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ON THE BOOKSHELF
Athlete Brands: How to Benefit from Your Name, Image & Likeness
Whether it is practice or a game, successful athletes have a strategy to make sure they achieve their goals. Preparing for NIL success by developing an athlete brand is no different— it requires a game plan to get the best results. This book provides a four-step process to help student-athletes (SAs) manage their brands like a pro. Short, easy-to-read chapters with real SA examples guide athletes through a series of exercises that enable you to set goals and then design, activate, and monetize your brand. Athlete Brands is the perfect resource for SAs to learn to make
NIL decisions that serve their most important goals. “This book clearly offers advice on how to build my own brand while I’m still an SA, which is a very specifi c situation that needs specifi c guidance.” —TINA GRAUDINA, NCAA Beach Volleyball, twotime AVCA All-American, fi rst NCAA Beach Volleyball Player to qualify for the Olympic Games “Name, image, and likeness has ushered in an era of tremendous opportunity for SAs. The lessons in this book offer essential learning not just for SAs, but for those who care most about their development: athletic directors, coaches, and parents.” —TED WHITE, Founder/CEO of Fair Ball Foundation and former Deputy ATHLETIC DIRECTOR, UVA “This book coaches SAs to engage more effectively with Opendorse, agents, and others so they can maximize NIL value well beyond their playing career by giving readers a process to identify, design, and activate their brands.” —BLAKE LAWRENCE, CEO of Opendorse, a leading NIL company
NCollege Athletes Need A Game Plan for Managing Their Name, Image & Likeness ew rules allow college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. To get the best results, these athletes need a game plan. Professor “I’ve witnessed fi rst-hand how SAs who build Praise for Athlete Brands Kimberly Whitler and co-author Jay a strong reputation around hard work and dedication earn the respect of coaches and attention of sponsors. This book helps SAs balance commitments to their education and teams while using their platform to pursue their dreams.” —ADAM SMITH, Assistant Coach, Reebok Boston Track Club; former Assistant T&F Hodgkins provide a four-step process Coach at Syracuse, and UNC-Chapel Hill “Becoming a high-value athlete means more than just performing on the court. It means creating a consistent athlete brand at practice, in the classroom, in media interactions, via social media. This book “connects the dots” to help players to help student-athletes manage their develop athlete brands that achieve their goals.” —JOHNNY CARPENTER, Director of Player Development, UVA Men’s Basketball Team “This book helps young people better understand the link between what they spend their time on, brands like a pro. Short, easy-to-read the reputation they earn, and the goals that they accomplish. This is an excellent book for parents to read, as well as provide guidance for their kids.” —KATY FITZGERALD, mother of Kyle Guy, NBA guard chapters with real-world examples guide athletes through a series of athBrands_cover.indd 1 exercises that enable them to set goals and then design, activate and monetize their brands.
WHITLER & HODGKINS
Athlete Brands Athlete Brands
How to Benefi t from Your Name, Image & Likeness
KIMBERLY A. WHITLER & JAY P. HODGKINS
5/3/22 7:08 PM
Mia & Tiago and The Bird in Hand Principle and Mia & Tiago and The Lemonade Principle
The first two books in a series, Darden Associate Director of Research and Intellectual Capital Gosia Glinska takes Professor Saras Sarasvathy’s entrepreneurshipfocused principles of effectuation into the world of children’s literature.
Giving Voice to Values Creator Retires From Darden
Professor Mary Gentile retired from the Darden School at the close of the 2021–22 academic year. A professor of practice who joined Darden in 2016, Gentile is the globally renowned creator of Giving Voice to Values (GVV), a curriculum for values-driven leadership that has been used in more than 1,300 business schools and organizations globally. In September 2021, Gentile was inducted to the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame for her career impact in the field of ethics.
Although Gentile is retiring, Darden will remain the permanent home for GVV materials, with cases and curriculum available through Darden Business Publishing.
Darden in the Media
Darden professors remain sought after experts to comment on leading global business issues in top publications.
Will Russia’s Isolation Last? The New York Times
Professor Greg Fairchild is a noted expert on business ethics and corporate actions, making him an ideal source to weigh in on the pressure many businesses have felt to cut ties with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. As he explained in The New York Times, autocratic rulers may calculate that such pressure campaigns won’t last. “There is a half-life to the outrage that is tied to the news cycle,” Fairchild said. Many leaders “have enough evidence that we wouldn’t care for long.” Super Bowl Ads Go Heavy on Nostalgia and Star Power Associated Press
When the Associated Press writes about the commercial extravaganza that is the Super Bowl, they know who to call: Professor Kimberly Whitler. For several years in a row, Whitler has offered her take on the expensive and rarified marketing opportunity of a 30-second Super Bowl ad.
