeah. And is there one that resonates with you most, you said, Oh, my God, I discovered this or found this. And this really, maybe is impactful to me, but was really impactful to you?

Jeff York 6:26
Not impactful to you. But impactful either way, right?

Brad 6:28
It doesn't have to be for me, but something that you found that was like, an aha moment for Jeff, the researcher.

Jeff York 6:34
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I have this paper called converging winds. That's about the wind energy industry in Colorado. It's in the Academy of Management Journal. I can't remember the year honestly. I mean, I'm not. I say things like that. I feel like I generally, like I've just written a lot of papers, I can't remember when they're published. And, and the thing is, you, as you've heard from many of the authors on this podcast, you the papers done, like about two years. But it took like eight years before that. And that paper means a lot to me, I just because I think it's a really important question of when and how do these environmentally relevant industries emerge? And how do they emerge? And what we find in that paper, that's the most interesting thing, to me that I think is really an important insight, and that I actually plan to write about at some point for a more practitioner orient book, practitioner Orient, people that aren't researchers book

Brad 7:32
with you, by the way, I,

Jeff York 7:33
it wasn't that environmental movement suddenly became right, or that the industry suddenly became like, economically viable. It was that the environmental movements realized how to use economic arguments for what they were trying to do. And that was well before wind energy was economically sustainable. And once they figured that out through this process of going back and forth and evolving over time, then they started to win and actually push for the industry. And what's really cool about this is like once that industry emerged a little bit through policy change, you have to have policy to support a lot of these industries, because market failure exists for a reason market failure is when we have negative externalities for an industry due to inappropriate regulation. That's just why there's multiple market failures. That's one. That is the reason we're our world is going to hell in a handbasket as far as climate change goes, unfortunately. So once that's captured, you create a influx of new entrepreneurs, new businesses. And once that happens, all sorts of other kinds of coverage happens in the press about this economic opportunity. And then you start to see more investment in these industries. And then you start to see more positive policies that are more carrot and stick based. And once you get that virtuous cycle going, this will happen in Colorado, those industries will take off and be self sufficient. That's really cool. To me. That's really cool. The other thing about that paper is, I wrote most of it or not most of it, but a lot of it when my dad was in the hospital. And I just remember writing it as like, frankly, escape from really hard time. And, you know, I think writing is a often overlooked part of our research. Yeah. So it's for me, it's simple. How

Brad 9:16
long ago did you write that paper? Would

Jeff York 9:17
you say? Gosh, 2014, maybe 10 years? 10 years

Brad 9:21
now. So looking back at that paper and where we are now in 2023? Was it predictive at all?

Jeff York 9:28
I don't think it's predictive. I think it's prescriptive. Okay. I've talked a lot about it. I actually presented it multiple, like energy kind of conferences and other places like that. And I think it tells you, I mean, that was 100%. I mean, you know, one thing about we're talking there's research, it's always directional. It's never it's never like this is the fact right. Anybody that comes on here and tells us I think I'll I think you would acknowledge I'll challenge them as much as I don't think we've ever had. Well, we've never had anybody that unthoughtful which is awesome, right? But I think it does tell you Like, what does it take to actually get these things going? And the broader kind of insight that I would say comes from that paper and a bunch of my overall work is that like, entrepreneurship, as a mechanism, and as an ideology, is extremely helpful for getting people past their politically infused divisions. It's really hard for people to not be in favor of creating new businesses and creating jobs talked about that a lot. Yeah, I haven't talked about my homework about you and I have talked, but that's the message like, I mean, and I think, I think environmental movements, and pro business movements do themselves a great disservice when they try to create these divisions between people. I think that's really true. A lot of the problems we have in this world in this particular instance, I think there is huge business opportunity and climate change, and, and you'll get critiqued for that by the left as well as the right and I'm fine with that. That makes I feel great when my student evaluations, half of them say like York is like a really left leaning liberal and is like trying to make us all do these things. And that people they're like York's to like pro market and you hit it right down. I'm like, great. Okay, perfect. I'm really happy when that happens. Right.

Brad 11:08
So let me ask one more follow up question, then we can get to the paper. No. So if you had to rewrite converging winds today, 10 years later, yeah. What would you do differently,

Jeff York 11:18
I would probably simplify a lot of it, to try to make it easier for for people to pick up on the theme. So I think this podcast actually helped me a lot through the act of going through academic papers and trying to simplify them. I mean, I don't always present the papers I can go into today. Usually we have a guest, but I do read them. And I do try to think about what is the actual insight from it. And that's, that's heavy sledding. It's hard for me. Yeah. So I think about like, you know, someone who's actually trying to gain insight from our academic work. But the only way to change that really is within the academy is like, I mean, you can change a school level but that's very hard because you have to my friend Andy Hoffman says something I really like he's a

Brad 11:58
comic. Was that was always any clone.

Jeff York 12:01
Any Kaufman says a lot of things I really like, I loved him. He's just my favorite comedian ever, probably. But Andy Hoffman, who is actually a pretty funny guy, not in a coffee play, but but he's a professor of sustainability and business at Michigan, Ross School. And he says, We have a lot of full professors that are acting like assistant professors. And what he means by that is like you have to, as an assistant professor, you have to publish, if you don't publish, you will not keep your job, okay, you'll probably get a job somewhere else, eventually, you'll have a job. But like, you know, you're on a tenure clock. And, and that's why there's a lot of stress to publish, publish, publish, you have to do it. It's the it's table stakes. And Andy will tell you that he's like, You don't like that game. But it's what you got to do to be legitimate. But once you're granted the privilege of tenure, and certainly being a full professor, one would hope you would do something a little more.

Brad 12:53
I think that's the point of tenure. Right? But right, but you're protected, right?

Jeff York 12:57
I mean, yes, keep writing research, of course. But like, don't just keep publishing for the sake of publishing, like because, I don't know, I guess this is part of what I'm trying to do. Like, I mean, I know we get around a lot. But in all, in all seriousness, I don't think some people do listen to the podcast. And if you're one of them, go ahead, hit that five stars on your review, and make sure you subscribe. So I think trying to do this and like, you know, translate this organ, it's not so much the podcast reaches that many people but but it's training my mind to do something different in the latter half of my career. So what's next? Well, I'm trying to do meaningful research and publish things.

Brad 13:35
Currently, right now. Yeah, I'm working on a bunch of stuff. So what is like what has your interest and maybe what has the interest of our listeners? Well, I'm

Jeff York 13:42
working on thing with our former PhD student now professor at University of Kansas, Beth Embry. Yes, hard, hard not love, Beth. She's fantastic. And we're gonna thing about how the city of Boulder collaborated with entrepreneurs to address climate change. And they made a lot of mistakes, and screwed a lot of stuff up. But there's some things they got right. And it's it's very interesting take on what public private partnerships under uncertainty. So we usually think about public private partnerships as being very clear cut. We're gonna build a road to Broomfield. Okay, so, yeah, we do that, right. We contract them. This is how you create a public private partnership when you don't actually know the solution to the problem, which is what entrepreneurs are good for. Right?

Brad 14:24
So that was my first entrepreneurial journey actually was a public private partnership.

Jeff York 14:29
Right. But you probably had a very clear contract, right? No. Oh, well, there you go. See, this is not the case. We usually talk

Brad 14:34
about No, not not at all. Actually, it was very, it was very random. And there were goals that were that were put in front of us that we created our own KPIs. Right. But if they were just guesses, yeah, I mean, that's

Jeff York 14:48
cool, though, that we should talk more about that sometime. Because that's really interesting. That's not what we normally think about when we say public private partnerships. Yeah. So

Brad 14:54
so let's go back to your research that you're doing with Beth though because I specifically the town of Boulder and And we know boulders trying to do the right thing. But well, we try. Yeah. So where are you in the process of writing your paper? So

Jeff York 15:10
Beth got a job out this paper, which is already good use of the paper, right? She's presented how my goodness, she probably presented like half a dozen schools, right? I've probably presented it like three or four places. So we've actually gotten all the feedback at this point. Usually papers complete. No, not even close. A draft of the paper is complete. Okay. So and best, but I realized it was funny, because that was going out. This is kind of embarrassing, but what the heck, that was going out during a job talks. I'm a PhD supervisor. And I was like, Oh, so you're presenting this? She wrote three papers for a dissertation. I assume she was presenting one of those. Is that normal, by the way? Yeah, that's normally what you would do. You would go out and like, you know, roadtrip, a paper from your dissertation. And she's like, No, I'm doing the boulder energy challenge paper. I'm like, really, that paper is like, pretty bad. She's like, Well, I'm not presenting. I'm presenting like, where I've gotten to in my thinking about it since our initial draft. We hadn't really updated it yet. She but she her she's so smart. She had like, kind of thought through where the paper needed to go without actually writing it. Yeah, I saw a presentation I watched it. I watched a recording of whatever presentation was like, Oh, that's so much better than the paper. So I started working on the paper. And so now, it's actually in my lap. And I'm trying to trying to get it totally revised to reflect her presentation. And then I'll go to her and then we'll probably submit it hopefully by the end of the year.

Brad 16:33
So is there a takeaway that the Boulder City Council could use listening to our podcast today, from this paper, or the one that we were the one that you and Beth are working on? Well, they

Jeff York 16:42
already know because we've been informing them the whole time. But like, do they? Are they receptive, though? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, it's been, it's been good. We probably need to go back. I mean, the paper Oh, my goodness, the data was collected back in 2013, or something. Oh, my God. This is how long these things take, man. I mean, the big takeaway was like, when the Boulder City employees started to understand how entrepreneurs think and work, they were able to collaborate and way more meaningful and impactful ways than they previously had been able to when they thought of themselves as giving a public private grant. So they were contracting with all these. It's a long story. I mean, that's an example. I'd love to hear this will be a podcast in of itself, this podcast. Okay, fine. So you're just a railing me now? That's fine. Okay. Well, that's fine. We'll talk about that, if you want. So, so So this paper. So long story, I'll start at the beginning. Basically, the City of Boulder decided, well backup the City of Boulder put in place a tax. And we should have Beth on to actually talk about this paper when we publish it. Well, we gotta wait till we publish it. And it'll probably be much different than the story I'm going to tell today. Because that's just sort of how it goes. The things that are interesting, come out in the review process are often different than what you think they're going to be. That's really cool. Actually, it is kind of cool. Because like you're you engage once you in the review process, you're actually collaborating with really smart people. You're not always happy with what they have to say. But you do respect them. At least I do. So there was a saying they created this thing called the Climate Action Program tax, okay. And the city of Boulder implemented a sales tax, that would go into something called the Climate Action Program. Well, they start collecting this tax, right. And they didn't do anything with the money. It just sat there. There's so you have a pool of money. Now, this pool of money that's just sitting there got up to a pretty big number, and they didn't know what to do with it. Well, they weren't doing anything with it. They're busy running the city and doing other things. And then the city got audited. And the auditor, I mean, voluntarily audit, it wasn't like, it was just sitting waiting. That's just what cities do. And the consultants like you guys have, like almost half a million dollars sitting in this pool of money you're not doing so you got to do something. So the city council got together, they said we should have a climate innovation program. And they did not declare what that would consist of, but they said we're gonna have it. This is all very ancient history. So it doesn't reflect on the on the current city, but this is this boulder staff, or is this boulder cell count. So then the Boulder City Council decided that they would appoint us boulder staff member to go implement their climate innovation program? Okay, she was a government, you know, sort of administrator. And she realized very quickly, like, I have no idea what the heck this is supposed to be. I care about climate change. It's important to me, which is why she got the gig. But no good deed goes on published or does go on Publish to actually in our field. But so she started, she reached out to a bunch of people, including myself, and another professor at the time was like, Hey, will you come be on the steering committee for this thing? And try to figure it out because of your expertise at the university? Right. So we agreed to be honest, the agreement was will be on it if we can record and document every email every meeting everything. So now you're measuring Yeah, so now we're just collecting all these data. And so I collected these data. I was on the steering committee for several years. First. And you know, I can't write this paper because I was on the steering committee like, I can't be like, here's my here are my reflections about the steering committee that I was part of you're the Muppet in the row. And then Beth was here. Yeah, exactly right. This much like we are the challenge. And so then I met, Beth was a student, I was like Beth, you know, you're she's very gifted, very hardworking person. Like, I got this data, I can't write it. The other guy that was gonna write it, he didn't get tenure. So I was like, you want to write this thing? She's like, Sure, I'll do that. And so she wrote a draft. And then they did a second cohort, which was also on the steering committee for and best start to conduct interviews with all those entrepreneurs thing. So tell me, so is this really going to be the podcast here? Because like,

Brad 20:45
tell me about the entrepreneurs. What does she who she talked to?

