Center for Finance Strategy & Innovation

Naveen Jindal School of Management building, home of the Center for Finance Strategy & Innovation

The Dallas-Fort Worth region is a hot-bed for communications, software development, supply networks and private capital. It is a leader in corporate and investor response to disruptive technologies and digital transformation. The Center’s focus is to accelerate consideration of the needs and opportunities for financial management and education thus created. Disruption and the evolution of alternative capital share a common imperative – to produce more corporate value. Today, new value can be unlocked by changing strategies, business acquisitions, or by restructuring operations and/or business eco-systems. If traditional responses prove to be inadequate or too slow, activist investors or private equity funds are likely to move in and force change. Developments in the COVID and post-COVID environment have reinforced these facts.

The economics of operating in virtually all industries continue to change with digitalization.

Communication costs, computation costs, transactions costs, and management costs have dropped dramatically in the last fifteen years. So have some manufacturing and distribution costs. At the same time some risks, such as achieving cybersecurity or achieving a successful restructuring have increased. The new capabilities of disruptive technologies of the last decade (blockchain and artificial intelligence, for example) have also reinforced pressures to innovate.

Structural, pricing and business model changes underway in digital transformation include:

  • More customization in products and services becoming available.
  • A less centralized pattern of manufacturing facilities, operations and distribution.
  • The closure or modification of some retail stores into much smaller asset-lighter units.
  • The widespread adoption of speed of transactions and mobility as competitive factors.
  • Reduced pricing power due to increased transparency for many consumer-facing companies.
  • The existence of clear leaders in distribution having real cost advantages due to serving a very high share of possible volume.
  • The feeling that corporate renewal must be continuous and that the speed of corporate change itself is now a competitive factor.

The Center’s initiatives to help unlock value are part of the University’s strategic plan to become an economic engine for the region. The initiatives are grouped in four areas.

  1. Professional assistance for companies and career-development/educational opportunities for students delivered as student internship projects in disruptive technologies or private equity finance. The resultant work-product is in high demand.
  2. Programmatic assistance intended for business leaders and decision makers. We build on partnerships with leading organizations to produce curated programs advancing corporate adoption of selected disruptive digital technologies. We organize conferences on private equity and public-private partnership topics which keep the business and investment community updated on important developments.
  3. Discussions at the board or senior management level regarding strategies and corporate transformation.
  4. Execution of applied research projects supporting government policy makers and the publication of unique economic indexes.

Partnerships and peer networks are central to the work of the Center for Finance Strategy & Innovation. Our partners are attracted to the subject matter experts we attract in both the technological and strategic aspects of business. Being at a university, we are seen as a neutral body committed to raising standards of performance.

The Center was co-founded in 2009 by Dr. David Springate and Elizabeth Jones within the disciplines of applied finance and value creation. We are made up of an advisory board, executive fellows, data scientists, teaching faculty and cooperating students.

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