“This is one of the most engaging sets of ads I’ve seen in several years,” Whitler said of the 2022 big game spots. “Almost all focus on light-hearted entertainment.” White House Must Go Further on New Pandemic Response The Washington Post
Professor Vivian Riefberg is among a team of experts that released a road map to help Americans get to “the next normal.” The Washington Post spoke to Riefberg regarding the goals of the report, which included recommendations to combat long-COVID and move faster to combat potential new variants. Riefberg said authors hoped the report would reach people beyond federal officials. “We hope other local and state governments as well as the private and nonprofit sectors will also take actions,” Riefberg said.
BY SEB MURRAY
By2026, a quarter of the global population will spend at least an hour a day in the metaverse for work, education or play, according to research firm Gartner.
Already, companies have built ways for users to pursue aspects of life in an alternative reality, from virtual-reality (VR) gaming to business meetings, education and even real estate. At present, these experiences take place on separate platforms. The metaverse will bring these activities into a single environment allowing users seamless access to infinite destinations and experiences.
This will create a virtual economy, enabled by digital currencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — digital ownership certificates registered on a blockchain that can be traded for cryptocurrency. This emerging economy means organizations, having already adapted their activities for the internet era, will need to pivot again from a digital business to a metaverse business. It’s what many are calling a transition from “web2” to “web3.” In the next four years, Gartner predicts 30 percent of the organizations in the world will have products and services ready for the metaverse, across sectors from retail to gaming and entertainment.
Who will collect the spoils and set the rules? Silicon Valley tech giants — particularly Meta (formerly Facebook) — are in pole position, according to David Touve, Darden’s senior director of applied innovation and new ventures.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg changed his company’s name to Meta in October, reflecting its push to build the “next generation of the internet” beyond the smartphone. Meta is already spending billions per year on virtual and augmented reality as it competes with fellow internet titans such as Microsoft and Google to build a metaverse that captures the biggest network of users. In the next five years, the company plans to hire 10,000 new staff to work on metaverse projects, such as a wristband that allows users to interact with the virtual world through subtle finger movements. In addition, Meta is launching an app for social networking in VR, called Horizon Home, which allows users to socialize as avatars while wearing
What You Need to Know
• The metaverse is an immersive visual space in which people will replicate their lives as if in a parallel digital world, according to Gartner. • It is accessible through devices that range from ordinary computers to virtual reality headsets to augmented reality glasses. • Companies developing the metaverse refer to it as a transition from “web2” (today's internet) to “web3” (a decentralized, blockchain-based world wide web). • Meta (formerly Facebook) has realigned its strategy and plans to invest billions to create a dominant metaverse experience. • As with the internet, open standards will be needed to enable a seamless, integrated metaverse.
headsets developed by Oculus, which Facebook acquired for $2 billion in 2014.
“By creating the virtual worlds, you essentially set the rules for the virtual economy,” says Touve, who anticipates a land grab. “The more people are on the network, the more valuable it is. The network effect can lead to winner-take-all markets.”
Yuga Labs, creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs (essentially, blockchain-verified digital images of cartoon apes), recently secured a $450 million investment from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, valuing Yuga at $4 billion. The company has announced plans to launch its own metaverse and sold or gave away 100,000 plots of digital land in that metaverse. The sale sold out in minutes for cryptocurrency valued at $310 million at the time. Not a bad day’s work.
Proponents believe this lowcost, high-margin business could transform global retail; critics see the metaverse as a passing fad. One reason for their doubts is the major technical challenges involved in bringing these sci-fi visions to life, such as creating a graphics rendering system able to animate thousands of avatars sharing the same experience, for example, at a live concert. This would mean that computing platforms would need to support billions of operations per second, compared to thousands per second today on even the most popular live online games such as Fortnite, which can only host up to 100 players at a time.
Related to the hardware challenges, Raveendhran says, “There have been reports about VR causing health concerns including eye strain and headaches. It will take time for people to figure out how to use these devices for prolonged periods of time.”