Jeff York 20:48
She's talking to all the I mean, so I don't have the paper in front of me like, because I'm not I wasn't prepared to talk about this. But she's talking to all these entrepreneurs and the second cohort? Well, anyway, there's a lot of it's a very complex thing that goes on and on. But like, basically, what she figured out was, there was two kinds of sets of entrepreneurs in the second cohort. And half of them were like, more kind of almost social movement organizations. They were really interested in say, creating a place for people to share climate change insights, like a message board in Boulder County. Or we're going to have this like, you know, climate awareness thing where people can get insulation in their house like, next door for for insulation. Yeah, exactly. But this was 2015 or so there was no next door at that point. And then another half of them were actually trying to start businesses. Like for example, one's called Evie. Well, no, it's not Evie, go. Got some space in their name? Well, it's probably best because we anonymized it. But basically, what they were doing is creating a Uber for Evie, charging stations. That just sounds brilliant. It was pretty clever, actually. Because, you know, what's the stressor about having an Eevee charge? And I gotta go, I gotta go. I gotta give me Joel and Brad burns pub, they came in today, right? And I have no idea where to charge? Well, ideally, you know, we could go find a charging station, we could lease it out to us, we could charge the leaf and then drive back, although we'll be okay. So anyway, they're actually like creating a real business and what you would think like, so there's this whole literature on these things called institutional logics. Now, institutional logics are just belief systems and instantiations of those beliefs that happen around different ideologies. Okay. So it's not enough that there be an ideology, like we have a free market ideology, we believe the market will solve problems, and we should support free markets and not restrict trade. Right. And it's messy. That's not a logic, a logic is, we believe that within the way we're looking at is within a geographic region or within a sector. We believe that but we also put in place policies to instantiate as, for example, if boulder was the exact opposite of what it was, it would say like we're going to have very low taxes. It it'd be different, right? Boulder has a very strong pro environment logic. Yes. Which is, well, that's great. We love businesses, but we'll pass something called a climate action tax, even though we don't know what we're gonna do with it, we're gonna tax business, people will go for it, because everybody wants us, right. So that's an instantiation of that logic. But the only reason it works is because the pro environment belief is as strong and bolder. Right? So what we're doing in this paper is we're measuring the degree to which these ventures fall into different logic categories, okay? And some of them are these hybrids of a pro environment and pro market logic. For example, the Uber for Evie, charging stations, yes, they want to solve the environmental problem. They want people to use EVs more, but they're trying to make money and create an actual business around this. On the other hand, you and I are going to have like a block party to promote installation of insulation. We don't want to have any plan to make any money off. It's just a great thing to do. Yeah,

Brad 23:56
so it's Tupperware for so Now, which

Jeff York 23:58
one of these do you think the government's gonna get along with better? Oh, so

Brad 24:01
for sure. The cocktail party?

Jeff York 24:03
Yeah. Right. You think like somebody? Right? So the government's in bed in this in this government, like, you know, what we would call a governmental logic, which is one of administration distribution of goods and services, how you actually take care of people, the less fortunate how you move them around, and you would think they would be more successful working together than the others. Right? Yep. Makes sense. We find the exact opposite. Really? Yeah. And that's what's cool about the paper, the pro government logic, well, they only work because they already did the first car. I'm not gonna talk about exit takes too long. But they've learned through this first cohort, right, which is great. And then they came in the second cohort, and they were like, Okay, we still want to do these, like community things. That's great. We love that. And we're gonna, we're gonna fund them. Now. I myself was on the steering committee with some angel investors and others who were like, what like this. Anyway, that's a whole nother story. That was interesting. So we're on this committee and And what we found was, the more market oriented the venture was, the more they benefit from the interaction with the government. And the more likely they actually persisted over time as a result, not solely of the boulder energy challenge. But those were the success stories. That's really interesting. All these other things were like, Yay, we did it. And that was it. Right? There's no business model. And so this implies a bunch of things. So the big findings of the paper number one, this idea that public private partnerships are only useful in situations where they're able to engage in contracting, this is a prevailing idea in the literature on public private partnerships. They're a methodology, they have to be really careful opportunism, they have to be sure they have clear contracting, because ironically, people theorize the government is going to take care advantage of businesses. I think the opposite happens quite a bit, too. But but that's what the literature says what we say instead, is that no, actually, the learning process of engaging in an unclear more entrepreneurial venture is perhaps more powerful for solving problems where we don't have a clear solution, like climate change, or I would say homelessness. I mean, there's another one, there's no clear solution to how you solve homelessness, it's emerging all these western cities, I think an entrepreneurial approach will be much more effective than a regulatory approach. And in many cases, second aspect that we learned from this was actually, you know, the collaboration for the government and the for profit business, when you're addressing social problems, is arguably better and more effective than trying to collaborate with add nothing against NGOs or social mission organizations. But the government already brings enough balanced that like you put the government with those kinds of organizations, they all look at each other and nod and say, Yeah, we're doing a good thing. And that's great use of the taxpayers money has Ha, whereas you look at this for private venture, they're like, Hey, can we partner with you, for example, we want to find all the Evie chargers in your government subsidized low income housing in Boulder. And we want to run a pilot of our software with those constituents. So we can market test our technology, like as an entrepreneur, that's freaking hard to do. Like, how are you gonna go find a bunch of people to market test this thing? Right now? It's a nightmare. Right? But that's awesome. But it's great. You get proof of service you that's actually one of the hardest things. Exactly. And that's the role of government can play. And that's the big takeaway from this paper, at an application level is like, if we're looking at solutions to problems with no clear solution, collaboration between entrepreneurs, not necessarily industry, but entrepreneurs who are trying to create for profit businesses, and government can be a much more powerful approach. And we're talking local government here. Yes. Small, local level, like Boulder City government is not big government.

Brad 27:47
Right. But it meet but working in Washington DC to do a blanket rollout would be a mistake. No, no.

Jeff York 27:53
Well, you could put federal funding into such programs, right. You could you could deliver it at a local No, no, no, it's much more delivered at a local level. And so so those are the kinds of the big insights that comes out of that paper. We think it's really interesting. I guess the people saw a bunch of people offered Beth jobs. I thought it was interesting. So yeah, so that's one of the projects we're working on right now. So what if I was not here, podcasting, I would be working on trying to write that in a clearer way and support it through the data. That's the problem. The paper makes a lot of sense. Beth Beth had like a lot of insight to it. It's not necessarily supported through the data in a very convincing way as of yet, not to say she just like made it up. It's just that she hasn't taken the time to go through and make sure all the data line supporting way it's very time consuming. To do that.

Brad 28:42
I have to tell you that our listeners at Creative distillation are going to love hearing what your work are working on and have worked on. Well, this was this was very interesting.

Jeff York 28:49
Do you think that was not what I intended to talk about at all? Yeah, that's good. We'll have to, I guess, come back to this paper. I was going to talk about which I'm introduced next time. Actually, you know what? This paper is so damn good. Let's see if we can't get one of the authors here. That'd be a lot more fun, actually. So okay,

Brad 29:05
dude, that was awesome. Honestly, I really liked hearing what you're doing. Well,

Jeff York 29:09
I feel very egotistical talking about but you tricked me. We had like this whiskey tasting. And then yeah, a couple of whiskies. I mean to talk about it. Yeah. We'll

Brad 29:16
talk about iraf company next. Oh, no,

Jeff York 29:19
actually, let's talk about the Phish concert. Really? I have some which one? Well, there's so many. And also have big plans coming up for Halloween. So awesome. So did I get actionable insight. So I don't know. I just saw

Brad 29:32
an insight from your paper. Okay, that are less actionable insights.

Jeff York 29:34
Eric will appreciate this. We gotta go. Okay, here we go. actionable insight. If you are an entrepreneur that is working with local governmental entity, you might initially be attracted by the idea of funding that in fact was what we were doing in this program is giving out funding. And in the first cohort, many of the entrepreneurs thought oh, the funding the funding the funding, the funding didn't matter at all. I mean, it was nice to have it might have given them a month. More burn, right? But it was the ability to collaborate with the local government. That was just one example like access to the constituents access to testing and their facilities,

Brad 30:10
feedback loops that you were able to develop are incredible. It's incredible.

Jeff York 30:13
It just it really turbocharged those ventures. So that's an actual insight for entrepreneurs. And then I've got another one for actual government entities actually want to say number two would be if you're a government entity, and you're looking to solve climate change. Anyway, that's pretty spooky. I think actually thinking about working with local entrepreneurs who are used to particularly I think, looking to try to engage with serial entrepreneurs, and people that are passionate about solving climate change or other social and environmental problems, and giving them like, you ask them to pitch initial ideas. And they just saying, Yeah, let's let's run with it. You know, here's a little bit of seed funding, what can we do to collaborate? I think that actually is maybe as productive as creating a budget. It might even be more productive. And this is where my students say, you're so right wing like free market guy. It's not a political thing. To me. It's just what my research uncovered is effective. I'd love to see more of that. And I think the other thing is that crosses and then the third actionable lens, I actually have one more. Wow, you have a lot today. Yeah, well, I got a lot of actionable insights. I tried to write these things since we've been I mean, I try write them anyway. But when you're talking about solutions to climate change, specifically, whether you're in government, whether you're a business person, whether you're just, you know, just an environmentalist that like cares about this, the more you can talk about this as a, a yes. And instead of a no but right, the more you can say yes, that's great. And we can actually build businesses around this. And we can address these things through a pro market approach. And I'm not saying that's the only way to address it. If I had my way we would have draconian taxes on carbon tomorrow, that would be great. I'll happily pay them, I'll happily tell everyone that's complaining about they should be paying them that they they've had a nice ride, but now you got to pay for all the negative externalities we we produce in this country, unfortunately. But that's not going to happen, at least in my opinion. So what do you do? You've got to build the bridge between a market economy and solving climate change in a way that produces jobs, better quality of life and solves the problem. And if you take that approach, you get a lot you get a lot more people involved. At least that's what we saw on this study. And, gosh, I've probably seen in over a dozen studies I've done at this point bread. So

Brad 32:35
that is creative distillation for my friend and researcher Jeff York. Jeff, nice having you on the show today.

Jeff York 32:42
Really weird. That was really cool. I think we shouldn't publish this one. Yeah, I think we should. All right. Well, thanks. Cheers.

Brad 32:48
Cheers.

Stefani H 32:51
We hope you enjoyed this episode of creative distillation recorded on location at the burns pub in Broomfield, Colorado. Learn more at the burns pub.com Jeff's paper, converging winds logic hybridization in the Colorado wind energy field was co written with Deseret Pacheco and Timothy Hargrave and is published in the Academy of Management Journal. Check the show notes for a link. The trick paper they discussed about the boulder Energy Challenge is an in progress collaboration with Kansas Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and see you PhD alum, Beth Embry. It's top secret for now. Let's just keep this one between us. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas email us at CD podcast@colorado.edu. And please be sure to Subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The creative distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado boulders lead School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu. That's D M. ing and click the creative distillation link. Creative distillation is produced by Joel Davis at analog digital arts. Our theme music is whiskey before breakfast performed by your humble hosts, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here for another episode of creative distillation.

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Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 58: Jonathan Odde, Founder, The Burns Pub

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 58: Jonathan Odde, Founder, The Burns Pub Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/25/2024 - 00:00

Stefani H 0:07
Welcome to another episode of Creative Distillation. Your hosts Jeff and Brad from the ��'s Leeds School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. This time on Creative Distillation, Brad and Jeff conduct field research at The Burns Pub, a truly authentic British Public House, located in Broomfield, Colorado, with a delicious menu of handmade pub delicacies, a full selection of beer and over 300 whiskies. The Burns is the spot for your fish and chips, Fuller's ESB and 15 year feta, Karen fix. Brad and Jeff are hosted by the burns co founder, Johnny od who walks them through the pubs direct UK lineage. Its history and success in Broomfield and the quality tasting of some quality spirits. Enjoy and cheers!

Jonathan Odde 1:12
Welcome to Creative distillation wherever it is still entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. I'm your host, Jeff York, research director for the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the LEED School of Business at the ��, joined by my co host who doesn't have to say all that No,

Brad 1:27
I don't think this is Brad Warner and Jeff, it's great to see you. You know I'm an entrepreneur. And we are sitting in I know it, Brad, we are we are sitting at a really cool place today.

Jonathan Odde 1:38
We our producer Joel turned us on to this place. And he as he rightfully pointed out feel not just a small amount of shame for not having been here before and and bread really thinks he should have been here because he's from Chicago. How does that work, Brad?

Brad 1:55
It's not that I'm from Chicago. It's that the whiskey list is incredible.

Jonathan Odde 1:58
Oh, okay. I thought it had some connection. Like you said you were from late. Well, I'm I'm from London mate. And I've never been to I was a really bad British accent. Anyway, we are at the burns pub, which is located right across the east entrance to the Rocky Mountain Regional Airport, which used to be the Jeffco airport over in lovely Broomfield, Colorado. So I'm really branching out Brad leaving the city of Boulder confines today. I actually

Brad 2:23
other than California, this may be our first venture

Jonathan Odde 2:28
to places like California. You know, we've never gotten to Denver. I

Brad 2:34
don't know, since I've been to Denver since I moved here. You haven't been to Denver since you moved here. And maybe

Jonathan Odde 2:39
once or twice. There's some great breweries in Denver, but we'll go there at some point. But today we're at the burns pub where you find the burns bob.com Amazing place and we have a special guest. Yeah, we

Brad 2:49
have Jonathan Odde. Jonathan, Welcome to Creative distillation. Tell us about the burns pop.

