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Industry Night
Industry Night 2019

MEM hosted its 5th Annual Industry Night on Thursday, January 31, 2019, at the James L. Allen Center on Northwestern's Evanston Campus.  MEM students, alumni, faculty, and industry guests were invited to hear Rob Wolcott, Co-Founder and Chairman, The World Innovation Network (TWIN) and Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management as the keynote speaker. 

Keynote:

Foresight, proximity and the future of all business

Professor Wolcott discussed where business is going across industries.  Digital technologies push the production and provision of value ever closer to the moment of demand, a phenomenon referred to as “proximity.” He also shared some insights as to how our organizations—and we personally—can build vision as a capability.

Robert Wolcott

Robert WolcottWolcott is Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Wolcott won Teacher of the Year from Kellogg’s EMBA program in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017.  Wolcott is also a managing partner with Clareo, a foresight and growth strategy consultancy serving global corporations.

He serves on advisory boards for ZF, a 40 billion USD German automotive supplier, and H-Farm, the leading technology ecosystem in Italy. He has served on advisory boards for the Nordic Council (Oslo), Kraft Foods and GE. Wolcott serves on the board of CureBlindness (Himalayan Cataract Project), a global non-profit that has restored sight to over 500,000 people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

He is a regular contributor for Forbes on the impact of technology on business, society, and humanity.  His book, Grow From Within:  Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation (McGraw-Hill, 2010) has been published in Chinese and Japanese.  Wolcott’s work appears in MIT Sloan Management Review, strategy+business, The Harvard Business Review (online), The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, Business Week, The Financial Times (European Edition), The New York Times and numerous overseas publications.

Wolcott is an angel investor in enterprises such as crowd funding leader Indiegogo (www.indiegogo.com), student loan innovator Lumni (www.lumni.net), legal documentation platform Page Vault (www.page-vault.com/), transaction security technology firm Magic Cube (www.magiccube.co), healthcare analytics providers SA Ignite (www.saignite.com) and ClearCare Online (acquired by Battery Ventures), international art show, EXPO Chicago (www.expochicago.com) and a blockchain-based startup in stealth mode.

BA, European and Chinese History; and an MS and Ph.D., Industrial Engineering & Management Science, Northwestern University. He lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife, Ada, and their two daughters, Jolie and Sage.

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