Monetizing the Metaverse: Why Businesses Are Jumping In
Touve sees advertising as one way to monetize the metaverse: Meta has already patented multiple technologies with hyper-targeted advertising and sponsored content.
Revenue also will be generated in the metaverse through virtual stores in which users can buy digital goods that correspond with real-world items developed by consumer brands.
“There are a large number of digital commerce opportunities that have pretty attractive underlying economics,” Touve says, noting that investors are now considering VR headsets more seriously after decades of disappointment.
Big-name consumer brands such as Nike and Forever 21 have created virtual world stores in a bid to increase their real-world income. In fact, JPMorgan believes the metaverse is a trillion-dollar annual revenue opportunity, pointing out that $54 billion in virtual goods are already sold every year. Professor Roshni Raveendhran does not think such predictions are fantasy, based on current usage levels. “On the retail side, companies already allow people to use VR and avatars to try out different products or clothes,” she says. “The metaverse will accelerate the trend.” The shoe brand Vans recently opened a virtual skatepark to connect with its customer base, while Chipotle launched a virtual restaurant where the first 30,000 visitors get a voucher for a real-world burrito. Budweiser, Gucci, Autodesk, Benetton, Coca-Cola — the list of brands building consumer experiences in the metaverse goes on. “Some businesses are building digital spaces in these words in which they can connect with potential customers to showcase new and different products or services,” says Touve. These big brands are often relying on small, innovative “web3” focused startups with animation, creative design, game design, blockchain and programming expertise. From among these innovators could emerge the next generation of Metas, Apples, Googles and Amazons — rulers of the “web2” online world. Investors Focusing on Technology Behind the Metaverse Metaverse-driven bets are being placed on producers of components such as semiconductors, cameras, displays, servers and sensors. This reflects higher demand for the processors, computing power, wearable devices and cloud storage that all underpin the metaverse experience. “There are significant opportunities for investors to get involved at the start of the next evolution of the internet,” says Touve. Apple’s recent $3 trillion market valuation has been fueled in part by speculation that it will launch a headset this year that could revolutionize consumer technology, just like the original iPhone. Beyond this, Touve says a big opportunity exists for creating a framework for immersive virtual workspaces as working practices change. Microsoft has already said it was developing an “enterprise metaverse,” a version of the metaverse for corporations. “VR is predominantly used for gaming, entertainment or social experiences, but corporate users will boost adoption rates very quickly,” Touve predicts, pointing out that the shift to remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic looks sticky and is driving demand for virtual collaboration tools while potentially ushering in a new era of globalization in talent management. “The workforce is distributed throughout the planet, so why do we expect it to all move to our neighborhood?” Raveendhran agrees with her colleague. “It does seem there will be a big push for the corporate metaverse,” she says. “Companies have already been using VR for sensitivity training, as well as diversity and inclusion and customer service training. The metaverse will make this
— Professor Roshni Raveendhran Raveendhran
an even more visceral experience.” On top of that, she points out that swaths of the labor force have grown tired of two-dimensional videoconferencing during the
Touve pandemic. “Before Covid, how many of us used Zoom or Teams? Now it’s the go-to method of business communication. The same thing could happen with the metaverse.”
Toward an Internet-like Open Metaverse
As Microsoft, other tech titans and upstarts race to build their own immersive worlds, there is a risk that multiple metaverses could exist in competition, forcing digital citizens to pick where they spend their time. Think about the unwelcome experience of opening and closing streaming apps just to tune in to a different show.
For this reason, Touve calls for open standards to be developed, like there were for the founding of the internet, so that people can move freely between virtual worlds as they do from website to website on a single browser.
“The open philosophy is in conflict with the desire for predominant platforms and their ability to monetize a user base,” he says. “But that is what made the web work so well, as it enabled open competition — a rising tide that lifted all boats.”
— Professor David Touve
There are formidable privacy and security problems, too. Meta, in particular, has faced persistent criticism over its ability to moderate harassment and abuse, alongside numerous privacy scandals. “People are already unhappy with the boundaries of consumer privacy,” says Touve. “The same sorts of challenges will exist in these virtual worlds.”
Online networks can be toxic environments, especially for women and minorities. Touve says the content moderation challenge is “probably the next domain of real cost to emerge.”