Jonathan Odde 2:56
Well, it's a family owned, and operated very much operated with my sister and I who who run it. It's my father and my sister and myself. who own it. My father is retired living in Jamaica, mostly Nice. Occasionally person comes by and says hello. But that's Yeah, sounds like the gig. He's got the better part of the deal. We love doing it though. So, and I I'm actually the founder and my sister kind of the general manager and I'm the general manager for the for the pub. Okay, so

Brad 3:34
how long is the first pub? Ben here?

Jonathan Odde 3:36
August 3 2011 was opening day so just over 12 years now, but it really feels old school. Well, the property has been here for a while. So the it's it's part of the hilltop in which we also own and then the hilltop in has been here since 1984 used to be called the Broomfield guesthouse and we purchased it that back in my parents actually did back in 2002 and started the burns pub in 2011. But so it's actually a little bit of a Bavarian style building but we you know, we've kind of retrofitted

Brad 4:17
the seats but also maybe country English

Jonathan Odde 4:21
Yeah, was the vibe I was getting country English. Yeah, scene. So you guys spend a lot of time in the UK like what influenced like our interest in this

my mum specifically, but she passed away about six years ago, but she was the inspiration for it. And growing up there. We spent a lot of time there as kids and spent a lot of times in pubs. We actually in my my relatives in the UK, lived in a very small town and they frequented pubs quite a bit and so we we didn't see a single one And that really was authentic in the Denver area. So, and not and not to mention the other. The other thing was I wanted a place to showcase our love of our my love of whiskey, but also my love of my family's food, my mother's cooking and my aunt's cooking and the cooking that I grew up with because the reputation for UK food is not exactly stellar is so

like the epicenter of food culture,

they're doing very well. Yeah.

That's what I'm told by people who wouldn't know. Yeah, well, you

have a lot of gastropubs that are food forward as well. Yeah,

I love the UK. My grandmother was British. She was a war bride. Obviously love whiskey, and this place is just it's warming my heart.

Brad 5:49
I love the UK to ice. Yeah, you're there in college, and it was frickin Great. Yeah. I

Jonathan Odde 5:54
don't know if I mentioned my mother. The connection to the UK is actually my mother was born in Northampton. Raised in Oxford. Her mother was Welsh. Her father was Irish. And the name actually comes from my father's side, which was my grandmother, who was Scottish. The burns name is actually her her maiden name, but it's not named after Robert Burns, which a lot of people write the first easy assumption, right? Yeah, exactly. So

Brad 6:24
I don't think love of whiskey actually truly describes you though. It's not a love of whiskey if you have 600 whiskies close to Yeah, yeah, that's

Jonathan Odde 6:36
that's, we, we might have the most whiskey per square foot. Because we're it's actually behind this tiny bar. And there's something

where we got to do the photo for this. For sure.

Brad 6:53
I knew that there was a deep heritage though, when you call your mom Mom. Yeah.

Jonathan Odde 6:58
She's always she's always mom. Yeah.

Brad 7:00
Okay, well, let's have a drink. Let's see what you brought out. And let's talk about three interesting whiskies. Yeah,

Jonathan Odde 7:05
well, I got some whiskies that I thought were representative of kind of what we do here at the pub. So the first one is laws, right? And we have done a lot of bourbon single cask selection. And now the array, we do a lot of single casks, we select casks from distilleries all over the country. So let's actually

Brad 7:27
describe to our listeners what a single Cask is and how it works.

Jonathan Odde 7:31
So essentially, you select a cask from their warehouse, and say I want that cask and you taste several casks. And you say, I want that cask and they bottle it, put it into bottles, put it into cases, and you purchase it, you know, the whole, the whole lot of them, and then you keep the barrel. Awesome. And then you actually can brand the label. And you you get your get your name on the label because it's our selection. And that was, so I've done many, many, many of these. This one in particular, we like laws a lot. In fact, we do a lot of selections from local distilleries. We like to support local as much as we possibly can. Colorado has a fantastic distillery scene since Wall Street hands basically starting the Micro Distillery movement here in the in the United States. And so you have fantastic distilleries here or you know Alister over at Boulder spirits

this episode doesn't end up like that one. You can be highly rated

Brad 8:47
I'm looking at bottles of whiskey no water no food.

Jonathan Odde 8:52
Kitchens actually mentioned that the kitchen looks amazing. Like Scotch egg I saw all sorts of pup foods that like I haven't seen anywhere around here. So yeah, the food looks I wish I wish it was shepherds really good

Brad 9:05
shepherd style pie. Come on. This is awesome. Yeah. Mash some really

Jonathan Odde 9:09
great stuff to like corned beef poutine that's really cool. Yeah.

Corned beef. Poutine is a big seller for us. Certainly our best selling appetizer it's an appetizer a lot of people order it as Where's laws? Laws is in Denver kind of South

Yeah, laws is laws is actually a very well known. distillery here in Colorado. And yeah, they've won lots of awards and yeah, great whiskies.

Brad 9:46
So Jonathan, take us through the tasting of Cheers, guys. Yeah, cheers and why you actually selected this barrel?

Jonathan Odde 9:54
Well, this barrel to me. It had lots of character It's going to be going into cocktails, it's going to be going into, you know, and it will be set neat. So you don't want something that's lighter. So I picked something that was quite bold, has a lot of spice character right up front, you get a bit of that spice, almost slightly delay note, and it's just just a beautiful whiskey and you want to whiskey that's going to be going into a cocktail to stand up to the cocktail. You don't want it to disappear. A lot of people, you know, if you drink vodka, maybe you do want it to disappear. But if you don't, if you're a whiskey drinker, you want your cocktails tonight.

That's fantastic. Yes,

but a caramel. Good. Good. Glad you enjoy it. Yeah, that's a that's a bit of caramel and it's got that spicy finish. It's just a little peppery. Just a beautiful whiskey. And that's, I would say pretty typical of rise to have that spicy character, but I just thought this had a little bit more a little bit more gonna change. I

Brad 11:00
think this is enough to drink without being an

Jonathan Odde 11:03
absolutely, yeah, that's. Well, it has to be both right. Yeah.

From a from a pub owner. You have to do both. Yeah, exactly as a whiskey

Brad 11:13
fan, but I'm just I'm just thankful for Jonathan because the last time I saw you, Jeff, we were drinking pumpkin beer. Oh. Finally upgrade. Yeah,

Jonathan Odde 11:20
we will tis the season.

John, so we've gone like that's interesting. We've gone like from Brad's least favorite beverage like my most favorite.

Glad to be glad to be representing your most favorite. Here you go. Yeah.

I do. Just adding a few drops?

I do. Yeah, I typically do. Especially if I'm tasting something for the first time like you are. This is not my first time tasting this, obviously. But I do tend to add a bit of water to to a whiskey to help open it up a little bit. Sure.

Brad 11:53
So how much whiskey is in a cask, usually

Jonathan Odde 11:57
bright around 32 cases of six.

Brad 12:00
So you won't sell this though. You'll just sell it at the bar. Or you could I buy a bottle of this. We

Jonathan Odde 12:06
can Yeah, we can sell a bottle of you. Yeah, we don't do a lot of that. Let me let me let me rephrase that. No, come here and drink it. Yeah.

Brad 12:16
So just so our listeners know if they want to try some interesting whiskies that they can't get at a Hazel's or their local shop can come here to try some really unique things. So I 100% Highly recommend whiskey lovers come to the burns pub, the selection is amazing.

Jonathan Odde 12:36
We also have a single cask bourbon from new riff right now as well. We riff is making a lot a lot of waves and that's a cask strength, new riff bourbon as well. So we got to reschedule our

meetings for the rest of the day. Well, I got a lot of once we had the water it tastes very different. I got like, Yeah, but black licorice.

Absolutely. I'm getting a kind of some kind of herbal notes. Me and the nose is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And it's got a beautiful nose to it. It's got a little bit of floral illness, some some caramel and I get I even get a little bit of molasses. Just a beautiful, beautiful little whiskey. I like that one quite a bit.

It's hard bringing creative distillation to you folks out there. If you're a if you're listening to this help us out, go ahead and hit five star review. Because you heard about whiskey you're not gonna hear about anywhere else and

Brad 13:27
go to the birds pub folks. This I didn't know this existed, actually seeing a lot more

of each other. Okay.

Joel texted me because we were talking about the episode, he just goes, you're gonna love this place. And you said trust me. And

Jonathan Odde 13:44
Joel knows this stuff.

Brad 13:45
So So Jonathan, though you have approximately 600 Different whiskies. You selected three for us today, what was the process of saying, hey, out of the 600. I'm going to bring these down for these fellas. Well, for

Jonathan Odde 13:56
different reasons, actually. This first one is obviously because this is one of our single barrel picks and it's a local, we like to support local. The other ones for different reasons, the Springbank here, which is going to be our next one. This is actually my personal favorite distillery. It is the bar standard for craft distilleries worldwide. Its icon, absolute icon distillery, you know, people think of single malt scotch and they think think of the McKellen's and Glenn limits and whatever. And that's all well and good. But people who really know whiskey This is the distillery that they they respect the most. It's a distillery that's been around awhile, actually. 1828 but legally, it was it was it was an illicit distillery before that, but they've have always had the very highest quality, the only distillery in Scotland that does 100% of their own everything from the floor malting to the bottling of the whiskey and house, which is as high As craft as it gets, and when I say craft, it's not hyperbolic marketing, it's, you know, it's the real thing. And so they they do the everything from the floor malting with the bottling without a single computer in the whole process. It's a it's hand handcrafted as it gets. If you go to Scotland and visit one distillery in your whole life, this is the one to visit. It's literally a working, working museum. And it's absolutely fascinating. It's just beautiful whiskey.

What region of Scotland is it?

This is from the Campbellton region. And this is a not so well known region, because there's only three distilleries there. Two of them are owned by the Mitchell family, which is who owns Springbank. And now, there's something that just recently occurred, it's no longer you was until literally just last month, the oldest family owned distillery in Scotland. Headley right, the owner had no heirs, and he passed away last last month. And you could literally write a book on this distillery and you wouldn't be at a loss for words you actually could write. So he passed away and gave the handed the distillery over to the town of Campbellton. He's as he's as he's as Bay Packers. Right? Exactly. Very, very similar concept. He actually. So what Campbellton in case you don't know is a town of well, in the Victorian era was a town of about 2000, people had about 34 Plus distilleries in Wow. So do the math on that very, very high distillery per capita. But nowadays, it's a little bit more than 2000 people. But still, he was was very proud of his town, and, you know, like to support local, to the degree that he went out of his way to make sure that whatever he did was creating jobs for the local people of Campbellton. Hence, why they still to this day, do everything from the floor malting to the bottling in house, they don't send any of that off, even though it's more cost effective. They keep it in house because he wants to support the local community. And that's, you know, the ethos that I think most, if not all, independent, businesses should kind of, you know, support each other support local community, and absolutely, yeah. So when he passed away, he didn't want it going to the hands of big corporations, and he made sure of it. So it's, you know, in a trust, and you know, he's not going anywhere. Can you buy a liquor store? No. So here's the thing about spring bank, and this is something that's relatively recent, the demand for spring bank has grown so, so much that it's very difficult to find, we're one of the few places in the Denver area that you can still find it, there's a couple places and in Denver that you can get it, but we actually get a lot of, you know, we have a very good relationship with both the distributor and the distillery. And so we get a lot of it, and you just can't find them, they get snatched up as soon as you

Brad 18:15
get on the highway to get it as to go to the distillery or

Jonathan Odde 18:19
pay an exorbitant price on the aftermarket. It's one of those so like when people talk about allocated whiskies, like pappy, Van Winkle, and all of that stuff that those types of whiskies those are artificially allocated, okay, they create the demand themselves by limiting the amount that they produce, they could easily produce enough for everybody but they don't. This is a distillery that simply by the way, have they they are a tiny distillery and can only produce so much every year. They can't keep up with the demand anymore. So so it's a very sought after whiskey, it's a beautiful whiskey, they do everything from unpeated to heavily peated and, and they have all sorts of variations within and just really know what they're doing. So I chose that one as my as a as the second whiskey for today. Let's give that one if you want to pour yourself one. There you go. Yeah.

Be careful with that.

So this one in particular that we're having is a 12 year old cask strength. This is part of their core whiskies and it is absolutely beautiful. It's lightly peated so it's not it's not super smoky, but it is it does have a bit of smoke to it

arburg I'm looking at the post over there like yeah,

it's not Yeah, it's not it's not the sample. Yeah, that's the that's the little bit a little bit more on the PD side, but this one is about 60% sherry cask matured and about 40% X bourbon

the room It's not, not refer aggressive very

Brad 20:05
smokiness though right away. Yeah.

Jonathan Odde 20:07
But it's mild. It's not no no like a punch, you know, kind of smokiness that I actually like.

Well, and that's and that's I think one of the things that people like about Springbank specifically and other distilleries that do a lighter style peated single malt like bran Romac and you know a couple of others, where it has that hint of smoke, but it's not overpowering the other elements. It's really good. I feel like just lighting

Brad 20:34
the place on fire putting my feet up and just a nice yeah,

Jonathan Odde 20:38
this is what he's trying to get to the research discussion. Brad's just like now bringing me some more that spring begs me and it's, that's really good.

Now's a great mouthfeel that very viscous and just coats the mouth smooth is a

word that keeps coming to mind for me for this. I know that's not very good descriptor. But it is,

you know, when you when you think about peated whiskies and scotches and stuff like that, smooth is not a word that people come that comes to people's mind, but it is something that you can sit there and sip on and, and have, you know, not not feel like it's obtrusive in any way. But it's just just absolutely. normally

Brad 21:21
not a fan of very smoky. But this is balance. Yeah, right. So the balance here is great. So you get those overpowering smoking ones for me. It's like no, thanks. It could go into barbecue sauce.

Jonathan Odde 21:36
arburg is a bit much about like Talisker. I mean

Oscars the light lighter, yeah, that's, that's a little bit less more

towards this spectrum. I would say. I love this. Yes, it's good. So next CD podcast, roadtrip, Scotland, Campbellton. Scotland. Yeah.

That would be great. That would be a thumbs up. And it is a fascinating town in general. You know, you go you go there. And it's just, you know, the air just kind of

wears itself north. Like it was

on the near the end of the entire peninsula, on the western side of Scotland. So basically, you know, Glasgow, you head up and then back down from Scotland out here. Yeah, actually, I've got one upstairs. I'll show you later. But yeah, the entire peninsula is an interesting one in Campbellton. In general, if you're music fans, it's it was since the 1960s. Paul McCartney has a farm there, just right outside of Campbellton. And, incidentally, some of the barley that Springbank gets is from Paul McCartney's farm. But the song The Long and Winding Road was a song that he wrote on his way back from you know, you'd gotten into a fight with the rest of the Beatles and was driving down the entire peninsula down the and that a wrote the long and winding road down that. Linda McCartney's Memorial Gardens is in Campbellton. Yeah, so but it is a very interesting little town. Considering the size of it. You've got a lot of history there for sure.

Brad 23:19
These are fabulous. Yeah. Are you looking up just looking up Campbellton

Jonathan Odde 23:22
because I just I'm trying

it's really not near anything.

Yeah, that's how the middle of nowhere I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

invergarry up there. Yeah, you know, which is a tiny little place to write in itself, but it's probably the closest you got a great castle there and very right, right. But yeah, so this you know, Springbank has been my favorite distillery for a long time. And this is kind of, you know, just when I you know, I'm talking about the community and everything like that local community and everything. Their ethos is kind of ours. Yes. It was very similar to kindred in way

do you guys like lease out this this basement area around it's just beautiful. Do you like lease this out for events and stuff? Because

we have no been known to

Brad 24:08
Yeah, atomic center might have new venture launch next time

Jonathan Odde 24:11
this is actually one of my it's probably my favorite room in the whole place like this room it's it's a love it or hate it room. Some people don't like coming down here because they think they're being put into the basement but I actually much prefer this this is I'd like to put into the basement.

So as you're sorting whiskies like this, and

it's very common, and you know, as you sure you know, you go to the UK, their basement parts of the pubs all really

rickety stairs

are staircase, unfortunately, is not rickety. Yeah.

It's probably a good thing in the grand scheme of things. It'd be cool if it was truly creaky and kind of felt like it might give out any minute. There's usually like a stone wall and men smacking me you We pay Yeah, we still gotta get back over to the UK sometime.

Brad 25:03
I totally agree. We

Jonathan Odde 25:04
were supposed to go and we just couldn't make it we had we actually had people inviting us and we just couldn't. No, I've

Brad 25:08
never been to Scotland. Have you ever been to Scotland? Nope. Denver or Scotland? No. Well,

Jonathan Odde 25:13
okay, so if there's a one.

Brad 25:17
I'm totally with you. We got to do a Scotland. That would be amazing.

Jonathan Odde 25:20
Going every year now. So I am judging a whiskey competition and Glasgow. So

Brad 25:27
that would be a great place

Jonathan Odde 25:29
to go to the whiskey competition. That would be quite a podcast. So when is this show this will be extremely relevant and clear episodes. Be really precise on the research.

late April is I think when they're the it's it starts next year, went out there, preliminarily, this past year, and I go there pretty regularly anyway. So this is just all the more reason to go. It's called the world whiskey challenge. And it's actually very unique. I judge whiskey competitions and spirits competitions. But this one I've never seen before. The concept is that they're they hold one in Glasgow, and they hold one in Tokyo a few weeks later, a couple weeks later, and then another one in New York. And each one is so the one in Glasgow is obviously European whiskies. Sure. Yeah, exactly. And then the one in Tokyo is going to be more of the Asian market whiskies and then here in the States, the Bourbons and American single malt, which we'll be getting to very shortly here. And then I think, at the New York one, which is the last one, they're going to be having a Best of Show for the whole the whole thing and you know, the best of best of each events are going to be getting together and then there'll be judging a winner for the whole year.

Brad 26:53
Life is very interesting. Travel is tough as a whiskey. Yeah, My life sucks.

Jonathan Odde 26:59
Yeah, being comparatively.

My life's great. So what do we have here, Jonathan?

So I guess you could say that this is definitely something that the Burns is kind of moving towards and that is, recently they have officially defined a single malt American whiskey American single malt whiskies and this is we're gonna go back to the beginning here because this is a McCarthy's and McCarthy's is the original American single malt and this is made at Clear Creek distillery in Portland Oregon. I actually years and years ago, I was there and tasting the distillate right off the off of the Stell now this one, sorry, but you're probably not going to love this one because it's heavily peated but it is it is heavily peated and they specifically wanted to do a Scottish style single malt whiskey here in the United States, but with an American twist, so they don't age in ex bourbon casks. They age in for instance, they age in fresh oak and I believe they actually are aging in quarter casks as well as initially This one however, is a six year old that has finished and Oloroso sherry cask so and this is an absolutely beautiful whiskey but it is a big smoky it's not it's not as smoky as on our dagger Laphroaig or something like that, but it is it's definitely has that PD element to it. Love it. Yeah, that's kind of smelling it. Yeah. It's kind of a wonderful aroma to it. Yeah, so

that smells good. But now well, can you share a little bit that

Yeah, and that's the thing about you know, you want that those those no matter what the Sharia is going to influence at

the front end Do you have the Sherry For sure I do anyway, yeah. Yeah, it's good. That's my favorite. No offense to other whiskies but that's just what I like.

Yeah, that's just a simply fantastic whiskey and so you know, right now unfortunately, Jim Beam is trying to put a you know, they passed the law but they haven't actually set the law into effect yet on American single malt. Jim Beam is trying to say no, you know, the laws aren't good enough American single malt have to be aged in fresh charred oak it's just so why would they even

I mean, how does this even affect their market at all? I have no like there's nobody is going to buy a handle a Jim Beam as in you know, I might get that McCarthy's a sherry instead, right. You get this gallon of Jim Beam. Before the football game. Well,

they're doing decision they're trying to do American single character as well, because you know, this is the next takes

market, you know, gotta keep taking that's entrepreneurship podcast as people get big, they just I don't know what happens. Yeah.

But you know, and the thing is these places like Westland, and we're actually right here, Boulder spirits was, was really pushing the the American single malt movement, you know, part of that group of distilleries nationwide that were pushing American single malt to be an actual category. But, you know, why restrict it to short American hope when you can, when you can have so much more variety and so much more complexity and champions a

lot of pressure?

Really, what it boils down to is, hey, I know the answer. That's what it sounds like to resources.

Brad 30:58
Sujatha can you find McCarthy's at your local liquor store? Is that something special

Jonathan Odde 31:02
on you're starting to see it a bit more? Okay, this one's actually was was one that was really tricky to find for quite a while, but you're starting to see it a bit more. So you know, probably larger liquor stores, you know, Argonauts and stuff like that your Apple Jack, that type of thing, I would think definitely would carry McCarthy's some version of it. I don't know if they're going to carry this one. I will say they have two releases that just recently came out a PX finish an Oloroso finished px, meaning Pedro Ximenez sherry casks and Oloroso sherry casks finished, and they're both phenomenal, but the standard McCarthys is excellent as well. So it's really, really good whiskies. Yeah. And you're, you know, like I mentioned, and not, you know, American single malts. This is a kind of an outlier, because it's it's heavily peated American single malt, typically or not, but, you know, maybe a little bit of Pete, I know, Boulder spirits, has dabbled with it. Westland has dabbled with a little bit of peat as well. But you're seeing some really innovative and that's one of the things about American single malt and the American spirit in general is that we're very innovative. And we like to, you know, you give us some rules, we'll try and bend them. America.

Exactly. You show us a pumpkin beer. As Brad found out much to his joy. But I mean, this is a different level of innovation. It's much, much less gimmicky, I guess, I would say it's more about like developing a flavor of love America. I mean, I'm not I mean, I'm a huge fan of American brewing. Don't get me wrong, but like, sometimes people just get a little over enthused about some of the experiments. Yeah, I think the banana raspberry sour milkshake. I had that point. I was like, okay, even I'm out on this. Every time I drink this, Jonathan, I want to say like, Oh, my God, that's like, Oh, stop saying it. Because it's you like, well, this is

Brad 33:08
pretty penny. But the flavor is amazing, really.

Jonathan Odde 33:12
And I started

going back from the mics as we drink more whiskey.

Chair, yes, yes. So this this one, you know, I would, I would say it's maybe just a tad more PD than the Springbank. But you know, just knowing how to extract the most flavor from the casks and everything like that, rather than, you know, you don't want to just cover it all up with smoke and creosote, and whatever. But this is a great complexity, and yet still has that. Isla ask, kind of, you know, character to it.

You know, this was he's making me wish it was Friday.

Brad 34:00
It's Friday. It's

Jonathan Odde 34:02
true. Yeah. Every every day is Friday for bread.

Brad 34:05
So actually, this reminds me of a story. The last time I was in London, I went to a store that specializes in all types of whiskies. And I walk in the door and it's 930 in the morning. There's this Scottish guy there. That's a six, six and all muscle, and he's like, Hey, laddie, come on in and, you know, like three shots later at 930 I think I bought six or seven bottles. Yeah, sure. But the guy is doing it all day. Right? I mean, I don't understand how many how many glasses of whiskey is a normal day for you Jonathan?

Jonathan Odde 34:41
I you know, I don't drink every day. I drink occasionally. But you know, yeah, I can. Well, I mean, obviously I do it professionally for a living. I will say that I've got one of those rare, say rare, but I don't know how common it is but I Don't get addicted to alcohol. So yeah, I just appreciate it. And I love it. And I enjoy it. And I love a great whiskey and I can sit down and I can, I can drink a lot. And the next day I won't have any or, you know, several days. Doesn't doesn't really affect me in that way. But I do. I do appreciate a great whiskey and I don't I do want to encourage people not to over and

Brad 35:26
so for all of you young entrepreneurs. When you hear do things that you love, and you're good at, you might want to stay away though from opening up a whiskey.

Jonathan Odde 35:37
Yes, you definitely.

But if you have that kind of, you know, metabolism or whatever it is, but yeah, it definitely could be something that whiskey if you're passionate about it, right.

Brad 35:51
Yeah, I mean in there's so there's different expressions, and each three of these bottles, which is really an artistry as well. So the

Jonathan Odde 35:57
complexity is McCarthy's like is really every time I sip it so I get the sherry on the front end. And then I get like kind of the woody kind of cast flavor. Chocolate. Yeah, okay. Yeah, there's that too. Yep. I mean, I gotta try it again.

Brad 36:10
I think it my buddy had McCarthy who was one of my business partners, and one of my oldest friends.

Jonathan Odde 36:14
Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Not Dead chocolate.

Brad 36:21
That's awesome. I'm actually imagining that sitting here right with us.

Jonathan Odde 36:26
We sit here too much longer. You might be seeing him. I don't know. Jonathan, this is amazing. Thank you so much for the gift of this tasting. This is possible. Yeah. And, you know, so burns, burn the burns pub, you gotta get out here, the burns pub.com Check it out. If you're anywhere nearby if you happen to be in Denver, which apparently exists. Brad's not sure. This is a very short drives also a very short drive from Boulder if you're just gonna be in the area, and you will go see a place it as 600 whiskies I think Brad and I are gonna be back here. This

Brad 36:58
is this is insane and insane in a great way. Amazing. Plus, you have someone like Jonathan behind the bar, who can talk you through all of your tastes. We

Jonathan Odde 37:07
have really cool. We actually have another gentleman by the name of Jasper, who's certified whiskey Somalia. We have of course, Ron Nadal who, who Joel knows, and, and he's just one of the greatest people you'll ever meet. And he is here from time to time as well. And he loves to talk whiskey. We do whiskey tastings every month, and whiskey dinners. So, okay, so keep an eye on our Facebook page a few because that's where we announced those Facebook and Instagram. And so those are a lot of fun. So yeah.