Raveendhran warns internet companies not to ignore the psychological barriers to adoption in their race to create and capture economic value from their metaverses. “The big thing is to figure out which interpersonal experiences are right for the metaverse.” But she thinks these kinks will eventually be ironed out. “The metaverse is not something that is science fiction anymore. It’s here.”
IS THE METAVERSE A (VIDEO) GAME CHANGER?
As a sign of the rise of the metaverse and the gaming industry’s importance to it, Microsoft in January bought games maker Activision Blizzard for $75 billion to power its move into the metaverse. Sony and Lego in April announced plans to build a “family-friendly” metaverse together and said they would invest $2 billion into Epic Games, creator of the mega-hit video game Fortnite.
One of the primary forms of metaverse- and blockchain-enabled Palomba gaming to emerge is known as “playto-earn gaming,” according to Professor Anthony Palomba. And one of the biggest players in the play-to-earn space is a game called Axie Infinity, which is loosely based The ability to buy in-game on the Pokémon franchise and items with real-world rewards players money is a new form of with digital tokens if they win battles conspicuous consumption. or complete quests. The game’s entry costs are three monsters or “Axies,” which are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can be freely bought and sold on exchanges. Often, sponsors gift players the cost of entry and take a substantial cut of their earnings, creating a new type of business model.
Players can convert their in-game assets into real cash. In fact, gamers in developing countries such as the Philippines are quitting their jobs to earn money from Axie, which is an early indication of the potential for rapid growth in people actually working in the metaverse. However, a North Korea-based hack that successfully stole $600 million in cryptocurrency earned by Axie players highlighted risks of banking on this emerging space.
For players of other games like World of Warcraft and Fortnite, the ability to buy in-game items with real-world money is a new form of conspicuous consumption, with the aim of displaying one’s wealth. “For people who feel disenfranchised from reality, this is a better measurement of their own personal capacity than owning cars or houses,” says Palomba.
Yet there are obvious risks, he says, such as if people simply cash out rather than recirculate the money in the game, causing a depreciation of the in-game tokens and forcing games developers to make changes to control inflation and other economic variables. “Being stewards of your own currency is a very interesting prospect. You become a central bank, basically,” says Palomba.
Is Business Innovation the Cure for What Ails U.S. Health Care?
By Anna Katherine Clemmons
Health care-related expenditures accounted for a record 19.7 percent of U.S. GDP in 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. As Professor Vivian Riefberg says: “Someone’s cost is someone else’s profit.”
Many describe the U.S. health care system as “broken,” with inefficiencies and access disparities further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. But looking at health care as a monolith, Riefberg says, “is fundamentally flawed, because each segment has different structures, conduct and performance.”
In that more nuanced view, there is immense opportunity for private business to make a positive impact on the literal and figurative health of society.
“If you look in aggregate in this country, we have some of the highest costs in the world per capita, and it’s pretty clear our outcomes are not always the best or health care is evenly available,” Riefberg says.
Professor Dennie Kim has been working in or studying the health care industry for more than 15 years. “I used to be so cynical and thought, ‘It’s all broken, we need to redesign it,’” Kim said. “But the U.S. health care system in many places is fantastic. We get some of the best outcomes of the world — in pockets — and so much of the world’s innovation comes out of the U.S.”
The introduction of retail clinics more than two decades ago, alongside similar forms of convenient, accessible care, Kim says, is one example. Initially, that push toward nontraditional health care delivery was met with strong resistance because established health care businesses worried over patient safety and profitability. But once the clinics “had proven demonstrated value, and that people wanted and needed them, those working in the system followed, using them as an opportunity to deploy capabilities in different ways to provide value to patients,” Kim says. “These sorts of small, incremental changes are happening on the fringes.”
A Pandemic-Sized Catalyst for Business Innovation
The pandemic amplified the need for this type of innovation. In the article “The essentials of health care innovation,” McKinsey wrote: “In speaking with more than 100 leaders in the health care industry from pharmaceutical and medical technology companies to health systems and payers, 90 percent agreed that the pandemic will fundamentally change the way they do business, requiring new products, services, processes, and business models.”
One example, Riefberg says, is the application of artificial intelligence
— Liridon Rrushaj (MBA ’14)
combined with virtual care and telemedicine, the latter of which was massively accelerated by COVID-19. “It’s more convenient and timely for the patient, and it can be better quality, because now you are getting the learning of others, and it can be more cost efficient,” Riefberg says.