Brad 37:44
Awesome. Well, Jonathan, thank you for joining us today. This is great and you're outstanding host. I've learned a lot.

Jonathan Odde 37:49
I've learned a ton. I've learned about whiskies I can't buy come here. That's great. You got to come to the burns pub. I mean, I guess there's a few other plays. I don't know where they are. But I'm gonna go find this McCarthy's for sure because I've got a d&d player and he brings the best whiskey. See Brad, you would like Dungeons and Dragons. Whiskey would like the whiskey part. This guy plays he always brings great whiskey and now I can go get McCarthy's somewhere and try to one up and below because he keeps bringing all these amazing whiskies I've never heard of. So this is the creative distillation podcast. We'll be coming back to you from bourbons pub, our next episode. We're gonna do an old school new guest. Straight paper. No Chaser. We got it. So we're gonna just be talking about recent paper drinking some more whiskey maybe. And I enjoying this whiskey a great deal. This is so good. I just I really truly like, oh, man, I was just really making me wish it was Friday. It's very relaxing. It is. It's just almost too relaxing for me. Perfect. Okay, well, great. So Brad's happy. That's good. I'm Jeff York, research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. I

Brad 38:58
am Brad Warner. It is great to be with you, Jeff. It's great to be with you, Jonathan. Thank you. And we'll talk to y'all soon. Yeah,

Jonathan Odde 39:04
thanks again. And one last plug. Hit that subscribe button. We actually would like you to subscribe if you have feedback, write to us at CD podcast@colorado.edu. Thanks a lot. We appreciate John.

Thank you.

I'll see you next time.

Stefani H 39:19
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Creative Distillation recorded on location at The Burns Pub in Broomfield, Colorado. Learn more at theburnspub.com. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. Email us at CDpodcast@colorado.edu. And please be sure to subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The Creative Distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the ��'s Leeds School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu. That's D-E-M-ING and click the Creative Distillation link. Creative Distillation is produced by Joel Davis at Analog Digital Arts. Our theme music is "Whiskey Before Breakfast" performed by your humble host, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here for another episode of Creative Distillation.

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Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 57: Trent Williams (BYU) on the "Architecture of Hope" + Sweet Cow Ice Cream

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Creative Distillation - Transcript for Episode 57: Trent Williams (BYU) on the "Architecture of Hope" + Sweet Cow Ice Cream Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/14/2023 - 00:00

Stefani H 0:07
Welcome to another episode of Creative Distillation. Your hosts Jeff and Brad from the ��'s Leeds School of Business, discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. There's a sweet twist to this episode as Brad and Jeff are joined by Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Brigham Young University Trent Williams for a tasting of frozen treats from Sweet Cow, a Colorado based ice cream chain, trying to make a better world in addition to amazing ice cream. Vegan ice cream, sorbet or regular ol straight up ice cream, which will be the favorite? Stay tuned for this revelation, as well as a wider ranging discussion about trends recent research, extensive academic career, and his focus on new venture emergence and innovation. Enjoy and cheers!

Jeff York 1:05
Welcome to Creative distillation where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. I am your co host, Jeff York. I'm still the research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship manage not to get fired so far. And I'm joined as always by my co.

Brad 1:22
I am Brad Warner. I work at the Deming center with Jeff, I am an entrepreneur. But Jeff, you have some exciting news.

Jeff York 1:28
I do. Yeah, your title has changed. I'm trying a new flavor of yerba monta today. You're referring to no honey don't recommend the peach way. Okay, we have a peach theme going on. ��

Brad 1:39
the peach, the palisade peach. So I love palisade peaches. Sweet cow really enjoyed the guests that we have coming up, oh, we got all kinds of items. But to get going, I really want to talk about your professional life change.

Jeff York 1:52
I have a professional life today. So tell us tell our listeners what's going on. I'm the Associate Dean for strategic initiatives. Okay, so we have no longer the division chair for social responsibility and sustainability. Nor am I the division chair for organizational leadership and information analytics. So I have to list I've consolidated titles now.

Brad 2:14
That which is awesome, meaning less work more money. I totally get it.

Jeff York 2:18
I don't think it's gonna be less work. i Yeah. Okay. So it's a different kind of work, right? That's a yes. Okay. So it depends on what you mean by work. Like, so. If work is managing people, it is definitely less work. I am, I have loved my time as a division chair. The people I've worked with have been lovely. But I went into academia. So well, not primarily but but big reason I went back and I did not want to manage people ever, ever again. And I do not enjoy managing people. I do not enjoy telling people that they're doing something wrong or that they need to change what they do. I just don't like having authority over people. Like I just does not my thing. And that's basically what you do as the division chair you. Well, I mean, okay, on the flip side, you get to hire great people sometimes. And you get to tell people, you're doing a great job, help them promote sometimes, but usually you're dealing with problems. And thankfully, we don't have a lot, but we have some as any school does. And so, not being a division chair, instead, being the associated infrastructure initiatives is really exciting, because we have a new dean, Dr. Vijay country, who's joining us from Indiana University.

Brad 3:31
Yeah, hopefully, we will get him here. Well, I

Jeff York 3:33
hope so he said he was gonna do it. But we'll see. And I'll probably have this title right up until the point we record.

Brad 3:41
Well, here's the thing. Oh, this

Jeff York 3:43
is what Jeff actually.

Brad 3:46
So so the role has changed from managing people to thinking about strategy from the parking lot of a phish concert?

Jeff York 3:52
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, mostly from the parking lot of a phish concert. I know you so well, well, so I wish I could just go to phish concert parking lots and think about this, that'd be really great. But my actual job is to gather input from all of our stakeholders across a broad array of strategic initiatives, you're gonna how do we improve student outcomes? How do we actually improve our research standing and productivity? And at the same time, how do we improve our relationships with our community members and stakeholders? And so if you think about those three pillars of any good school strategy, and if you think about like the culture as sort of the underlying what makes those things happen, how people treat each other how they collaborate, my job is to figure out the arrows that go both ways between those pillars. And so yeah, so I don't think that's going to be less work.

Brad 4:47
You don't tease me, right? Yeah, no, no. And I think truthfully, as my friend, the university is lucky to have you in that position. I'm really, I'm really thrilled there. But when I think about entrepreneurship, and how fast We would try to make those changes in the real world versus do you have 1012 years to do this?

Jeff York 5:04
Are you ever done this in a corporate setting? I mean, oh my god, like it moves like a mono. Yeah. And I mean, I think we're actually I mean, I dare I say, Yeah, I'll go and say, I think that I think that the elite school is faster moving on some of these things, and most corporations are

Brad 5:20
gonna find out, well, we're gonna find out, let's mark the day and we should do a check in every year. Yeah, I

Jeff York 5:25
don't have much choice. Well, I generally have two years. So

Brad 5:28
that's right. Because then you have to take a year off

Jeff York 5:31
sabbatical, to go, you know, recuperate by going to fish party. That's what you do on sabbatical, right? You just go to a fish Park. actually goes to the concert, you stay on the parking lot. And tailgate. Yeah, no. So no, really, I asked. They asked me to do it for a three year appointment. I wanted to do it for two years. But the time horizon for which we're planning is 2035. So the idea is we start now we move really fast. By 2025. We hope to have an actual clear plan in place with key performance indicators, tactics, goals, and all the stuff we have to have. So and then I will, and then I will go on sabbatical. So

Brad 6:10
by 2035, we'll have two other Dean's or two Dean's in the future, they will not even remember, whatever. What do you think we'll see? We'll see.

Jeff York 6:20
Yeah, so so. So our guests coming in? Is your person which is awesome. We're really excited to be able to get him here because last time he was on via zoom, I think it was at the height of lockdown, as I recall. So Dr. Trent Williams is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and strategy. Got that right. Is that what your new title is? I believe so. Yeah. Cool. Good to know. Thank you for joining us.

Trent Williams 6:43
We are great to be back. And great to be in person. Absolutely.

Jeff York 6:47
So we were gonna do this episode and a bunch of places that will remain nameless. And none of them would call us back. So you can see the creative distillation brand just moving ahead here in Boulder. We are powerful. We are powerful. It's funny places that sell alcohol all call us back immediately, when we tried to go for the night because Trent is not a drinker. And Brad told us he wasn't going to drink because he's getting ready to teach a class. That's what he said. And I was like, Yeah, and I just came in on a flight I had to get I had to get up at like four this morning to go on a flight so I wasn't planning to drink. So we do have some other things to sample. And we're actually going to visit these guys at some point in the future. So we got some local ice cream as a a Colorado ice cream company called Sweet cow. I don't know that much about them. They were founded in 2010. They say their mission is to make the best ice cream in the world and the cleanest ice cream parlor you've ever seen. I think they're doing pretty well. We're gonna find out that we're gonna taste some ice creams. What I do know about them is a bunch of my son's friends have worked there. And actually a couple of professors, kids I know of work there. And everybody says they are amazing at working with teen employees. And I definitely saw that during the pandemic where they stuck with a bunch of kids and really helped them work through some hard times. I think it's an amazing company. If you're in Colorado, they're all over the place. We went to the one in North Boulder, but there's some all around Denver, there's some in Boulder, and they were so funny. We went in there to buy an ice cream and why did you do it here we were like we were rejected by five other places on our way here. Of course

Brad 8:19
we'd let you by the way anytime my family comes into town, Jeff, this is like our first stop

Jeff York 8:25
this week. Great. They love it. All right, so we have two vegan ice creams here. I think we'll start with the vegan ones and work our way up. So we're gonna do a little little taste sampling of sweet cows. We also I brought up a thorough thing so I'm so happy to see my friends today and because you know what your associate dean you have this massive budget you can afford to go buy ice cream and peaches for your friends. We have some palisade peaches. I don't really know. I just know that palisade peaches come from the western slope of Colorado. It's harvest time I always associate with elk hunting season because that's why I usually buy them so yeah, fall in Colorado. palisade peaches, sweet cow ice cream. What do we try first? flight away we got one other

Brad 9:05
use for palisade peaches is take cut up your peaches, put them in a bottle, pour a bottle of bourbon in there and close it up for two weeks. It is incredible.

Jeff York 9:15
What bourbon would you recommend

Brad 9:16
you can do? Pretty much anything I would do like a bullets or something even at that level and that doesn't have to be very expensive. The outcome is your pappy This is not a pappy. Coffee.

Jeff York 9:27
So here's what we got. Here's what we got. We got vegan strawberry banana, golden Oreo. That's one flavor. I think that's got one. Yeah. Okay. We've got vegan chocolate chip, chocolate Vegan Chocolate Chocolate Chip. We have key lime sorbet. And then we have Trump's pick which was what was this? Raspberry chocolate raspberry check, which we have first.

Trent Williams 9:47
I asked man, let's I want to try this. The vegan what was it?

Jeff York 9:51
Vegan strawberry banana golden Oreo. So while Trent's getting that up, we got some serving dishes here. Brad, what are you what are you excited about? Uh, you know, we're sort of in the midst of a new season here. What are you excited about? So

Brad 10:04
here's I actually was, we were speaking of this before we started recording, some prior students working to make solar delivery more efficient and scalable, through the Department of Energy, just won the National Solar prize. Wow. So

Jeff York 10:17
are there multiple winners of the National Solar prize? Really, there's one, one and Cheers, guys. They won this. So I'm sorry. They

Brad 10:27
won the solar solar prize given by the Department of Energy good. And I have people all the time asking about funding. And we were just talking that it's not about the funding, it's about getting some customers doing something that really is groundbreaking. And the funding will come to you. And that's exactly what's happening with this team. And it's really, really exciting for them. And it's, it's great for our environments.

Jeff York 10:48
That is really cool. So winning that money. What do you think is worth more in that price? Is it the cash? Or the legitimacy? They gave them that prize? I mean, a lot of federal prizes. Yeah. The cash is great. Of course, we'll take it, but that's really the legitimation Oh, yeah. 100%. Oh, yeah. To show theory is right.

Trent Williams 11:07
That's right. Well, yeah, you get that legitimate, especially around these complex things where it's its impact. And it's, well, if we look at this full cycle, is it actually doing what it says it does? When you have those big institutional actors say, Hey, you're onto something, especially if it's a newer innovation, then that's phenomenal. Yeah. And

Brad 11:24
it's patented. Now. They're actually going into their first power plants in Hawaii in January. So do beyond just modeling. They're doing actual real pilot testing now.

Jeff York 11:34
what is the actual technology like what

Brad 11:36
it allows a, a constant output of solar power from a large panel array. So if you think of many, many acres of solar panels, and if you think about cloud, kind of randomly coming through, it's able to manipulate the grid and the power output in a way that the output is exactly the same, depending on whatever's happening with water.

Jeff York 11:58
Decrease intermittency and the need for the grid to adjust. That's right. That's right. All right. Cool. Okay, so what do you guys think of vegan strawberry banana Gordon? actually pretty good. How would you know it was vegan?