“[Telemedicine] has not only proven that it works, but that patients like it and want it,” Kim says. “It’s such a huge game changer.”
Business innovation in the wearable device space has also improved health care, giving consumers increased access to sophisticated medical data and, in some cases, equipment, which proved critically important to have on hand amid the isolation periods of the pandemic.
Liridon Rrushaj (MBA ’14), director of venture investments at OSF Ventures, which has $250 million in assets under management and has made 28 health care-related investments since 2016, points to OSF’s partnership with Current Health and Medically Home, two hospital-at-home offerings in which patients take agency over aspects of their medical care. “People are much more comfortable in a home setting versus hospital,” Rrushaj says. “And this eliminates potential [hospital] capacity issues, risk of infection, etc.”
Dr. Taison Bell (EMBA ’20) and Dr. Abigail M. Pape (EMBA ’20) met while students at Darden. They decided to combine their medical training and business school learnings by partnering, along with fellow co-founder Timothy Harvey (EMBA ’20), to create Owl Peak Labs. Their goal is to provide innovative, at-home, cost-effective cancer screening processes through both imaging technology and oral screenings, which can eliminate the need to travel to a medical services location, undergo an invasive procedure and bypass potential patient fears of seeing a physician.
“When you look at the U.S. health care system, there’s a lot of disjointed elements that can make participating complicated,” Pape says. “That’s where some of these telehealth companies competing with each other offer a space for that integration.” The pandemic also exacerbated the mental health struggles of millions of Americans. OSF is seeking to address the shortage of mental health counselors by investing in companies offering remote cognitive-based therapies, such as Silvercloud, an on-demand, virtual mental health platform.
Creating an Irresistible Force to Overcome the Immovable Object
One of the biggest challenges for business innovation to unlock systemic improvements to health care is a lack of mutual financial incentives.
“What are the incentives behind the scenes for all parties?” Rrushaj says. “How do you align those so everyone is rowing in the same direction across the different sectors within health care? The vast majority of payments for the total pie are fee for service, and if you can drive more toward the value-based care models, then you can better align incentives to keep people healthier, keep them active and keep them productive.”
About 6 percent of Class of 2021 Darden graduates accepted a position in health care, and interest continues to grow in the student-run Darden Healthcare Club. During the 2022–23 academic year, Riefberg and other faculty members will spearhead an effort to explore what Darden might do additionally in the health care space.
Riefberg challenges her students to look toward health care business innovations that will improve quality, lower cost and increase access. In particular, Riefberg says businesses Dr. Taison Bell (EMBA '20) can work toward innovations that allow for more accessible and uniform health care, particularly for underserved parts of the country. Access to care, particularly in remote areas and regions without consistent access to broadband, is another realm in which business can improve the landscape. “More and more rural hospitals have closed, which decreases the percentage of Americans who have easy access to care,” Rrushaj says. “How do you think differently about providing care to those rural populations? Technology and digital health is a great way.” Ultimately, business innovation and grassroots work may be the only realistic way the health care system can improve. “With all the various interests and divisions in the country, it is unlikely that there will be a major overhaul,” Riefberg says. “Just look at how hard the Affordable Care Act was to get passed.” Kim doesn’t see drastic changes either, possibly even in his lifetime. “It’s a beast of a machine, and it has to keep running. We can’t shut it down, because lives are at stake.”
What You Need to Know
• Health care-related expenditures accounted for nearly 20 percent of GDP in 2020. • 90 percent of health care leaders surveyed by McKinsey expect the COVID-19 pandemic will fundamentally change the way their companies do business. • Telemedicine and wearable devices that record health and wellness data are at the vanguard of business innovations bringing digital disruption to health care.
18 THE DARDEN REPORT
Even to the casual observer, it was clear that cryptocurrencies hit the big time in 2021.
Headlines made last year helped cement crypto in the zeitgeist. Crypto-related news included a massive surge in the price of bitcoin. Before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the cost of one bitcoin never exceeded $20,000; mostly, it was far lower than that. Then it surged more than three-fold to an all-time high above $68,000 in November 2021 as institutional investors poured cash into the cryptocurrency. Even Fidelity began to allow bitcoin holdings in 401k portfolios. An abundance of new cryptocurrencies built on alternative blockchains with myriad uses and purposes have emerged to drive the overall crypto market up in value and hype.
While crypto gained traction with many, it never shook all of the skeptics. Warren Buffett in April essentially called cryptocurrencies worthless, and the skeptics seemed vindicated in early May when the TerraUSD cryptocurrency, which is a “stablecoin” intended to always be worth $1 per coin, collapsed under a wave of panic selling, leading investors to lose $40 billion of value in the span of a few days. The stunning turn rattled the entire crypto universe, with cryptocurrencies trending down in line with higher-risk tech stocks this spring. Bitcoin had settled below $30,000 as of early June.
The question now is: What’s next?
Crypto enthusiasts pitch a vision of decentralized finance providing access, opportunity and transparency. Many observers remain unconvinced cryptocurrencies can overcome the hurdles presented by governments and systems to achieve that ideal. Nevertheless, even one-time cryptoskeptics now see the potential for innovations that could change the world over the coming years.
“I was once a crypto naysayer, but now the technology has started to make more sense,” says Professor Dennie Kim, who teaches in the Strategy, Ethics and Entrepreneurship area and has started to develop a research Bruner interest in crypto. “We are at just the beginning,” he says.
COLLECTIBLES AND ART: A NEW FRONTIER FOR EMERGING BLOCKCHAINS AND CRYPTO
An important factor in the crypto boom was a related boom in activity in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are digital assets based on blockchain technology. Some of these digital files started selling for millions of dollars in early 2021 and supported the value of alternative blockchains, such as Ethereum and its corresponding cryptocurrency ETH. “These things are digital cultural artifacts,” Kim says. “So much of our lives are digital, it is almost shocking.”
Kim sees the NFT phenomenon as part of the evolution of the art world. Many young artists use computers as their means of creation. That led to the idea of selling a digital file, an NFT. Kim says the phenomenon benefits the artists more than in the past, when art dealers dominated the sales process and many creators had little power. Through the blockchain, art makers can go direct to the customer and earn a residual fee on future sales. “This is an evolution of how artists and creators can work,” he says.
In addition to art, NFTs are used to log unique ownership of everything from digital sports collectibles to memberships at private restaurants to rights to claim future digital or real-world products and experiences.
CRYPTO AND SOVEREIGN CURRENCIES
In mid-2021, El Salvador became the first country to adopt bitcoin as a legal currency, lifting the hearts of cryptocurrency fans. The Central African Republic followed suit in April. There’s long been a view that crypto could replace paper money printed by national governments. Indeed, other countries such as the United Kingdom, China and the U.S. are looking into the practicality of using digital currencies.
However, in practice, using cryptocurrency as a nationally mandated legal tender has both pros and cons. In El Salvador’s case, earlier this year the International Monetary Fund requested that the country drop the program. The intergovernmental organization was concerned for the country’s financial stability. Central banks, such as the Federal
Reserve, would also face challenges.
“It’s not clear to me how, under a regime of digital currency, the U.S. Federal Reserve would manage the money supply,” says Professor and Dean Emeritus Robert Bruner.
— PROFESSOR YIORGOS ALLAYANNIS
“Central banks set interest rates and influence the money supply according to their mandate of stabilizing prices, promoting economic growth and other aims,” he says. Prevalence of nongovernmental digital currencies or the issuance of digital currencies by central banks will complicate the ability to fulfill their mandate. “For instance, once a central bank pumps digital money into the blockchain, how easy will it be to draw it back in?” Bruner asks. “But this difficulty is what some advocates of cryptocurrency want. They would like to stop central banks — or governments more generally — from tinkering with monetary policy. The crypto craze has many drivers, of which one is the long-run decline in trust of government.”
On the positive side, the use of crypto has the potential to help develop a more inclusive financial system in the U.S. “Financial access is crucial to begin to redress the problems of economic inequality,” Bruner says.
That’s a meaningful problem in the U.S. As recently as 2019, more than 5 percent of households didn’t have access to a bank account, according to a survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. For all adults, the figure was 10 percent. Theoretically, a blockchainbased digital currency could move those figures closer to zero. “The more that digital currency enlarges the access to financial services, the better,” he says.
Buying and selling digital currency can be more efficient than current financial transactions, according to Professor Yiorgos Allayannis. “Blockchain tech will make things a lot faster and cheaper and safer,” he says. It would also reduce the risks of checks lost in the mail, or stolen or misplaced by recipients. Indeed, no one would need to waste time depositing physical checks at a bank. “For instance, [COVID-19 pandemic relief] stimulus checks could have been distributed using blockchain technology to people who didn’t have bank accounts,” he says. “If you think about the future and want to send money to certain populations, then you could do that very efficiently and quickly, if they have digital wallets.”