Brad 12:12
I would not have known it was alright,

Jeff York 12:13
we would not know it was

Trent Williams 12:15
I like I like I like a slightly ice or ice cream as opposed to custard type thing, personally, and so I kind of liked that. Well, it's not everybody's that's what you like, let's do.

Brad 12:25
Let's do would you order this? Would you actually go back and order? I

Trent Williams 12:27
would. Yeah,

Jeff York 12:28
I would get it. Yeah. I get that. Do pina colada a lot there. They do a bunch of boozy ice creams, too. All right. Let's try this key lime. All right. So

Trent Williams 12:38
while you're doing that, I have a question about, you know, we were talking before about how students find ideas that are solving bigger problems than just for fellow students. So I'm curious, how did they, you know, come to find this as a problem. I mean, it's pretty significant. So

Brad 12:54
the founder was a computer scientist, and had an internship at Enron and ran into some very interesting scientists through his internship, which kind of was the genesis of his idea.

Trent Williams 13:07
I'm interesting. This one is amazing. It's really good. As

Jeff York 13:11
someone from the South who just came back from Tennessee, I feel like I'm an authority on concerns. I just had amazing banana pudding yesterday. That was really good. Oh, yeah. So it was cute. And you know what this Keyline needs? It needs like graham cracker Bits and like a graham cracker.

Trent Williams 13:26
Yeah, then it's like in a pie.

Jeff York 13:27
But it's got that like calm, sharp,

Trent Williams 13:29
tart. Man.

Brad 13:30
That's good as the guy that lived in Key Largo for a long time. This is awesome.

Jeff York 13:35
It's my number one ice cream so far. It's pretty different feel

Brad 13:39
like ice cream though?

Trent Williams 13:40
It's a sorbet. Yeah, it's a sorbet. So it's a little ice or ice. But it's

Jeff York 13:44
alright. Well, it's we got let's alright, we also have the Pelosi peach sample that

Trent Williams 13:51
you finish this first. Alright, well, yeah,

Jeff York 13:53
we got finished. At first. These pieces are great. Dude. That's really what is it that makes these speeches better? Like this one could be ripened a little bit more, but like, I don't know what it is. I think they're just like way sweet.

Brad 14:04
I don't know either.

Trent Williams 14:06
Like sweet, but they're firm too. As opposed to like, squishy. I don't like squishy.

Brad 14:11
I think palisade pitches, like famous. Yeah,

Jeff York 14:14
I think it's because like, I don't know, we should go find somebody on the western slope that actually knows what they're talking about. But I think it's because on the western slope, they have this long warming period where these things are coming right from the fall whereas I think in the south beaches are generally like ripe in the summer. And I think it's good as a drier climate. They hold more of the sugars. I don't know that's great. Totally trying to pontificate like I know what I'm talking about here. And I have no idea

Brad 14:38
I say palisade peaches and bourbon works.

Jeff York 14:41
Alright, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna do that with some of these peaches. We'll do try that and then we can we can sample that with a future in a future episode.

Trent Williams 14:49
All right, here's the raspberry chocolate

Jeff York 14:50
raspberry chocolate.

Trent Williams 14:52
Okay, and this is an ice cream. So this is like the real deal. Totally different high tax dairy, milk base. Ice Cream.

Brad 15:00
This is a first for creative distillation having ice cream.

Jeff York 15:03
We're having an ice cream social, I believe is what you would call. That's the thing and prove it right. Yeah.

Trent Williams 15:08
And that's one of the things that BYU sponsors is really an ice cream social.

Jeff York 15:12
I thought Provo was basically if you take Boulder, and you put it through like a looking glass, and instead of dispensaries you have ice cream parlors. That's Provo really you replace all the dispensaries and breweries pretty much with ice cream.

Trent Williams 15:27
Well, and I'm discovering something new. And my my kids, my kids said that I had to mention this. And now here it came up naturally. But they're all of these soda shops where they do how they do that, like massive varieties of of sodas. And so there's, you know, Fizz, so delicious, all these different brands, and it's cool to be driving down the street. And there's this line going all the way around and down down the street. And it's like, what are they waiting for? And it's, yeah, so they have all these different flavors and these mixes and that's amazing. Yeah, so it's kind of interesting. So listeners

Jeff York 15:57
have figured out Okay, so this market is not that keen on drinking tons of beer or dispensaries, which I don't think you can even have in Utah. Still entrepreneurs have figured out how can we capitalize on the market that happens in these other mountain towns and do this in a way that appeals to our local culture?

Trent Williams 16:12
Yeah, absolutely. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So it's kind of it's kind of interesting. And, you know, I grew up out there. And so I as a kid, I remember thinking, yeah, what could we do socially? Right. Like, you know, if you're going on a casual date with somebody that's, like, 10 kids? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Cuz then you have your own your own in house social experience. Right. Which, yeah, but it's kind of one of those things where it's, it provides social interaction, but then also, you know, people like trying different beverages. Talking about it. But

Jeff York 16:43
yeah, I'm totally into like drawing. I used to be in a bluegrass band. Right. And me and my, my fiddler, Molly, we would always go like, anytime we would go on a road trip, we'd be like, we're gonna go try interesting beverages. And, you know, like, Brad, we were very responsible. So we didn't want to drink before he performed, you know, and so

Trent Williams 17:04
very responsive. Yeah. Now, while

Jeff York 17:06
we were performing on the other hand, so actually, we would go find, like, all kinds of cool sodas and drinks and stuff like that. And now I'm on stage

Brad 17:15
in Los Angeles, Jeff, can you Oh, yeah. That was

Jeff York 17:17
awesome. Did you hear we did this thing with Shawn Hyatt and not in had real suit and real bottles. He's like the leading distributor of sodas in the United States. And we were in like this 50s Cafe Reconstructor. And we're talking just looking at me, Sean and this guy start talking about soda. He's like, dude, if you got gathered like the two leading authorities on soda, and the entire United it was it was amazing. That was so funny. I'm gonna say the actual real ice cream is my least favorite so far. The Raspberry chocolate chip. I mean, it was good, but it's not nearly as good as the key lime. I don't think it was as good as the vegan one. So

Brad 17:56
I'm gonna go exactly opposite. I thought the others were good. I would order the raspberry chocolate chip.

Jeff York 18:01
Really? Do you just like the real milk? Yeah, the

Brad 18:06
more fat the better.

Jeff York 18:09
Looking like a true Chicago. I so I'm gonna rank them. I like the first one. The vegan strawberry banana. Golden Oreo. All right. Got from Emory. That was that

Trent Williams 18:21
was a big one.

Jeff York 18:22
Well, you guys, that's

Trent Williams 18:23
my favorite. I think t because I like kind of banana cream pie kind of things. And that was approaching that a little bit than I did like the key lime. Second. I would

Jeff York 18:31
say Key Lime is number two for me. All right. Well, long story short, if you're in Colorado, are in the area. Really? The Front Range? I don't know that it'd be on the front range. There we go. All right. Well, so we should talk about research. Trent. Last time we had you on there was the high the pandemic. And one thing I've always really loved about your research we met Gosh, I don't even know. I mean, it's been a while. Like, I think I met you when you were a doctoral student. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. That's where we first met super old. But yeah, we're students together. No, I was a what was? What

Trent Williams 19:01
are we doing? So yeah, you are my you're my assigned mentor. One of the joyful features of being a mentor is you get to read bad work by a doctoral student. That is true. And not only did he have to do that, but I sent him an updated draft, like, three or four days before the conference. And he said, Oh, that's great. Because I had actually been, no, no, you said I had actually been proactive. And I had already read the previous one. And then you read the new one. Did I? Yeah. So I was, uh, you know, impressed by your willingness to just give me five minutes. And then more than that, and then you've continued to be supportive. I was doing some weird stuff at the time, it was seen as really weird. And how what role could entrepreneurship play as a vehicle when there's a crisis was kind of the question and people were like, oh, crises, I mean, those are so narrow and then lo and behold, this COVID thing happened and all of a sudden people are like, actually make sense. Yeah, maybe these things and that's

Jeff York 19:58
when we reached out to you because was just like we were doing our little zoom podcasting. And I was like, gosh, who do I know that actually talks about? And everybody, including us was all we were all talking about. I think Gaiman wrote something in that conversation about entrepreneurial pivots under COVID-19. And you know, something about entrepreneurship, folks, I think almost to a fault. I say almost we're going to talk a little bit about this, I think it's some of the work Trent's gonna talk about, is we tend to like bolster each other up with clear eyes. And in even if we know something's pretty bad, we tend to look at how can you change this to make it good? We tend not to say like, Okay, this is just, you know, a bad thing.

Brad 20:38
In my class. Yeah.

Jeff York 20:40
So I've been in your class, and I've actually been a judge in your class quite a bit. And I've actually been far more critical of some of your students, and you were on occasion, just as you've been a mine. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, we were all trying to cast COVID-19 as some kind of opportunity. And think about, oh, what's the good thing that can come out of this? I gotta tell you guys, I'm not convinced a whole lot. Great came. Now looking back, I remember we did something where people were like, it was good thing. But we were trying to we were trying to talk about entrepreneurs, we're pivoting into it. And I was like, well, whose research thinks about entrepreneurship and time of crises? And literally, it was you indeed, no. Is anybody else like if people picked up this topic and start to run with it more? Because I don't I don't know the literature as well as you do. Yeah.

Trent Williams 21:24
I mean, people have for sure. And then I see a lot of papers as a reviewer, I'm sure that are coming through. And yeah, trying to look at well, this notion, you know, last time we talked about, kind of the culmination of the work Dean and I did that stemmed from my dissertation work was this concept of spontaneous venturing. Right, which turns out, you know, disaster sociologists for years, many of whom came from Colorado, right? acknowledged this phenomenon, you know, since like the 1900s, early 1900s, and are saying, Wow, every time there's a big crisis, so called victims emerge to help themselves and others because they are on the ground, and they know exactly what to do, where to go.

Jeff York 22:05
That kind of goes back to some of high IQ stuff to like, I mean, back to what I think of as the economic roots of entrepreneurship, the idea that like the person on the ground, the person closest to the problem actually probably knows a better solution, right? And is going to create one Oh, Alan nerd out for justice like me curious here. What do you think about this to Brad So so as recently asked to write something, and I'm not trying to plug in my work, because who knows, maybe I'll read this thing. But we were asked her, I was asked to write something written with Ted Waldron over at Texas Tech. And to write Wharton, about there was a critique of some of our work that was saying, hey, when entrepreneurship, as a field has this huge problem? Don't get me ready for it. The big problem is, it borrows too much from other literature streams. And therefore it cannot be its own field. And we got create pure new theory seriously. Yeah. And so it's just interesting, you're commenting on that, Trent, you think that's a problem? I tend to find it a very odd critique of a field of entrepreneurship, right? You look to stern.

Brad 23:10
That bothers me, because I look at entrepreneurship is taking all of these experiences, and how do you how do they weave together? And what is the connective tissue? And how do you move it forward? So I actually think that if, if, if these are academics, entrepreneurial, academics, critiquing this, I actually think they're in the rock field. Well,

Jeff York 23:27
it's interesting, because it's like, you think like, is it really a whole lot nuisance? Like, you know, Plato and Aristotle? I mean, like, in social science, I mean, we're not talking about physics here, nor medicine or biology. I mean, we're talking about social science. So the idea that you're going to come up with like, completely new theories. And if you don't, then somehow the field is lacking? Well, okay. So first of all, it seems like an odd burden to put on people. I don't know of any field in social science that somehow exists devoid of theories from other fields. I mean, if it does, that's certainly not economics. I don't know. I mean, not economics. I mean, no. And then, if you actually want entrepreneurship research to be useful for some buddy somewhere, which, you know, we often fail to meet that bar on this podcast, but every now we try and every now and then we do meet that bar, I think and have some actionable insights and some interesting things. Why would you not want people to use things from

Brad 24:31
other theories? Well, first of all, we evolve as a species what it's like it to me, this actually makes no sense. And entrepreneurial boundaries are pushed by many things, new technology, new ways of thinking, new definitions of what families are and what business is, how businesses are delivered. And if you stay in the thinking of those two folks, you want to name them. It's a forum

Jeff York 24:57
in this in this journal Oh, well as strategic organization journal I not what we'll post it in the in the link the podcast for people to revolt. And we'll post the link to the whole forum. There's several papers that are talking about this. That was just interesting, like Trent was talking about how, you know, sociologists were aware of this phenomenon. By the reasoning of this debate we were having like so from our perspective, we would say entrepreneurship is by definition a borderland. It's a field that actually gets its richness, and its usefulness by bringing together theories from different fields to apply them to the creation of new products, markets and services. And beyond that, actually looking at the societal impact. And one more,

Brad 25:38
I think it's a way of creative thinking.

Jeff York 25:41
Well, right. So so it's strange to us to not think entrepreneurially while doing entrepreneurship research, yeah, exactly. Sure. People would say I was a compound. Well,

Brad 25:50
I actually, I would love to have said it was a cop out. But actually, it's not.