The blockchain technology could also speed up the movement of money from country to country. Currently, many cross-border transactions take days rather than hours to complete. Part of that tardiness is because money laundering rules imposed by governments slow down the process, Professor Kinda Hachem says.
The good news is blockchain technology can and is helping speed up the stodgy banking system, Hachem says. “I’m on board with what JP Morgan is doing for its institutional clients to move money across borders,” she says. That bank uses the JPM coin, which is not a cryptocurrency but uses an internal blockchain ledger to record where every dollar has come from or gone to. That makes the process to prevent money laundering more efficient.
However, Hachem sees a potentially huge problem regulators should worry about before the world adopts a decentralized blockchain technology as the wiring for the global financial system. “There is a bit of operational risk in the way these blockchains are set up to support decentralized payments,” she says. “The vulnerability is that current blockchain payments technology is programmed to accept the longest available blockchain as the correct ledger.”
That creates a potential exploit in which a longer blockchain can be made offline and then introduced into the system for fraudulent purposes, Hachem says. The detail is technical, but the vulnerability is simple: Bad actors could essentially steal bitcoin or other cryptocurrency holdings through remanufacturing a blockchain. That could cause the entire blockchain payments system to break down.
“If that happened then no one would trust the system,” she says.
What You Need to Know
• Bitcoin reached an all-time high above $68,000 in November 2021 but settled to below $30,000 in June, still well above its all-time high before the pandemic. • Cryptocurrency ownership, movement and transactions are recorded on digital ledgers called blockchains. • Alternative cryptocurrencies built on new blockchains have emerged to serve new purposes, but when the “stablecoin” TerraUSD collapsed in May, $40 billion of investor value was lost in days and the entire crypto universe was rattled. • Two nations have adopted bitcoin as legal currency, and many larger nations are exploring the use of digital sovereign currencies. Hachem
EVAN HELDMAN CLASS OF 2023
MAYA SINGH CLASS OF 2023
TO WIN THE TALENT RACE, IT’S TIME TO GET TO KNOW GEN Z
CHRISTINA ZHOU
CLASS OF 2023
KATIE RUSSELL
CLASS OF 2023
s director of brand marketing for E. & J. Gallo Winery, Adam Weinberg (MBA ’12) took note when a young woman he hired during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic told him she wasn’t considering potential employers who didn’t match her personal values. “She is graduating from college during a pandemic, and she is still filtering out companies that don’t commit to the things that are important to her,” Weinberg recalls thinking.
The woman went on to become Weinberg’s first hire from Generation Z. Born after 1996, this generation is entering the workforce in growing numbers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that Gen Z will account for 30 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force by 2030.
Many of the oldest members of Gen Z have experienced college, internships and their first full-time jobs in a virtual environment dictated by pandemic limitations. They’ve also come of age as the country has grappled with racial and social justice issues and weathered a political environment that has been fiercely partisan and marked by an erosion of norms.
Gen Z is more diverse than any other American generation, with 2018 research by the Pew Research Center finding that racial and ethnic minorities account for 48 percent of Gen Z in the U.S.
As Gen Zers begin to enter the workforce in larger numbers, members of Darden’s Alumni Career Services (ACS) and Career Center coaching teams are seeing sentiments that mirror those of Weinberg’s first Gen Z hire.
“Having a social impact in their work is incredibly important to this generation,” said Jennifer Coleman, executive director of ACS. “Companies that aren’t immediately associated with social good need to be thinking about how they are doing social good, even if it’s indirectly. There has to be that component in order to attract the best and brightest.”
Multiple surveys confirm this assertion. A 2018 survey of Gen Z individuals by Deloitte found that 77 percent of respondents said it was important to work for companies whose values aligned with their own. In a 2021 survey conducted by communications consultancy Porter Novelli, 55 percent of currently
aemployed Gen Z workers said they were reconsidering their job because their current employer hadn’t What You Need to Know • “Generation Z” includes individuals born after 1996. • The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that Gen Z will account for 30% of the U.S. labor force by 2030. • Gen Z is the most diverse generation in United States history, according to the Pew Research Center. done enough to • Experts in Darden’s Career Center and address social Alumni Career Services say members justice issues of Gen Z prefer employers with an externally. authentic commitment to a purpose As Gen Z that benefits society. prepares to become the primary source of talent for MBA programs, the Darden Admissions team increasingly sees interest in the School thanks to its focus on empowering students to improve business and society.
On the Move
While publications such as the New York Post have trumpeted how Gen Zers and younger millennials take to TikTok to brag about job-hopping, younger workers aren’t the only part of the workforce that is highly mobile right now. Record numbers of job resignations in 2021 have led researchers to coin terms such as “The Great Resignation” or “The Great Reshuffle” to describe the current labor market. What distinguishes Gen Z, Coleman says, is the speed at which these very young workers are willing to jump ship for something Having a social impact in their they feel will be a better work is incredibly important to this generation. — Jen Coleman, fit. “They won’t think twice about looking for Darden Alumni Career Services another job if they’ve been in a job for six months,” she said. Although that may bring to mind Gen X pop hero Ferris Bueller’s advice that “Life moves pretty fast,” there are things employers can do to respond to the quick pace at which this younger generation expects to see change happen. Weinberg said he’s come to the realization that the traditional system of annual performance reviews looks glacially slow to younger employees. “They are not OK waiting for a review once a year,” he said. “They are looking for constant interaction,
constant feedback. That has been a real change, and just managing an older millennial versus a member of Gen Z, the level of feedback and interaction they are looking for is much greater. They are trying to better themselves, and I think it’s really inspiring to see this new generation talk about things and demand things that we never did.”
Authenticity Is Essential
Gen Zers are digital natives. They’ve never known a world where you couldn’t use Google, Facebook, Yelp or Twitter to find out what people are saying about restaurants, consumer products, movies and, yes, even employers.
This means companies that want to prove their do-good chops — especially in the areas of sustainability, diversity and social justice — need to make sure they can back up their claims with concrete examples and actions, says Jeff Tang (MBA '13), senior director of marketing and general management careers at Darden’s Career Center.
“Every single company says, ‘We really want to recruit students of color,’” Tang says. “Well, show me the success stories that you have. Show me the leadership support and mentorship that exists to help create the outcomes these students are seeking. Unless you have some tangible proof to differentiate yourself, you are a day late and a dollar short.”
Weinberg sees a growing demand for less talk and more action when it comes to demonstrating company values.
“For so long, companies could get away with saying things but not actually doing things,” he said. “Gen Z is really bringing a new level of authenticity to the table. If we say a brand is about inclusivity — what is the company doing to deliver that? It’s about brands taking actions and not just creating ads to talk about the values they have.”
Mental Health Is Paramount
Weinberg says that Gen Z members of his team have brought with them an openness about mental-health issues that previous generations often avoided.
“They have really opened up the conversation about mental health and wellness,” he said. “It is really enlightening, and we have seen it even in our own team meetings where one of the Gen Z individuals will bring up mental health and wellness and others will start to open up about it as well.”
A January report from McKinsey & Co. found that members of Gen Z reported lower levels of emotional and social well-being than previous generations. In McKinsey’s survey, Gen Z respondents reported experiencing emotional distress at a rate that was double that of millennials and Gen X and triple that of baby boomers.
The fact that this generation has seen formative experiences in high school, college and first jobs eliminated or greatly transformed because of the pandemic has amplified this problem.
It should also play into employers’ planning around workplace flexibility going forward to ensure
workers get the social and emotional support they need.
“There is no question that the younger generation expects a flexibility that, when we were coming out of college, we would never dream of,” Coleman said. But the other side of that coin is that nonstop remote work can be isolating and draining.
“Some of the most challenging cases of young alums I’ve worked with since COVID are the ones working 100-hour weeks from their studio apartment or their parents’ basement,” she said. “As much as young people want flexibility, they also want and need mentoring and training. It’s difficult to get that in a meaningful way when everyone is remote.”
What’s required is a more empathetic approach to leadership, says Tang, who notes that many of the workplace preferences that are attributed to Gen Z are also felt in older generations due to the pressures of the pandemic and the national discourse on race and social justice.
“A lot of this stuff had been bubbling prior to the pandemic,” he said. “Gen Z was really at the forefront of it. Then the pandemic hit and all of us started feeling these things, and some of these doors got knocked down.”
They are not OK waiting for a review once a year. They are looking for constant interaction, constant feedback. — Adam Weinberg (MBA '12)