Trent Williams 25:55
On I think, you know, this might sound overly simplistic, but one of the things I often start in my classes is, what is an idea? Right? And my definition is, it's nothing more or less than a new combination of, of old, older, previous ideas, right? And it's not just my definition, I was drawn from other people who have commented on it. And it's, so for me, it's that combinatorial effect. And it's like, well, what is unique about entrepreneurship? Well, why why might somebody recognize the value at these intersections where somebody else doesn't, or, and so trying to figure out, even generically, that phenomenon, and so for me to pretend that them research in disaster, sociology does not exist. And you know, that I'm the first to, you know, I mean, it's just, it's kind of lazy. And it's also failing to acknowledge all of these contributions. And then the same goes for other fields. So psychology, sociology, economics, you look at kind of the three main mother sciences. And I think to me, in speaking back to all of those, it's, well, we value those deep, narrow explorations that you're doing in those spaces. And but who's able to bridge between all of those? Well, it's often entrepreneurs. And then I think from a research angle, it's the same kind of concept. Can you see connections in sociology, literature on this topic? And then, you know, markets in economics on that? I mean, I know you've recently published some work on that as well, right, these kind of moral market concepts, and whatnot. And that to me, it's like it just isn't enlivening. Not

Jeff York 27:24
a problem. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, I'm sorry to bring it. I didn't mean it. I think it goes

Brad 27:28
to a bigger problem, though. And I think it's what is the definition of entrepreneurship. And when you look at a university, our offices, Jeff happened to be in the business school. Right, but I think we transcend the business school. And well, yeah, but I think that there's a group of people that think of entrepreneurship is just related to business. It's much bigger than that. I don't

Jeff York 27:47
know. It's a strange thing. Like you think of it as turf or something, right? Like, we got to make this thing. And then we've got to own it and keep people out. And I get it. Like, that's how we kind of maintain all social sciences, we, we learn to speak a secret language, and then we talk to each other, and then other people can't get and it's in journals behind paywalls and all this stuff. And you know, I mean, because they get rid of all that. And as a friend of mine said, Yeah, but what are we going to do for money? Like, okay, I guess we're also entrepreneurs. I don't know, I'm sorry to take us on a tangent, Trent. Just always, always really respect your perspective. And it was top of mine, because we just published this thing. And I don't often talk about my own work on the podcast, but this really disturbed me clap them and treat. I was like, Wow, it really catches on. I don't know, to me, it would take away the promise and the beauty of the field, I just like, we're gonna put up barriers and we're gonna, you know, somehow generate Well, first of all, I don't think it's possible like to generate these original theories, like I mean, worthy. Because, like, some original theories and entrepreneurship, brick Lodge, clearly derived will not be Strauss and Ted Baker be the first person to tell ya actuation you know, Sarah's will be the first person tell you is derived from herb Simon's work and him as their mentor. There's the big, I mean, what are the other big ones? Opportunity discovery? I mean, that's to me is

Trent Williams 29:11
session. There's,

Jeff York 29:12
I mean, there's so much there. I mean, now, Jay, and Jay and Sharon are building on, like, philosophy to talk about that. So that's not an original idea. I mean, I don't think any anyway, these are like the big ideas in quotes. So

Brad 29:27
my suggestion is, forget it, go out, buy a Porsche, you'll be fine.

Jeff York 29:33
You'll know that I'm an Associate Dean. You know, by several Porsches. It's still a sandwich next time. I'll bring you a Porsche. Yeah, be nice. Alright, so Well, if

Trent Williams 29:44
I could just say one last thing, I just think it spurs from that comment about Jane and Sharon, and kind of what they're doing on that. And it's like, well, of course I mean, that's everything we are doing is building on great efforts from those before us. So you know, you have Socrates who's laying out philosophical arguments around ethics around all of these different things, and what is what is beautiful, what is valuable? How is knowledge created? And then eventually we move toward, we actually need to experiment with some of these things. And you know, Socrates says, Let's observe, that's great. And then we'll let's actually experiment, and on and on and on. And then slowly, you know, fields emerged to go narrower and deeper. And yet, it's still valuable to take step back, and how does this cross across domains. But so I think, if we start to argue for our, only our narrow field, then I think we're kind of missing the reality that there's contributions across lots of different spaces. And that I think, is what entrepreneurs do exceptionally well, because they come in and they're, like, I'm confused by why all these things are segmented. Like, can't you see that these fit perfectly? To

Jeff York 30:50
me they do. And then some other people start to believe that and that's all things, so called The Science of the artificial, right. I like that as an idea of I like the idea of like, you know, what we're teaching and what we do and entrepreneurship, we understand how human artifacts come into existence. Like literally, unfortunately, everything we're surrounded by. Because we're not in nature, right. Yeah. Anyway, so it's a bit of a sorry, hopefully, it's a better tangent than Dungeons and Dragons, though. I think we can talk about those topics.

Brad 31:22
It's a great segue into trends paper.

Jeff York 31:24
Why that's right. Thanks, man. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wait a sec. All right.

Brad 31:30
All right. So talk to us about what you're working on, or what you have. Yeah. So

Trent Williams 31:34
I wanted to talk about a couple papers that are just coming out in the Journal of Business venturing. And so one came out in January. And this is called progress without a venture individual benefits of post disruption. entrepreneuring. And then another one that's also in the Journal of Business venturing, you know, adapting a collective will in a way during a civil war, the persistence of an entrepreneurial ecosystem as an architecture of hope. Yeah, so

Brad 32:00
those titles are not getting me to buy the.

Trent Williams 32:04
So yeah, so as we were just talking about the

Jeff York 32:06
critical wood, you just got a civil war of hope. I'm

Brad 32:10
just thinking, Where are they going to put that at my bookstore shelf? Where does this even fit

Jeff York 32:14
to be? Read is like exactly one title.

Trent Williams 32:19
If the so that's okay. I still remember last time you said, I was gonna ask you the practical implications. But the final chapter is says, So what? Who cares? So thank you for bringing that up. So I'm gonna clean to that no matter what happens? No, but anyway, but let me take a step back. So you know, a few years ago, couple of collaborators, so Saratoga and she's in Sweden, and then Ramsay fatawa. He's currently out at in Ontario, but at the time, he was in Lebanon, he's from Lebanon. And so I became really interested in trying to understand could entrepreneurship have any beneficial role for this massive refugee crisis going on? And, you know, there was kind of a perhaps I don't know, well, there wasn't really a low, but maybe our attention got diverted. But now it's back front and center with many Ukrainian refugees. And then, you know, issues happening in the United States where people from many different countries are searching for a better life. And so, but at this time, this was primarily due to the civil war in Syria, and then other conflicts in Iraq, just people fleeing, like from work. Yeah, exactly. And so unfortunately, we're gonna be entering I believe that decade of refugees, yeah, entry of refugees, right.

Jeff York 33:35
climate change and sea level rise and storms and everything else and water shortages.

Trent Williams 33:39
Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah. Unfortunately, all the trends do not suggest that this is slowing, it's going the other way. And rapidly growing. Even as I would go through rounds a review, I go back to the UN's website, and oh, wow, I need to increase the number of refugees, another 10 million or whatnot. You know, I mean, it's not like another 200. So anyway, but I became really curious about could entrepreneurship be a vehicle to help with this process. So helping with both host countries to receive and provide opportunities for refugees, and then also helping the refugees themselves to adapt to the new location, and to have some immediate professional opportunities. And so this paper that is based in the Swedish context, we started out, because my my collaborators are at orgran, she had some influence and role with some of the government actors who were trying to create courses for entrepreneurs for predominantly Syrian Iraqi refugees to actually learn about how this works in Sweden. So you had government backing, you had all these resources. And then you had people who'd self selected into this refugee. So it's like, what could possibly go wrong, right? I mean, every everybody wants is, you know, and this is kind of the question. Sometimes people say like, Oh, if only I had money, it's like, well, this is a case where money did not solve the issue. There was has plenty of funding usually doesn't. Yeah. And so you know, as we started investigating this and following these individuals over a period of time, many, many of them did nothing. And we were really curious why. So initially, I thought, Well, this was, I guess, a failure. And so what? We ended up looking at it slightly differently and realizing, well, what did they gain? And so first of all, when you're a new person in a new country, and you're coming from a context that I might see, I, Trent Williams, my see is chaotic. If I was to go to Iraq and see how people are running businesses, it would make no sense to me. But for them, it absolutely made sense. They knew how to operate and entrepreneurial venture, they knew how to find financing in that context, in that context, and then they show up in Sweden, where everything is super egalitarian, like just follow the rules, but it's like, well, what are the rules? You know, am I going to be in jail? Am I going to be doing all of these different kinds of things, if I get if I get it wrong, all the same terms that they had understood, being successful entrepreneurs in their home countries, actually served as an impediment to being successful in Sweden, because it was all just different. And so what we did find, though, was, and this is why we use this term entrepreneurial, which quite simply is just engaging in the entrepreneurship process, in some way, shape, or form. In reality, kind of similar to what we do with our students at universities, many of my students at Indiana where it was previously didn't go on to start businesses, but they learned a lot about business, about vetting ideas about interacting and going to learn how to solve problems. And that's a huge part of kind of what we found, where it's like, well, they did find some tools to adapt, it just did not deliver on this really huge promise, which was it'll change the refugees lives, and it will renew Sweden's economy. The takeaway

Brad 36:50
in there Trent, though, that from your, from your findings, if you were to go and redo these programs, or re restructure them, what would you have done differently?

Trent Williams 36:59
Yeah, that's a really good question. So I think for one, you know, as Jeff kind of just reacted to this, like, wow, that's a that's a huge goal. And it is, but dialing back some of the expectations, and then also trying to be clear around. Yeah, so what's what's in scope, given where you're at? So one analogy we were using early on, in the paper, was this notion of rock climbing where you know, when you're an expert rock climber, yeah, you can make it look really easy. You know, it does, yeah,

Brad 37:28
right up the mountain.

Trent Williams 37:28
So I just finished watching. I'd followed the career of Alex Honnold for five years. So you sit there and watch him climb El Capitan. And you're like, Well, I'm sure I could do that. Like, I'm kind of athletic, and you know, why not? Right, like he's holding on just fine and up. And then I just imagine, if I were to show up and stand at the base of El Capitan, and look up, I'd be like, Bartek Are you kidding me? Like this is not a claimable wall. And so I think that that's kind of what happened is individuals, they see successful entrepreneurs in Sweden, they were successful. You from a distance, you see people scampering up the mountain, and then you show up and look up the wall and you realize, well, I'm expecting a rope, I'm expecting a foothold, I'm expecting these things. And so I think, really trying to specify, you know, there's a lot of emphasis on language has a lot of emphasis on learning the laws, but it's more like understanding how things actually work here. And I think if there was an emphasis on that, instead of more traditional kind of, well, let's do some ideation. Well, let's, it's, it's no, hold on, like, how does it work here. So accelerate that process, which ended up coming as an output of, you know, just engaging in the process as a whole. So

Jeff York 38:42
it's more so I think what you're saying, I mean, yeah, paraphrase back to you see, if I'm getting it, focusing more on teaching would be entrepreneurs, how they operate in a different societal, institutional, and cultural context will be at least as important, if not even more important than teaching them the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, especially if you're talking about assimilating a refugee population, a diaspora coming into Sweden, which is relatively a rather homogeny homogenous country. Yeah, I think by most standards, as well as very wealthy, so is no, absolutely.

Trent Williams 39:24
I mean, there's an actual insight for policymakers. Well, and here's the second thing, you know, a practical example from my own experience. You know, when I left Indiana, I made my way to BYU Marriott. Yeah, I found that there were just different processes. I found this every time I switch any organization. And so what I found useful actually was to say, okay, when it comes to this expectation, here's what I'm currently doing. Now. Could you translate that in like BYU Marriot language? And, and that was actually really helpful? Because they would say, oh, yeah, okay. I understand now because they now understood what I was expecting. And then they could say, oh, Oh, yeah, 99% of that is similar, this 1% is different, but it's important difference. And so I think that's a big part of it is trying to acknowledge, what did they had known previously was valuable was impactful. And I think even something as simple as, so how would you get financing? If they explained it and said, Oh, that's interesting. So what's common among that is, there's a network of financers. And you had somewhat informal mechanisms for getting that funding here. It's just slightly more formalized. But we still have an informal element that's like this. And so you're finding, I think that that helps people to not get totally discouraged, because what ended up happening is a lot of analogies. Yeah. And a lot of them would would say, well, it's totally different. And if and if things are completely different, diametrically opposed. Yeah, there's not a lot of space for progress there. But if it's okay, so I'm, like, 60% of the way there. And now I should go learn these things, then that that's a little

Brad 40:59
different takeaway, though. So my takeaway is that we have very creative problem solvers in their native land. And they, they get dropped off in this alien world. And they actually don't understand the problems. That's true. Right. So how do you solve for something you don't know what needs to be solved? Yeah,

Jeff York 41:18
yeah. It's like our, it's like sending our undergrads to go solve problems for Google. Yes. Right. Right. Like, that's why they come up with you guys. Were talking to us earlier, this idea of like, ideas to solve problems for other undergrad. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's kind of like write what you know, but is an entrepreneurship you got write what you know, that actually will lie. So

Brad 41:40
if you trap someone in a place where they can't understand the language that they actually have, no, they have no center to understand what the problems are happening around them. If they're standing in the middle of it, they may not even recognize it. How would you ever expect them to be successful? Right?

Trent Williams 41:56
Yeah, no, it's it's very difficult. And then you add on layers of things, like your real human trauma that has experienced for some, but not for others, you know, so a lot of the research I've done as well as on this psychological resilience, which is, according to clinical psychologist is the absence really of PTSD symptoms. And I think often, when we see individuals experiencing something that's difficult, and especially, you know, would be massively significant. So if somebody walks up to me and says, Oh, yeah, like these people died, I saw it happen, et cetera, et cetera. In my context, that would be highly unusual. But that was not all that unusual for these people. And so I think what's, what's the general challenge when we go about trying to help people and so this is kind of the takeaway for the host country, and those trying to resource and fund is we make some assumptions on people's life experiences based on what we can or cannot tolerate. And it's just really not the way it works. It's like, well, what do they say? What are their needs? You know, where are they at? Like, but if we just walk up to them and say, You are traumatized. So now we're going to do some psychological intervention? Well, there's research on that this is that that that might cause someone who was not traumatized to become traumatized, right.

Brad 43:11
You just told me, though, Trent, that if you follow up in 10 years, that the people that self identified as entrepreneurs, that you'll look, if the immigration flow continues, they will actually develop enterprises within their community, I think

Trent Williams 43:24
you're probably right. And so that that's another great takeaway, which is, you know, what was the timeline, you know, that we were expecting. And so with such massive translation that needed to occur, you know, even four or five years of data collection,

Brad 43:38
it was right not understand the problem, from the day they left to where they are today,

Trent Williams 43:43
because they have that, you know, kind of tying to what Jeff was saying earlier, we, they have that creative ability to integrate ideas from different domains, they just need to better understand their new domain. And, you know, many of them that acknowledged as well, they said, Look, you know, we were realizing that this is going to be a long term process, and maybe it's my kids who are going to be the most successful from these efforts. But their efforts of actually going out and testing some of their nascent ideas about what does this context mean? So many ways, that's the beginning step of the entrepreneurship process for them is, I'm actually going to have an idea about how things occur in my context, and I'm gonna go test it and get feedback and then get a lot of negative feedback. But what if they had just kind of stayed at home instead, and kind of interacted with their own group of people who had come, and that that's when I think they really got stagnant. And the last thing I will say about this particular situation is some of the most successful were people who had not benefited at all in the previous context. So especially women, and so many of the women were just so thrilled that they could finally were empowered to do something. Yeah. And so they they were very eager, not only to potentially launch a business, but everything just involved and working on it was highly empowering and motivating and yet also was difficult for their partners, spouses, because that was breaking some norms and expectations. And so that's just going to take time.

Brad 45:13
And then the other thing is I think that I mean, very, very long term study. But we could look at generational impact of immigrants coming to the United States in the early 1900s. And how their families have grown out and actually start studying these folks now and seeing what happens. I'm sure there'd be absolutely,

Trent Williams 45:27
absolutely.

Jeff York 45:28
So that paper is out now. Correct. It's progress without adventure, individual benefits of post disruption entrepreneurial? Yep. Do you have another paper that's in the works? Not? Well, should be out by the time you guys

Brad 45:42
explain to me what in the works means and this time delay? Can you Sure. So

Jeff York 45:48
you submit a paper to a journal best case scenario, it comes back three months later, with like about 15 pages of complaints about how bad the paper is, and invite you to resubmit it, that's best case scenario. So you usually take about you, that's the good news. That's, that's the best, best possible outcome. So then you spend around three months, hopefully, you do it in three months, you try to do it faster, but you never do. At least I don't. And you send it back to the journal and they hold it for another three months, and then they'll send it back. Best case scenario, they'll come back with about 10 pages of complaints. And then you'll go through the process, then you go back with that. And then around the third, fourth round, sometimes fifth, sixth one, case seven, the journal finally says, Okay, we like your paper. But this is why these things take like two and a half, three years to get published.

Brad 46:42
How long have you been working on submission? Boy, just the process of collaboration

Trent Williams 46:45
yet from collecting data in 2017 2018? And then yeah, sometimes, you know, with with both the papers that I mentioned, went multiple rounds at journals, and then got rejected. So start again,

Brad 46:58
so you guys pick the craziest thing.

Jeff York 47:03
So yeah, we're lazy people.

Trent Williams 47:08
Negative feedback. So this

Jeff York 47:10
paper is under review. Looks like it's what we call a conditional acceptance, basically, before the final, the final thing, it was printed. I don't know.

Brad 47:20
When you say this out loud. It does sound stupid. Okay.

Jeff York 47:24
we all we all agree, it's just we can't figure out anything better. So so you get what's called conditional acceptance, which says, Alright, read your paper, we will conditionally accept upon you doing these things. And that's usually like, because over the courses you're trying to satisfy for different people usually, so the paper invariably gets longer and longer. And then it comes back and says, Now cut five pages out. And which you always like cursing the editor and kicking things. And then you get done. Oh, my God, so much better for taking those find me almost Anything's better by taking five. We're talking about 30 page document. So anyway, train as this one. I think it's really interesting. But we'll have you back on to talk about when it's out. But just real quick to talk about, like this idea you had of what was the term

Trent Williams 48:10
kind of an ecosystem of hope. That's kind of what I'm calling it. So so this is really cool idea. So quick snapshot of this, we started collecting data in a country that we have to call not by its real name, so we call it the Dariya. And so yeah, I know, you're in the middle of a civil war. So there were some individuals who were in the capital town well, while the regime was out, chasing down dissidents, if you want to call them that, that's what I mean, I'll just use the regime's turn, I guess. And this, there was an attention paid to people in the Capitol. And so these young people said, Hey, we could create Silicon Valley of Bavaria. And I was sitting there like, really? And so we started tracking this group of individuals. How did you do your research? So yeah, he's in context. So my Lebanese co author, Ramsay, batalla, he, he had some friends who were interacting interfacing with this. But they're Yeah, they lived in Bavaria. Correct. And, and so he, he and I had started collecting some data there in Lebanon. And he said, Well, hey, what about this? And so I was intrigued. And it was funny. One of our interviewing tactics was to say, hey, this American just doesn't even believe that you're doing this. And they said, Oh, my gosh, well, let me tell them and so it was a very good interview tool, like you just And so anyway, I don't believe you're right. And so so we tracked this group over about six years. So they went from saying, Well, we're gonna build an ecosystem that's going to produce the Uber of that area, the Uber Eats of that area, the fill in the blank of that area, and they really copies though. So what they were trying to do, yeah, they were trying to replicate some of these business models. And it was all anchored in digital technologies, because they said, Hey, our country's in shambles. But it's not like we're saying we need to build a Tesla factory, because we cannot do that. But what could we do that's hosted perhaps somewhere else in a different country on their servers and We can create these things. So that was the, the, the hypothesis they had. And so they, you know, they they followed pretty strictly the structure that they had interpreted of being the Silicon Valley structure. They said, We don't want any entrepreneurs like we don't want someone, you know, doing a fruit stand on the side of the road that's not an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs high growth, VC backed funded. Yeah, they were very exclusive. And it's really interesting reading some of these quotes, because many of them were like, I mean, they were total novices. They said, Yeah, I didn't even know about this until like yesterday. You know, and I found other students, right. So anyway, long story short, as this kind of ongoing war started to happen, and in a quick sidebar, I suppose you know, in war contexts, entrepreneurship actually happens quite a bit, because you have very few employed opportunities.

Jeff York 50:49
And there's so much uncertainty. Yeah, just trying to figure out what resources. Exactly.

Trent Williams 50:54
So one of your only options is to be an entrepreneur. And so on the one hand, you have entrepreneurship is really one of your only option. On the other hand, it's missing all the things that are theories say you need to launch a business, there's no institutional support, no system, nothing, nothing. Anyway, so when the regime turned, it's, you know, I have Sauron back to the capital, it began kidnapping people, they just be swept off the street disappear, murdering people in prison, I mean, just horrific stuff. And so they first move things just into hiding, and even some fellow barons were like, Why are you guys doing this entrepreneurship thing, our whole world is falling apart. But what they realized is that they had started to generate a sense of hope. And this collective my will to struggle is kind of what we call it were powerful, it's very powerful. It's like I can't actually do something, but because this regime is so oppressive, but achieving a little secret meeting here, and one guy talks about giving a presentation, where there were artillery rounds going off outside of his hotel room, and he's just casually setting up his easel and you know, those kinds of things. And so then, as it moved into the long term, kind of the opposite of what they had started out where it's very narrow entrepreneurship, it became No, hey, you leaving that area to go to Germany to get to get your education that helps entrepreneurship in Bavaria, you know, you, I'm moving to Canada, and, you know, start opening up a blog post that talks about this. So it just became this vast community that was all aligned around still, this notion of entrepreneurship. And so it went from narrow has to be high growth, too, could be just about anything, because all that matters is your part of our struggle. And so as I kept reading the data over and over this most common threads was hope. And so there's some research on this that talks about collective hope in an organization and especially if you're struggling, but this was collective hope in loosely organized, collective. So that's why I kind of said, Oh, they've created an ecosystem of hope, where you could belong to it. And even though your life is horrible, you could reinterpret whatever activities you were doing, as being part of moving forward. And actually, I had just randomly picked up Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning, which I had read before, as as an undergraduate. And I thought, this is exactly what he was trying to do in the concentration camp was a no, I'm not digging a trench, I'm moving myself forward. But then he looked around and saw people who were literally miserable and dying. And so anyway, it was fascinating to me, I really think my editor Charlene ziet, spa on on this particular project, because she was the one that invited us to go and explore how entrepreneurship in this war context where you have really almost no hope for long term success like this. This is an ongoing conflict, it's not over. And here's where it can serve as a psychological vehicle. For people involved, I'm

Brad 53:51
actually thinking, so ecosystem of hope is a great term. I'm going to actually, I think it's awesome. I think that Ukraine, when this is all over, is going to be an entrepreneurial miracle. I really, I really think it's going to be an incredible, I'd love to actually go and work there and help them. What you're talking about is putting my head in Ukraine and how, because I think that the culture is there that doesn't need kind of this catalyst to light. Yeah. And so I'd love to talk to you 10 years to see how that looks. That'd be pretty

Trent Williams 54:20
cool. That's cool. It's

Jeff York 54:21
actually interesting, because this, this whole conversation kind of points to how sometimes the measures we want to throw on entrepreneurship, number of ventures started funds, raised, successful exits, all those things. I mean, yeah, okay. They're important sometimes, but they kind of missed the point. In some ways. It's societal, not necessarily about that, which means our whole field has a long way to go.

Trent Williams 54:45
Yeah, well, I'm just human. Like, it's the end of the day, like it's, it's human life and living and thriving, where possible, I mean, surviving and hopefully thriving, and it's, you know, whatever we are doing for our work. I mean, there are of course, These metrics, but you just zoom out. It's like, we have lives. And we're humans and that that alone matters and should matter, you know, and

Jeff York 55:10
kind of the crisis in higher ed in this country. But that's probably a note for another time.

Trent Williams 55:15
Yeah. Just take care of this crisis in higher ed.

Jeff York 55:18
Maybe by next year associate Dean's on the case everything will get solved. All right. Well, our guest Dr. Trent Williams from BYU, thanks for joining us transcripts, we'll see you in person. And also want to mention our ice cream sampling from Sweet cow. Check them out at sweet cow.com

Brad 55:35
It was great to sit down with you guys. Yeah, this is

Jeff York 55:38
brand go teacher class after definitely not drinking any. I might actually not drink something else before I go. Yes, totally, completely, only fired by ice cream. So once again on Jeff York, research director for the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. And

Brad 55:52
I am Brad Warner. I'm an entrepreneur, lucky to work at the University of Colorado and I appreciate you. I feel

Jeff York 55:57
the same way. Write to us, subscribe, do all the podcast stuff. It really does help us out we'd really appreciate thanks again for joining us today.

Stefani H 56:07
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Creative Distillation. Recorded at the Leeds School of Business at the ��. Learn more about Sweet Cow ice cream and order merch at sweetcow.com. Learn more about Trent Williams on his faculty page at marriott.byu.edu. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. Email us at CDpodcast@colorado.edu. And please be sure to subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The Creative Distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the ��'s Leeds School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu. That's D-E-M-ING and click the Creative Distillation link. Creative Distillation is produced by Joel Davis at Analog Digital Arts. Our theme music is "Whiskey Before Breakfast" performed by your humble host, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here for another episode of Creative Distillation.

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